Grocery Delivery App Reduces Last-Mile Delivery Costs By 50% With EVs

Following other e-commerce firms, the online grocery startup Grofers is joining the EV club. On July 22, Grofers announced that it is planning on deploying 500 EVs for last-mile delivery by the end of 2019.

The news comes amidst the time when the central government is encouraging the use of EVs. Last year, the company started testing out electric vans by deploying a fleet of 50 vehicles in Delhi. But it is only now that Grofers is taking serious steps.

Grofers’ co-founder, Saurabh Kumar, said:

At the moment, Grofers’ fleet of EVs consists of 100 ones in Delhi and 50 ones in Jaipur. And by the end of this year, the company plans to deploy EVs in 13 cities that their operation is available, which they believe with cut down their last-mile delivery by half.

Kumar said:

Grofers and the government are also piloting four-wheeler EVs which would be used for transporting products between the firm’s warehouses to distribution centers.

Besides Grofers, there are other firms that have been testing out EVs for delivery. Last month, Flipkart announced that 40% of the company’s delivery fleet will be replaced with electric vehicles.

Grofers which received $220 million of investment from SoftBank Vision Fund, as well as other investors, has been targeting profitability. Its switch to using electric vehicles is meant to cut down costs by deploying an environmentally-friendly vehicle.

Grofers is making profits in Delhi where it hits a monthly revenue of Rs100 crore, according to Albinder Dhindsa, the company’s chief executive. He expects by the end of 2021, the startup will hit profitability. In May, the company’s number of daily orders was 60,000 with Rs 1,450 as an average order value.