Ola Dash, the 10-minute grocery supply service launched by mobility unicorn Ola, has scaled down its enterprise and quickly suspended operations of most of its darkish shops as a consequence of a shortfall in demand, stated two sources conscious of the event. Sources additionally added that Ola Dash will now focus solely on three cities – Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai – whereas placing on maintain growth into newer cities.
Ola Dash is at present obtainable in six different cities, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Jaipur and Lucknow with 200 operational darkish shops, the start-up claimed in a January 2022 assertion.
Ola joined the fast commerce (q-commerce) bandwagon in late December 2021, beginning with Bengaluru providing primary groceries. The 10-minute supply service had revealed plans to launch a community of 500 darkish shops in 20 cities.
However, the q-commerce service from Ola appears to have beginning troubles with its growth plans principally as a consequence of hyper-competitiveness within the q-commerce sector which has seen an explosion in enterprise capital funding, stated one of many sources talked about above.
“Ola Dash has had trouble sourcing demand in many of the cities it recently ventured into, especially in the Delhi and NCR regions (launched in Dec 2021). The company has fired several store managers and delivery workers in the Delhi NCR geography and shut down dark stores temporarily,” stated one of many sources looking for anonymity because the particular person just isn’t allowed to talk with media.
Apart from grocery supply, Ola additionally operates a fully-managed cloud kitchen unit named Ola Foods which was launched in 2019. It at present operates a number of non-public labels akin to Khichdi Experiment, Paratha Experiment, Biriyani experiment, and plenty of others. It competes intently with different cloud kitchen start-ups akin to Freshmenu, Faasos, Box8 and others.
To be certain, this isn’t Ola’s first experiment within the grocery supply section. Its first try within the grocery supply house got here beneath the ‘Ola Store’ branding in June 2015. This was additionally shuttered down later as a consequence of operational constraints. However, the corporate has additionally been unsuccessful with its ventures in meals supply throughout merchandise like Ola Cafe and Foodpanda. Just 18 months after buying Foodpanda India and spending $200 million on the operations, Ola fully shut down the unit in May 2019 and laid off a number of workers.
Nevertheless, Ola’s present entry into the grocery supply market is warranted as a consequence of a spurt in q-commerce. It is now one of many hottest client web segments that has attracted large investor consideration. Start-ups akin to Swiggy, Zepto, BBNow and Blinkit are already topping client web funding charts. In December 2021, Swiggy stated it will make investments $700 million into its prompt grocery supply service Instamart, whereas the most recent contender, Zepto, raised $100 million at a $570-million valuation inside simply 9 months of launch, breaking all earlier data set by hyperlocal supply corporations.
Incidentally, Ola Dash isn’t the one q-commerce start-up dealing with progress troubles. Albinder Dhindsa-led Blinkit additionally struggled to lift funds, forcing it to put off workers and shut down its warehouses to preserve money in March 2022. Food supply unicorn Zomato is claimed to be in talks to accumulate Blinkit in a share swap deal which might doubtless see the foodtech agency not directly coming into into the q-commerce competitors.
Highlights
- Sources say Ola Dash will now focus solely on three cities – Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai – whereas placing on maintain growth into newer cities.
- Ola joined the fast commerce bandwagon in late December 2021 beginning with Bengaluru, providing primary groceries.
- The 10-minute supply service had revealed plans to launch a community of 500 darkish shops in 20 cities, in keeping with an earlier assertion in January 2022.
Source: www.financialexpress.com”