Tata group is the new entrant on the online grocery retailing space.Trent Ltd, the group’s retail arm that operates an equal joint venture with UK retail major Tesco called Trent Hypermarket Ltd, is testing the waters with an online grocery retailing pilot. The grocery e-commerce platform www.my247market.com is owned and operated by Fiora Hypermarket Ltd, a subsidiary instituted by Trent in March 2014, which also operates four stores in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu that have barred foreign direct investment (FDI) in supermarkets.
Though Trent operates supermarkets under the Star Bazaar banner, its association with grocery e-commerce platform is restricted to just being a supply chain partner for www.my247market.com. Given that fresh food forms a large part of customer order, deliveries will be made using temperature controlled vans to ensure right quality and freshness. The platform is currently only delivering to four pin codes (mainly in areas in and around Andheri) in Mumbai.
The Indian online grocery retailing space has seen significant action in the past few weeks where in India’s largest e-marketplace Flipkart was reportedly said to be working on adding new categories particularly the grocery section. This apart, other e-marketplace operators – Amazon and Snapdeal – have taken initiatives to have fresh produce and grocery among various offerings on the platform.
Taking the neighbourhood kirana store online Amazon launched ‘Kirana Now’, an express delivery platform in partnership with mom-and-pop stores, while Snapdeal has got on board Godrej Group’s food retail arm Godrej Nature’s Basket that features 700-odd products particularly gourmet food to cater to food and grocery requirements. In fact, Godrej Nature’s Basket on Monday said it has also partnered Amazon to sell its products through the e-commerce giant’s platform in India.
Another major player is Mukesh Ambani promoted Reliance Retail that is already testing the online grocery retailing space with www.reliancefreshdirect.com across different pockets in Mumbai. Among other players operating as a pure-play e-commerce platform include BigBasket.com, Localbanya.in, go4fresh.in, ZopNow.com and Grocermax.com.
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Source – dnaindia