PremiumNEW DELHI: Mother Dairy is set to pilot home delivery of fruits, vegetables, value-added milk products, and edible oil from its Safal outlets in Delhi-NCR, said a top executive at the company.
The move will help the company that has over 350 Safal stores in Delhi-NCR—service local neighbourhoods through a hyperlocal delivery model that has seen strong consumer demand especially as lockdowns continue and mobility remains restricted.
The company will roll out an ordering platform for Safal.
In the initial phase, it will pilot the delivery model through 15-20 stores before scaling it up gradually, said Manish Bandlish, managing director, Mother Dairy Fruit and Vegetable Pvt. Ltd.
Mother Dairy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB). Safal is the fruit and vegetable arm of Mother Dairy, with stores in Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru. Safal also sells frozen vegetables.
The pilot will kickstart next quarter and service a 2-km radius in parts of Delhi.
Mother Dairy sells Dhara cooking oil, branded ice-creams, curd, cheese slices. It also retails toned milk in pouches apart from running milk booths. To be sure, Safal stores are outsourced to what the company calls concessionaires, typically former servicemen. Safal's delivery will not include orders for fresh milk.
“Mother Dairy in itself is a retailer. So, we have approximately 2,000 outlets of Mother Dairy in Delhi-NCR, no other organization has this kind of distribution. We have 1,600 booths of milk and 350–400 outlets of Safal. That's huge in terms of any company owning that kind of distribution and I think there's a huge opportunity that lies with us in terms of using this distribution effectively," said Bandlish, who took over as the company’s managing director in March.
Bandlish said heightened consumer demand for home delivery especially in the aftermath of the pandemic, has prompted the company to look at hyperlocal deliveries.
There is an opportunity for Mother Dairy to make a dent in the market with modern technology, he said. However, delivering fresh produce on an immediate basis requires sophisticated demand planning and logistics or a deep network of offline stores that can work as distribution hubs.
Companies such as BigBasket now part of the Tata Group, Grofers and Amazon offer grocery deliveries in parts of India. More local, city-specific players have also emerged in the aftermath of the pandemic.
To be sure, Mother Dairy will use the existing network of stores to fulfil deliveries in contrast to opening up a central warehouse. The store will use its own sales and delivery staff to fulfil orders. The company is in the process of training staff to handle orders, Bandlish said.
A few stores will be picked for delivery, he said as the company expects delivery demand to be quite high as and when the app is rolled out.
“The minute we start it is going to be a huge thing because you're talking about deliveries not from a central hub but from every outlet, we need to be extra prepared," he said.
E-commerce and modern trade comprise 5–6% of total sales for Mother Dairy.
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