Fri. Mar 29th, 2024
Walmart

To take on the growing demand of online grocery and other retail items, Walmart has started its fulfilment centre or ‘dark store’ in Walmart terms in Bhiwandi. The 45000 sqft facility is located near Mumbai and it will serve online orders to B2B businesses and kirana stores in the financial capital of India. The facility is expected to stock home supplies and packaged items to be delivered to the customers. This is the first time globally that Walmart has started such establishment.

According to Krish Iyer, CEO – Walmart India, the world’s largest retail stores chain promises delivery within 24 hours. It had first piloted in Lucknow and after successful feedbacks, the company has now decided to start delivering to the online customers without having a physical store. He also added that the quality of last mile delivery needs to be ensured and that the company is working hard to satisfy the customers placing orders with the online store.

Walmart is currently competing with the likes of Amazon Now, Big Basket etc. Amazon has over 45 such fulfilment centres across the country, however, Amazon is catering into a number of verticals and Walmart does not seem to be getting that big just yet.

Walmart announced its entry 4 years back after it bought 50% shares in Bharti. The deal allowed it to start operations on top of Best Price Modern Wholesale stores, owned by Bharti earlier. With these stores, Walmart has been providing online delivery to the customers for over 3 years, however, till now, the service was available only in the cities where Bharti had its stores. With the latest move, the company is now expected to target a lot more cities.

Iyer also said that Walmart will now aggressively expand in the country with plans to start 5-6 stores in the next year and at least 10 stores in 2019.

By Prithviraj Singh Chauhan

Part time journalist, full-time observer. Editor-in-Chief at The Indian Wire. I cover updates related to business and startups.