Gurgaon: In a tin shed building filled with restless but invisible customers, data, AI and a group of pickers are locked in a frenzied dance, choreographed to the thinnest extent of human patience, known as the delivery ecosystem. has set as its new benchmark – ten minutes to reach homes.
Items are picked up and packaged in the blink of an eye in this new-age version of the grocery store, which is called a “dark store” because it only serves online customers. Sound is the method for this breathless motion. From coded shelves – designed so the most ordered items are within the fastest reach – washing powder, instant coffee, floor cleaner, digestive biscuit, cola, yogurt, milk and a chocolate bar land at the billing counter in under a minute order to do. Milk and vegetables, which are often ordered, are the ones closest to the checkout. During the IPL season, cola and chips were put together on the shelves.
This dark store is a quiet place, except for the soft rush of footsteps of pickers gliding around the aisles. Workers rarely speak. There’s no time or need for this, as the devices are all talking on the algo-verse – computers where orders arrive on handheld devices that drive the picker back to the computer for exact items and simultaneous billing. Packing takes about 20 seconds, which is the window for the rider – who receives a notification – to come into the store and pick it up. Order continues approximately two minutes after arriving at the store.
“For customers with a high predictable score, we receive orders while paying on the app. We just follow the instructions of the system. If you use your brain or get distracted, you will not meet the time target,” says a 40-year-old employee of the store (request of anonymity), formerly a warehouse manager in Dubai, who Had returned to India during the lockdown.
The day this correspondent went to a store located in an old neighborhood of Gurgaon and run by an e-commerce startup, he placed around 300 orders by noon, an average of 1,000 orders which he claims to do in a day. About 40% of them missed the 10-minute time limit, a difficult goal to accomplish through the traffic maze on Monday morning.
But traffic, or pausing to think, isn’t the only problem with this ecosystem, whose driving force, critics say, is an exaggeration.
What’s the big rush?
Quick Commerce is getting huge cash flows that don’t necessarily mean a commitment to deliver in 10 minutes. It could be 20 or 30 minutes or even a little more, which is pretty quick.
In January this year, Swiggy Raised $700 million (Rs 5,225 crore) in fresh funding to develop its food delivery platform and instant commerce grocery service Instamart. zomato Has already pumped $100 million into Blinkit (formerly Grofers). Google-backed Dunzo has tied up with Reliance and has raised $200 million. Tata’s BigBasket, along with its BB Now, has entered the fray with the promise of delivering groceries in a time limit of 10 to 20 minutes.
“Instant commerce is growing rapidly around the world. The only way to survive is to lead from the front. Thus, we are initially entering this area on a pilot basis.” Rinsul Chandra, Vice President (Products) at Zomato. The leading aggregator also recently started a pilot run to deliver food within 10 minutes at its home ground, Gurgaon. But the test ran into logistics problems.
Dunzo Daily, which has been in expansion mode, was launched in Gurgaon last month with a promise of 19 minutes delivery. Its co-founder and CEO Kabir Biswas said, “Dunzo Daily has expanded to five cities from January 2022. We were in Bangalore till 2021 and will be operating in Pune, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR and Hyderabad from January 2022. expanded.”
For Biswas, the 10-minute rush is “unnecessary and not supported by evidence”. “We deliver in less than 10 minutes, but in areas where we deliver in 19 minutes, we haven’t seen any retention issues. Through data analysis and mapping of consumer sentiments, we have realized that momentum is not the make or break point for the customer. Factors like inventory management, stock of the right units, especially perishables, a wide range of products based on demand forecast, and quality determine the overall viability of accelerated commerce,” Biswas said.
The e-commerce delivery space became an overcrowded space during the pandemic, with orders to isolate people from home and work from home. An industry watcher told TOI that companies that have invested in scaling aggressively now need a new hook to retain customers, as our lives go back to normal. The bottom line is that this is a market that is projected to grow 15x by 2025, and a race for its share is inevitable.
Mayank Jain, marketing and content head, B2B fintech company Finbox, said, “Therefore, e-commerce companies started sending out the message that it would take longer for customers to get groceries from stores inside their condominiums.” A senior executive at a leading grocery delivery startup agreed. “The change we were trying to bring for years, it came overnight (as soon as the lockdown started). We had all our slots filled and a long waiting list. It was the only business that was highly profitable. Therefore, companies remodeled their supply chains and expanded their hyperlocal networks. And here we are. ,
Zepto’s 19-year-old co-founder, Adit Palicha, who is also on the 10-minute bandwagon, said there is an organic need to reach homes sooner and sees the company’s growth as confirmation. “Our eight-month-old company is seeing around 61% month-on-month revenue growth and this shows that there is an organic need for seamless grocery delivery. That is why we are doing what we are doing – setting up a hyperlocal network,” Palicha said. “Skeptics may see this as a market bubble or something, but the value proposition that we and investors are seeing on the other side of the table is extremely promising,” he said.
A spokesperson for Swiggy’s Instamart also said that quick commerce was the need of the hour. However, Instamart doesn’t promise a specific time frame. “We deliver within minutes. But we are not committed to doing this in 10 minutes. Users of Instamart are those who are under time pressure and want convenience. Users across demographics have witnessed the digitization of grocery shopping in the last 18 months,” said the spokesperson.
speed bump
Superfast groceries are usually not available in large urban areas but in clusters. Depending on the demand density, tie-ups with dark stores or local stores are forged with an average operating radius of 2-3 km. However, speed is not just about technology in the current expedited delivery system. Still not, at least.
The latest news of Trinamool Congress MP Mohua Maitra, reckless driving and a stimulus regime that has been decried as exploitative, has drawn strong criticism from various quarters for months, demanding a law banning 10-minute deliveries. “No civilized society can do that. Encouraging delivery officers to break traffic rules” and risking lives. This has raised the big question of sustainability, even if companies have the right deadline for quick commerce. trying to find.
In Gurgaon, which has been a testing market for the superfast regime, police say they have their hands full by zigzagging the city by delivery agents trying to drive fast, many of them on small e-scooters . “We were confident that companies forced them to deliver items in a certain time frame. But the companies deny this and say that they operate in hyperlocal clusters. We are educating all such riders and their companies about the laws. They need to have extra time on hand while driving on the roads. The DCP (Traffic) said, “Wrong-side driving and speeding will not be tolerated.” RS Tomra,
For agents, even if the distances are short, the rush comes from the rewards of giving more, which means more day-to-day earnings. With no time to waver, end of gambling (22) On a dry June day in Gurgaon, he ate his lunch while staying in a pit under a tree. He had not been giving himself these 5 minutes for weeks, giving up his food to fulfill 50 orders (which would guarantee him Rs 2,500).
Sonu said that he fainted one day due to heat and lack of food and has since become more careful about his food. “The company does not force us to deliver in 10 minutes, but if we do more deliveries then our pay increases. Initially a rider used to get around Rs 25 to Rs 30 per order. As they become more experienced, the commission increases to Rs 50 per order,” he said.
In addition, many have delivered during the pandemic after losing their jobs and need extra money to run their households. “I was dismissed from the school where I taught physical education. I took this step to support myself and my family of five. It is in my best interest to place at least 40 orders a day so that I can take home around Rs 1,500 and manage a monthly income of Rs 35,000 to Rs 40,000,” said 50-year-old Ghanshyam Singh.
But he worries whether he can keep up the pace. Apart from climbing stairs with heavy bags, Sonu, who rides his bike for an average of seven hours a day, said, “It’s a backbreaking job.” “It is so,” he said.
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