Meragrocer.com sells Coke Zero cans, Oreo biscuits and Maggi noodles at Rs 1 each on a minimum basket value, while ShopClues.com recently sold Nivea skin care products at a 48% discount over its retail price.
"We sold Rs 15 lakh worth of Nivea products within nine hours. This breaks the assumption that e-commerce doesn't have scope to be an evolving market for grocery," said Radhika Aggarwal, co-founder at ShopClues. The platform sold bundled packs of skin-care brand Nivea at Rs 299.
Aggarwal said the deal allowed Nivea, an aspirational brand, reach small-town shoppers with zero investment in logistics infrastructure. "We are now trying similar models with Hindustan Unilever and Procter & Gamble," she said.
Most online grocery retailers said their sales have increased significantly in recent times. Investor interest too is on the rise.
"The year 2014 was an inflection point in online grocery retailing. We have seen sales jump five times since last year," said Vipul Parekh, co-founder of online grocer BigBasket, which operates in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Pune. "We buy products directly from companies or distributors similar to how modern trade operates. Hence, our discounts are very similar to what large su permarkets offer because of our bulk buying," he said.
BigBasket last year raised Rs 200 crore from Helion Ventures and Zodius Capital in a deal that valued the Bengaluru-based startup at over Rs 1,000 crore. Clues Network, promoter of ShopClues, got a valuation of about Rs 3,100 crore (approx $500 million) when Tiger Global Management, which has invested in Flipkart and Alibaba, invested fresh capital of $100 million in it. Set up in 2011, ShopClues focuses mainly on tier II and III cities and claims it has over 40 million visitors monthly.
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