Coronavirus: These 5 startups are ensuring doorstep delivery of groceries and essentials
While Dunzo, Bigbasket, Swiggy, and Zomato are the most popular in-demand apps during the coronavirus lockdown, other startups are helping in delivering essentials to consumers across the country.
It has been over two months since people are confined to their homes due to the nationwide lockdown announced by the Indian government in the wake of coronavirus pandemic. However, this lockdown has made people adapt to the ‘new normal’ — a world with little physical interactions.
In such a world, minimising points of physical contact would be the way forward. To help relieve people’s hardships, in-demand apps have come to the rescue. Various startups have come up with initiatives and features to deliver essentials at people’s doorsteps. Many are preventing transmission by opting for a contactless delivery option.
The demand for essential deliveries has also forced these players to tie up directly with brands and distribution hubs for timely deliveries.
Here is a list of five startups who are meeting the needs of people during the pandemic.
JustMyRoots
Founded by husband-wife duo Samiran Sengupta and Promita Sengupta, is a community-based ecommerce platform, delivering home-cooked meals, other cuisines, and food native to a particular region. It delivers fresh fruits and vegetables in cities like Delhi-NCR, Kolkata, Jaipur, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, and Jammu and Kashmir.
The team at JustMyRoots
Serving a daily order volume of 300 plus, JustMyRoots partners with selected distributors of FMCG companies, and delivers the products through a third-party delivery app, along with its own fleet.
Box8
Founded in 2012 by Anshul Gupta and Amit Raj, prepares and delivers meals and snacks through its delivery fleet.
The foodtech startup has recently introduced grocery delivery on its app, allowing customers to order daily essentials and groceries, including dairy products, vegetables, fruits, bread, snacks, and poultry products amidst the lockdown.
Box8 founders Anshul Gupta and Amit Raj
The Mumbai-based startup is offering home delivery of limited essential grocery products only in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Gurugram for now to reduce the possibility of physical contact.
StoreSe
is a 24-hour online grocery shopping platform that organises the delivery of essentials to apartment complexes, helping people locked down in their homes get their hands on groceries.
Conceptualised by Abhinav Pathak, Saketh BSV, and Yogesh Ghaturle, StoreSe enables people to order groceries and other essentials from their local offline stores.
Founders of StoreSe
The startup is currently serving over 1,600 apartments in Bengaluru. Some of the other cities on its list include Delhi, Mumbai, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Chennai, Lucknow, Jaipur, Surat, and Patna.
The startup has tied up with offline retail brands such as Modern Bazaar, Metro Cash & Carry, MORE, and leading cab aggregators such as Ola and Meru for the delivery service.
GreenDesk
is a B2B grocery platform launched by Himanshu Agarwal in 2016. The platform was started with three clients and 90 orders per month, using the mandi as a supplier.
Himanshu Agarwal, Founder and CEO, GreenDesk
The business now deals with over 600 farmers for supply of fresh vegetables across India. It has tied up with more than 50 channel partners to supply groceries. Eliminating the middle-men proved crucial in their expansion, as it supplies more than 60 clients across hospitals, cafes, and restaurants, and receives 1,000 orders per month.
In times of coronavirus, the startup has tied up with clients like Udaan and Grofers, and are focussing on home deliveries now.
NoBroker
Launched in 2018 by Akhil Gupta, Saurabh Garg, and Amit Agarwal, the app offers services and features which enable users to manage multiple activities inside residential buildings, housing societies, and gated communities.
Founders of NoBroker.com
To ensure the supply of daily essentials at people’s doorsteps during the lockdown, the platform has launched grocery services on its app. Under this, society residents can place an order on the app and volunteers within the society ensure delivery by buying it from B2B and ITC.
The startup has already started delivering groceries in cities like Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, and Hyderabad, and plans to soon expand to other cities, including Delhi and Mumbai.
Edited by Javed Gaihlot