Online food delivery service company Zomato has decided to shut down its grocery delivery service from September 17. The company also said that it believes that its investment in Grofers (grocery delivery service company) will lead to better results for its shareholders than the groceries delivery service on its own platform.
The company said in an email to its kirana partners, Zomato believes in providing the best services to its customers and giving the biggest growth opportunities to its business partners. We do not think that the current model is the best way to pass on such benefits to our customers and business partners. Therefore, we would like to discontinue our pilot delivery of groceries with effect from September 17, 2021. In July this year, Zomato launched a pilot grocery delivery service offering grocery delivery within 45 minutes to its customers in select markets. Earlier, the company said that it had invested $100 million (about Rs 745 crore) to acquire a minority stake in grocery delivery platform Grofers.
The email mentions that store catalogs are very dynamic and inventory levels change frequently. This has resulted in a gap in the fulfillment of orders, resulting in poor customer experience. “We have realized that in a marketplace model (like ours) with consistently high fulfillment rates it is extremely difficult to deliver on such delivery promises,” Mail said.
When contacted, the spokesperson said, “We have decided to discontinue our Kirana pilot and as of now have no plans to run any other form of grocery delivery on our platform.” Grofers has found the high quality products market fit in 10 Minute Grocery and we are confident that our investment in the company will yield better results for our shareholders than our in-house grocery effort.
