Hyperlocals, logistics players may pit themselves against food and grocery retailers

Hyperlocal and logistics players are expected to emerge as competitors to brick and mortar retailers embarking on e-commerce in the food and grocery segment.

For instance, Zop Now, which does deliveries for a host of retailers such as Star Bazaar, More and HyperCity, is likely to be pitted against them once they start their respective e-commerce operations.

“We will keep on adding more deliveries for brick and mortar retailers but at the same time will also end up competing with them. There are going to be two different operations for us in the food and grocery space since we also plan to have warehouses to service our customers who are not going to differentiate between the source of the food and grocery in the home delivery segment,’’ says Mukesh Singh, Founder ZopNow.

Shoppers Stop promoted HyperCity Retail is on the verge of starting its own e-commerce and expects to compete with big players like Amazon in the food and grocery segment.

“We may have Zop Now and Amazon Now today as our delivery partners but we also have to build our own brand. There is loss of opportunity when the hyperlocal players deliver for other retailers or even do deliveries by themselves. Even in the UK market, it is retailers like Tesco who are more successful than the other hyperlocal players,’’ observes Ramesh Menon, CEO, HyperCity.

ZopNow is also getting ready to compete with Aditya Birla’s More stores after doing deliveries on its behalf.

“There is always going to be consumer demand for food and grocery and we will be doing independent operations for ourselves and the brick and mortar retailers,’’ added Singh of Zop Now.

Meanwhile, another brick and mortar retailer in the food and grocery segment Dmart is also getting ready to build warehouses to make a success of its loss making e-commerce company under Avenue E-commerce.

Meanwhile, logistics player delhivery is transforming itself as supply chain company and challenging the brick and mortar retailers.

At the recently concluded National FMCG summit, Sandeep Barasia, Managing Director, delhivery, said, “We can always challenge the role of the distributors. If we can directly supply to stores, we can also supply the same FMCG goods directly to consumers. It is going to be no different since we can be equally efficient in both.’’