Online grocery delivery platform Grofers has rebranded itself as Blinkit to fend off competition in the fast-growing quick commerce space.
Japan’s SoftBank-backed Grofers pivoted to the 10-minute grocery delivery service starting with Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Jaipur in August this year. The move to rebrand comes at a time when its close competitor, Swiggy, has announced the launch of its 15-minute delivery service from January 2022.
“Once upon a time, a few months ago, we started on a journey to build the future of commerce with 10 minute delivery of most of the stuff our customers need in their daily lives. Today, we already process over a million orders a week, across 12 cities in India. And this is just a start,” company founder Albinder Dhindsa communicated via a blogpost.
“We learnt a lot as Grofers, and all our learnings, our team, and our infrastructure is being repurposed to pivot to something with staggering product-market fit – quick commerce. Today, we are surging ahead as a new company, and we have a new mission statement – “instant commerce indistinguishable from magic”. And we will no longer be doing this as Grofers – we will be doing it as Blinkit,” Dhindsa added.
Grofers has been partnering with local store owners across cities and following a dark store strategy to fast spread its presence in the quick commerce space. By November, the company had opened 200 dark stores and plans to open 150 more by this month-end.
The company had reportedly bagged the unicorn status (startups valued at $1 billion or more) after it raised $120 million from food aggregator Zomato Ltd. and existing investor Tiger Global Management in August this year. Prior to that, Grofers had raised close to $600 million across multiple rounds.
Its close competitor Swiggy’s total funding stood at $2.9 funding as of this July. Earlier this month, the company announced that it will invest $700 million in its quick commerce business Instamart. Launched in August 2020 in Gurugram and Bengaluru, Instamart is present across 18 cities and conducts over 1 million orders in a week.
In the last few months, Swiggy Instatmart has onboarded more than one seller-run dark store every day. By January 2022, it will make deliveries in 15 minutes by having the network of dark stores very close to the majority of its customers.