Indian internet firm Grofers on Monday rebranded itself as Blinkit as its CEO promised to accelerate deliveries of everything from groceries to electronics in a market dominated by Walmart’s Flipkart and Amazon’s local unit .
The SoftBank-backed firm, which has so far primarily focused on grocery delivery, has more than 100 partner stores or warehouses in eight cities through which it delivers 10-minute drop-offs to shoppers, CEO Albinder Dhindsa told Reuters. told.
“We see this is going to be the future of commerce,” Dhindsa said. “We are targeting around 1,000 (partner) merchants by the middle of next year… We are also planning to expand to 100 cities by March.”
Engineering graduates Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar founded Grofers in late 2013 as an online grocer.
Its expansion into the broader Indian e-commerce space comes directly against market retail pushes such as Flipkart, Amazon and tycoon billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance, which EY expects to grow an average of 27% annually, to touch $99 billion by 2024. .
Dhindsa said the company, which currently has 2,000 employees, will hire many more engineers.
“We will be adding as many people as we can according to our business needs. We have hired 700 people in the last 4 months and we want to work very, very aggressively.”
Another 20,000 people work for the firm indirectly as delivery workers and partners.
Dhindsa said Blinkit, which counts investment firm Tiger Global and home food delivery company Zomato among its backers, is currently evaluating its capital requirements but is in no hurry to raise funds anytime soon.
This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.
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