Grofers is looking to bolster its partnerships with offline grocery stores and retailers to grow its merchant base through various initiatives. This comes at a time when States have imposed lockdown-like restrictions as the country battles with the second pandemic wave and even essential stores are operating under restricted timelines in some of the States.

In its latest blog post, the online grocery retailer said it is inviting local businesses for partnership for three initiatives, which include Grofers Express Store, Grofers Market and Grofers Local Stores. These programmes are aimed at adding new offline merchant stores as well as partnering with local retailers to set up Grofers branded omni-channel stores.

Three initiatives

Stating that ‘Grofers Express Stores’ serve as mini-fulfilment centres, the company said this initiative aims to deliver daily needs items to consumers within a span of a couple of hours. These stores are leased and run by local retailers and supported by Grofers proprietary technology, providing a seamless customer experience and high level of efficiency, it added. The company is looking to partner with retailers for Grofers Express Stores initiative across 69 cities.

“Grofers Market is an initiative designed to enable customers to walk into a fully branded Grofers store and find the best prices and assortment in their neighbourhood. We enable the local entrepreneurs to build out a highly efficient branded storefront which has the capability to serve both walk-in customers and online orders placed through the Grofers app,” the blog post added. In the first phase, the company said it has already partnered with 35 entrepreneurs in cities such as Rohtak, Bhiwani, and Mathura for “Grofers Market”.

Through “Grofers Local Stores” initiative, the company plans to tap into the existing small and mid-sized local stores both in the grocery and non-grocery categories. “We believe that the combination of our technology-enabled platform and the hyperlocal presence of these stores can act as an enabler in strengthening the small business ecosystem in the country while making products more affordable for the end consumers,” it added in its blog post. The company added that offline retailers will have the opportunity to take advantage of its ecosystem and technology through this imitative to go online for additional income and become future-ready .

Last month, the e-commerce company had launched Grofers Spotlight to enable innovative brands to offer their products to a wider consumer base.

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