Blinkit (formerly Grofers) was founded in December 2013 by Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar. After completing his graduation from IIT Delhi, Mr.Dhindsa went to work in the US where he met Mr. Kumar. Later, Mr. Dhindsa left his job to get an MBA from Columbia University and then joined Zomato. Meanwhile, Mr. Kumar was trying his hands with entrepreneurship. After graduation, he went on to work in a few corporate setups before entering the startup world with Rasilant in 2011 as the COO.
Having met each other while working for Cambridge Systematics during the late 2000s, they teamed up to enter the grocery delivery space. Their goal was to solve the problems (both on customer as well as merchant end) associated with the unorganized nature of the sector. The startup piloted in Delhi NCR before reaching other cities in India.
While Mr. Kumar started working on Grofers, Mr. Dhindsa initially joined the project part-time. After seeing the opportunity in the hyper-local space, Mr. Dhindsa decided to join full time in 2014 as a co-founder.
Blinkit primarily delivers groceries, fresh fruits and vegetables, mobiles and accessories, kitchenware, books, home and office needs, bakery items, pet care, baby care and personal care products, electronics, flowers, etc.
After seven years of operations as an online grocery delivery service, Blinkit introduced express grocery delivery in India, by building dark stores across cities. In July 2021, the company reported delivering over 7000 groceries in 15 minutes in Gurgaon. A month later, in August 2021, it introduced 10-minute delivery in the top-12 cities, after completing over 20,000 under-15-minute deliveries per day across 10 cities.
Grofers is a delivery service provider and logistics system which provides operates one B2C model. The primary function of the Grofers is to deliver grocery to its customers as well as vegetables, fruits and items of daily needs to its customers within a time of few hours. Grofers provide the delivery service by maintaining the stock for products in warehouses owned by it.
The company associates with small and large grocery stores in cities of its operations. The delivery boys then pick up the order and deliver the same to the customer to fulfill the order. To be able to place the order, you can go online and place it using Grofer’s website or the app available at major playstores.
The company had received interest from many big investors like Tiger Global, SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, etc.
Grofers was one of the online grocery delivery services which continued to serve their customers during the Coronavirus global pandemic. This helped the company achieve great prosperity in its business since people were unable to go out of their homes and get access to the marketplaces.
According to the reports, Grofers is interested in going public in either 2021 or 2022. One of the founders of the company, Dhindsa also stated, “Our path to profitability has accelerated during the lockdown, and after achieving operational profitability in January, we are on track to become EBITDA and cash positive by the end of this year. We are observing market sentiments and aim to hit the capital market by the end of 2021.”
Image Source: Startupstory
References
https://yourstory.com/2021/07/the-turning-point-grofers-zomato-unicorn-grocery/amp
https://thedigitalyug.com/startup/grofers-success-story-cities-idea-investment-covid
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