GROUP 4 SECTION C

19PGP190 Mayank Yadav

19PGP129 Siddhant Sharma
19PGP170 Qaif Fangari
19PGP118 Avani Shah
19PGP139 Tanmoy Mondal
19PGP186 Chintan Kantharia

About Grofers

Grofers was thought off to solve a very basic problem of going to a nearby store to buy products of daily
needs. This is the basic thought behind the business model of Grofers. Grofers is a mobile commerce (m-
commerce) marketplace to buy daily needed products. It promises to deliver from any neighborhood
place within 90 minutes. It delivers a vast range of products from vegetables, fruits, bakery items to
cosmetic, baby care, and pet care product. Along with the vast range of products and quick delivery,
Grofers has customer satisfaction as its priority. The quality and timely delivery of products has helped
Grofers build loyalty from its customers. The product category breadth has also given Grofers a little
advantage over competitors.

Talking about the technology used by Grofers, it was built by the internal engineering team, a lot of
capital was invested in building the platforms and application to have a laminar flow of operations which
would in turn accelerate the growth.

Founded in 2013 by Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar, Grofers as of April 2020 with around 3500
employees, was valued at around $650 million with around 12 current investors. Grofers is an on-
demand enterprise where critical operational capability is the utmost importance that help in giving the
best customer experience. Idea is to improve delivery systems to meet delivery times in cost efficient
manner as promised to customers.

Business model

Grofers works on a M-Commerce or a mobile marketplace (on demand) model, this eliminates a
customer’s trip to a retailer and replaces the process by doing this process online. For faster deliver
Grofers works Hyperlocal.

1. Grofers tie-ups with Hyperlocal and assigns a delivery boy.

2. Grofers receives an order and delivers it in under 90 mins for delivery place under 4Km radius
3. Local tie-ups help faster deliver, profit for both itself and merchants.
4. This also increases revenue for merchants as the number of orders increase and Grofers charges
commission on it.
5. Grofers charges 8% commission on orders below Rs 700 and 12%-15% on order above Rs 1000.
CURRENT OPERATIONS MODEL

Grofers’ supply chain focusses on transporting processed orders from warehouses to aggregation
centers because it contains both groceries and fresh produce as well. Further it is moved to customer’s
delivery spot. However, this is little problematic in the context of our country.

Customer orders varies from weight of 1kg to 55kgs, due to the high variation in order based on daily
consumption and weekend parties especially in metro cities where Grofers has major footprint and
reach. Logistics last-mile involve delivery executives on bikes and vans like Eeco. Bikes are preferred for
places where accessibility is an issue for Eeco and single orders need to processed/delivered.

The initial set-up is that delivery staff is provided with the list of orders to be delivered along with the
customer details. From here, the decision to choose a particular route alternative, or to take bike/EECO
based on weight and location is the real problem that requires efficient planning. Any bad plan will lead
to late delivery and low customer satisfaction.

“The line between disorder and order lies in logistics” — Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Gagandeep Arora says, “It’s technology which helps us to solve this daunting puzzle.” Grofers has put up
an application in place to derive the customer deliveries in optimal manner. Various parameters taken
into consideration by the software is Delivery’s SLA, Order Weight and Minimum Distance.

This hyperlocal business incorporates geocoding customer’s location to build an optimal route. If the
application identifies a deviation of more than 200m, this would mean delivery exec needs to go through
a crossroad in Bangalore city. This can result in 10 mins delay in delivery or a U-turn at flyover in
Mumbai. A geocoder provides accurate drop locations which helps in making sure delivery reaches on
time. The system has feedback loop mechanism where it updates the geocode of the customer location
every time delivery happens.

Grofers use Google Optimization Tools (OR Tools) to solve mixture optimization problems for route
generation and Open Source Routing Machine (OSRM) for distance measurement between two
coordinates and geocoding. Deliveries are planned until the actual delivery day, providing our processes
the feedback needed to provide options for rational route planning and load balancing. Now, after the
magic in the background, the operating team is starts getting into action.

Once the routes are generated, sorting and segregation comes into picture at the aggregation center for
easy delivery. Special attention is given to stacking of orders so as to sync with the order of actual
deliveries. In other words, LIFO (Last-In-First-Out) manner is used to make sure first customer order is
put in the last of the truck. It saves good amount of time. Delivery guy receives the delivery route before
the scheduled delivery time. Delivery guy gets in-app routing sequence and customers are also able to
know the timing of their delivery.

Delivery slots are of 2 hours. This means if an order is booked with delivery slot between 3pm and 5pm,
then it can reach any time in this period. The latest app shares the ETD, estimated time to deliver based
on delivery personnel geolocation, updated every 2 hours to ensure ETD can have most accurate
information.

Regarding the transit of goods. They are kept in different boxes based on the need of refrigeration.
Crates are barcoded for easy scan and tracking. The app with the delivery guy also shows the detail of
number of crates left. Last quality check is done in front of customer at the doorstep when crate seal is
broken in front of him/her and inspection of every good can be done. If anything found failing quality
check fail, customer can instantly raise a refund.

Delivery execs goes through rigorous training to ensure best customer experience and also videos for
such trainings are provided in the app for the delivery exec to ensure he/she behaves the best and give
customer the better experience.
PROPOSED AMENDMENTS

Delivery hotspot pick up

The customer base of Grofers highly involve working class professionals who do not have time to go
offline shopping for grocery and fresh produce. Currently, there is still gap in delivery where customer
may have to wait in between that 2-hour gap to the last minute. From customer’s point of view, if the
order is being done at office location during off-hours, that would mean the customer has to
unnecessary wait for the delivery.

Therefore, a pickup hotspot will ensure delivery exec can deliver the goods in time and customer may
choose to come next day and pick up the goods from there. That will save time for delivery exec in a way
that, there won’t be a need a direct customer interaction. Hence saves time on another delivery. For
customer, it would be convenience.

Real-time information for better tracking

A real-time tracking as we have in Swiggy and Zomato can help reach to customer’s address early.
Customer can self-call and inform the delivery exec to ensure they are on right track or may have taken
a turn earlier or later. Such intervention will update geocoding accurately as Google Map also gets
limitation in crowded alleys.

Field Service Dispatch Planning

This planning involves addressing the latest orders and manipulating the routes of delivery to add on
more orders by taking more requests at hand.

For e.g, if a particular territory shows high demand of daily items then such items can be kept in stock in
cold boxes in vans, which can be used to take up new orders real time and the closest delivery personnel
can fulfill that order as well. Since this order would be small, it would require little or no inspection. Also,
they may drop such orders at pickup hotspots as well to be picked up by customers themselves.

Drones with camera for society/community/apartments delivery

Drones can be used for small deliveries where there is huge delivery of small-scale items in a
community/society/apartment.