Will expand 10-min deliveries to 100 cities by March 2022: Blinkit's Albinder Dhindsa

Grofers, known for its online grocery service, is ready for another major overhaul, following its recent pivot to 10-minute deliveries, with the company rebranding itself to Blinkit on Monday to capture the fast-growing and highly-competitive quick-commerce space.

The brand change signals the unicorn’s diversification into non-grocery deliveries under the 10-minute umbrella as it looks to take on heavyweights in the horizontal commerce segment. In an interaction, founder and chief executive Albinder Dhindsa spoke about the reason for the rebranding exercise and Blinkit’s ambition to capture 100 cities in the next three months. Edited excerpts:

Why did Grofers rebrand itself as Blinkit?

We wanted to build a 10-minute delivery (model), but demand was not just for a 10-minute grocery delivery. Rather, it was for a 10-minute delivery for everything. So, with a focus on how we bring more and more products to customers in under 10 minutes, we opted for a rebranding. This says we are not just for groceries anymore, we are essentially about instant quick commerce.

What are the steps Blinkit is taking in line with your aspirations to diversify from e-grocery? Do we see non-grocery items significantly driving gross merchandise value?

We have about 250 stores and are working with different (store) partners to bring stock units that are relevant to their communities or localities. In the north, it’s the wedding season and people require certain things right at the last moment. So, we have a wedding store that is live. We also sold gold coins and silver coins using our platform. We are figuring out how to gather all the data to give the right products. Ours being a tech platform, we are trying to harness the process of making relevant products available to customers when they need them. It goes way beyond groceries.

How are you seeing expansion of your 10-minute grocery model amid competition?

The 10-minute (delivery) proposition is fully operational in the top eight cities, but we are looking to expand fairly rapidly. The roll-out in cities is on. We are launching today in Ludhiana and Mohali. Chandigarh is in the pipeline. Our plan is to expand to at least 100 cities with the 10-minute delivery model by March. By January-end, we will have close to 550 stores on our platform. We have 14,000-15,000 delivery partners and are hiring 1,000 riders a week. Our partners’ pay is also higher and this will be ramped up in the future. We are very heavily investing in improving our technology. So, we have added about 100-odd people in the tech team in the last four months and we will continue to expand the technology feature because I believe that underlines everything that we do.

With stiff competition and with grocery being a low-margin business, do you see profitability taking a hit?

We haven’t felt the heat of the competition yet. We are already operationally profitable and we think we know the general concept of the business, partly because we have been doing this for a while.

We have taken a lot of those learnings to make sure that from Day 1 we were building a sustainable business.

tarush.b@livemint.com