After giving up on 90-minute delivery five years ago due to lack of profitability, Grofers is now chasing 10-minute delivery

• Grofers has decided to rebrand itself to Blinkit, a few months after launching 10 mins delivery.
• This is the third pivot grofers has carried out in the last five years.
• The company had earlier shifted its focus from a marketplace model to an inventory one.

Zomato-backed groceries delivery startup Grofers has decided to rebrand itself to Blinkit as it aims to gain more prominence in India’s emerging quick commerce segment.

The development comes only a few months after Grofers announced its entry into the 10-minute grocery delivery space. The company — which had earlier decided to move out of its 90-minute delivery option five years ago — now believes that “instant commerce is indistinguishable from magic”.

This has to say a lot about how the Indian ecommerce space has developed in the last few years.

Grofers made its first pivot in 2016, when it decided to move from a marketplace model to an inventory one as it was taking a toll on customer experience. This was also the time when the company decided to do away with its 90-minute delivery concept because it did not see any path of profitability in that business model.

The company’s founder and chief executive officer Albinder Dhindsa, in an interview with Entrackr a year later, highlighted, “We didn’t see a path of profitability with the 90 minutes delivery concept. It was causing significant burns and gradually we figured out that unit economics can’t be worked out with it.”


Dhindsa, in a blog post announcing the rebranding, said, “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.”

Currently, players like Flipkart and Swiggy are also experimenting with faster delivery options by developing their infrastructure. Meanwhile, Reliance Industries and Tata Digital are reportedly chasing delivery app Dunzo to further enhance their offerings such as JioMart and BigBasket, respectively.

Zepto — a quick commerce player founded six months ago by two 19-year-old Stanford dropouts — raised $60 million, at a valuation of $250 million. The company is now in talk to raise capital at a valuation of $500 million.

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