Blinkit– Company Profile

Grofers (blinkit) is an online grocery and lifestyle products marketplace that acts as a bridge between end customers and local stores. Grofers was founded in December 2013 by Saurabh Kumar and Albinder Dhindsa. The company is based out of Gurugram and currently operates in various cities such as Agra, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kanpur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Nagpur, Noida, Madurai, Mumbai, Pune, Ranchi, Surat and Vadodara. One of the USPs of Grofers is that it offers low pricing across various categories such as fruits & vegetables, grocery & staples, beverages, home & kitchen, household needs, personal care, breakfast & dairy, baby & kids, organic & gourmet and pet care.Customers have the option to place their order through the Grofers app or via the company’s website.

History:

Grofers started operations as a B2B delivery service that acted as a bridge between large sellers and local retail stores. Later, the founders realized that there was a significant gap between local retail stores and end customers. It often happened that local retail stores were too busy to attend to home delivery needs of end customers or they did not have the product the customer was looking for. Aiming to resolve such problems, which would benefit both retail stores and customers, Grofers was launched as a B2C online marketplace. Grofers started with a small team, but it has now grown to more than 1000 employees. Grofers has registered a significant growth in its user base, with more than 3 million app downloads on iOS and Android.

Funding:

Grofers has received funding worth around $ 165 million. Investors include SoftBank, Tiger Global Management, and Cyriac Roeding. Experts feel that Grofers innovative business model has the potential to achieve the tag of ‘Unicorn’, a company that is valued at more than $ 1 billion.

Acquisitions:

Till now, Grofers has acquired three companies. In April 2015, Grofers acquired Delhi-based MyGreenBox, which was an app-based grocery delivery platform. The acquisition allowed Grofers to strengthen its position in the app-based grocery delivery segment. In October 2015, Grofers acquired Spoonjoy, which was a food delivery app and Townrush, a B2B logistics service provider. Both these companies were based out of Bengaluru.

Competition:

Grofers is facing tough competition from other online grocery delivery platforms such as BigBasket, Zopnow, Naturesbasket, etc. Leading e-commerce players such as Amazon India and Snapdeal have also started grocery services, making it even tougher for smaller players in the market.

About the Founders:

Saurabh Kumar is the founder of Grofers and he had earlier worked at Rasilant Technologies,as the Chief Operating Officer (COO). He received his education from IIT Bombay and University of Texas at Austin. Albinder Dhindsa is the co-founder and CEO of Grofers and earlier he had worked with Zomato as the Head of International Operations. He is an engineering graduate from IIT Delhi and holds an MBA degree from Columbia Business School.