India’s Flipkart offers hyperlocal supply service one other strive – theinformationsuperhighway

Flip kart A hyper-local service started in the suburbs of Bangalore on Tuesday, four years after the e-commerce group abruptly completed its previous foray into this category.

Walmart's e-commerce group, According to Flipkart Quick, the company's supply chain infrastructure and a new framework for location mapping technology are used to deliver more than 2,000 products for groceries, perishables, smartphones, electronics, and stationary items within 90 minutes.

When a customer places an order, the items are sourced from local convenience stores, warehouses and retail chains. Flipkart Quick – originally operating in Whitefield, Panathur, HSR Layout, BTM Layout, Banashankari, KR Puram and Indiranagar, as well as in other Bangalore suburbs – allows customers to book a convenient two-hour window between 6 a.m. and midnight for delivery.

The company, which works with a number of partner companies, charges a delivery fee of 29 Indian rupees (39 cents) for processing these orders.

The launch of Quick gives Flipkart the opportunity to reach a new group of users, especially those who see no other reason to buy online, and is a headache for some existing startups like Dunzo who are already operating in a similar field. It also marks the push of flipkart to wait for fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and milk orders.

“This is a great model for India because households of all sizes are already used to the Kirana shops in their neighborhood. In fact, Indian families are so comfortable with what we call the "hyperlocal context" that there is a tendency to build deep family relationships with vendors, store owners, and service providers – now with the convenience of e-commerce, "said Sandeep Karwa, a VP at Flipkart, in a statement.

“While we are starting our dark store model (no-walkin), which enables sellers to store inventory close to the consumer. This model has the potential to promote local entrepreneurship and enable new business strategies and partnerships. With Flipkart Quick – our hyperlocal function – we now have the potential to bring together the entire network of Kirana branches in the neighborhood with just one click on our platform, ”he added.

This is not the first time that Flipkart has explored the hyperlocal delivery category. In late 2015, Flipkart Nearby launched to deliver perishable goods, groceries, wellbeing, and household items within 60 minutes. But the company has reportedly shut down Nearby abruptly due to low demand and margins.

Flipkart did not refer to Nearby today, but talked about the efforts it has made to build Quick and the opportunities it sees in the market. A Flipkart spokeswoman told theinformationsuperhighway that the company plans to expand the hyperlocal quick delivery service outside of Bangalore in a few months.

Flipkart said for Quick that it is also moving away from the traditional model of using a postal code system to identify the place of delivery and instead using a latitude and longitude approach. This model enables the company "not only to narrow down the location", but also to be "more precise" and to deliver more efficiently.