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E-commerce giants Flipkart, BigBasket and Grofers have resumed their services in some parts of India a day after their services were interrupted due to the nationwide lockdown announced by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 25.
Flipkart, which had shut their services on Wednesday, have now resumed their grocery essential services, confirmed CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy. He added that the decision to resume services were taken after law enforcement authorities ensured safety of delivery executives. We are grateful for the clarification provided by the government and local state authorities on the functioning of e-commerce during the lockdown. We are resuming our grocery services today.
India, we are committed to serving you at this time. Thank you for your trust, Kalyan tweeted.
Several delivery executives from various online delivery apps had alleged that they were beaten up and harassed by the police and local goons despite these services being termed as essential. The decision of suspending delivery services came after these cases surfaced.
However, now things are getting back on track and the e-commerce giants are trying to fulfill their commitments. So here are the developments that took place
The e-commerce delivery executives will be given identity cards issued by their respective companies such as Flipkart, Big Basket or Grofers among others. The delivery boys can flash the card as an access pass that would help them pass through the nationwide lockdown to deliver essential groceries and other items ordered by the customers.
This would allow the e-commerce giants to carry out overnight deliveries as well to clear the backlog of millions of orders that have not been delivered for 4-5 days.
BigBasket has issued the list of states where they are providing services. The services are operational in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bhopal, Coimbatore, Indore, Mumbai, Mysore, Noida, Surat, Vadodara. However, due to high-demand the services might not be very prompt for the next 4-5 days, as stated by BigBasket
BigBasket also shared the list of cities where it will not be functional for some time. They are Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Nagpur, Patna, Vijayawada. However, they are hoping to operate in these cities in a day or two.BigBasket also issued the list of cities where it will not get operational anytime soon. The cities are Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Ludhiana, Pune, Vizag and Kochi. The company has said they are unsure about starting their services in these cities.
Flipkart on the other has collaborated with the Bangalore Police to ensure that their delivery boys are not hassled.
Bhaskar Rao, Bengaluru City Police Commissioner, also stated on Twitter that he had called for a meeting of all food, medicine, groceries, vegetables/fruits or animal products delivery aggregators and has asked representatives to join.
Bengaluru City Police has asked all the Essential Services Providers to collect their vehicle movement passes from their jurisdictional Deputy Commissioner’s Office in Bengaluru City.
Gurugram Police too has assured that the delivery supply chain of all e-commerce retailers for essential items will remain uninterrupted during a lockdown.
Another supermarket giant Grofers too has issued the list of cities where they will be operational. The cities are Delhi, Gurugram, Faridabad, Lucknow, Kanpur, Bengaluru. Grofers is hoping to start operations in the following cities in a day or two. The cities are Mumbai, Kolkata, Noida, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad Mohali, Guwahati, Panipat, Durgapur, Vadodara, Asansol, Sonipat, Rohtak, Bhiwadi, Agra, Meerut, Moradabad, Hapur, Modinagar, Prayagraj, Aligarh.
Grofers are also issued the list of cities where they are finding it difficult to operate and might never operate anytime. They revealed that they are facing difficulties in Pune, Chennai and might never operate in Chandigarh as the authorities have refused e-commerce operations during the lockdown period.
