AskMe Grocery targets Rs 1,800 crore GMV by March

Confident of the success of online sale of groceries, AskMe Grocery has said it expects the value of merchandise sold through its platform to touch Rs 1,800 crore by March next year.

The growth is expected to come on the back of addition of new partners and expansion of its fresh food category, AskMe Grocery Co-founder Ankit Jain told PTI.

Grocery online has a lot of potential when the business is at a scale. We have been doing well and our average cart size is about Rs 1,900 and we are already processing 20,000 orders daily. The hyperlocal delivery model has really helped us, Jain said.

He further said the company works with kirana store owners to offer convenience, comparison and more deals for the consumers.

We expect our annual GMV (by the end of March 2017) to touch Rs 1,800 crore... Currently, business has been growing at 30 per cent month-on-month, he added.

Gross Merchandise Value or GMV is described as total sales made through an e-commerce platform.

AskMe Grocery has a presence in 38 cities (as on February, 2016) and plans to expand to 45 more cities including some tier-II towns, in the next 3-6 months. According to a report by Franchise India, the online grocery market is expected to be Rs 2.7 billion market by 2018-19.

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However, grocery delivery is a cash-intensive business. According to industry analysts, hyperlocal delivery startups, like BigBasket and Grofers, have been feeling the heat from a slowdown in investment as they operate on wafer-thin margins and end up losing money on each delivery. Last month, Snapdeal-backed PepperTap had announced it will shut down its cash-burning grocery delivery operations, laying about 150 staffers. Jain said the company is aggressively expanding the fresh food (perishable grocery) category, which has higher instances of repeat purchase.

Fresh foods is a segment where we see a huge scope of growth. We expect about Rs 150 crore in GMV from this category, he added.

AskMe Grocery has partnered Mother Dairy Fruit and Vegetable, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB). The tie-up will enable customers to buy all Mother Dairy products from the AskMe Grocery portal. The product range will include all Mother Dairy products, Safal Frozen, Safal Ambient, Safal Fresh (Fruits and vegetables), Safal pulses and Dhara edible oils. The service will be available in Delhi-NCR to begin with and will be scaled up gradually across other cities in the course of the current financial year, Jain said.

We will arrange pick ups from the nearest Mother Dairy booth and get the products delivered in 4-6 hours, he added. At present, Mother Dairy operates through about 750 booths and around 350 Safal booths in Delhi-NCR