Domestic online grocery to grow eight times in five years; JioMart poised to take lead

E-commerce in India has always been the market to eye on -- now more so after the entrance of Reliance Retail's JioMart that has the potential to disrupt the market. However, the next big thing in the e-comm market is online grocery delivery that has the potential to grow eight times in the next five years. Grocery delivery is likely to be the next battleground for growth that is expected to expand to over $18 billion by 2024.

The e-grocery market has grown 60 per cent in the calendar year 2020. It is expected to grow 41-49 per cent in the first half of CY21, as found by consulting firm RedSeer. JioMart is set to take the lead in online grocery delivery.

Satish Meena, Senior Forecast Analyst with global market research firm Forrester told IANS that grocery is the largest retail category. "This makes it an important category for retailers and one that is going to drive future growth of online retail sales. JioMart will definitely be a key player in the months to come," said Meena.

Moreover, Reliance is set to embed its JioMart platform on WhatsApp. This will prove to be a big vantage point for JioMart as WhatsApp has 15 million monthly users and 400 million overall users.

Due to the uptick in adoption of online grocery amid the pandemic, Meena said that online retail sales is likely to grow at a CAGR of 30 per cent from 2019 to 2024 and reach $359 billion.

Meena added that grocery is the category that will see the most marketplace investments in the next five years.

Another report by the firm and BigBasket found that demand for comfort food such as noodles and cookies, immunity boosters such as lemon and hygiene products such as sanitisers picked up after the pandemic. Biscuits and cookies within snacks and branded foods category were the largest sub-category and grew the most.

"We have observed that traditional brands which pivoted quickly to be digitally ready brands have seen over 2x jump in sales compared to offline brands," said Anil Kumar, founder and CEO of RedSeer.

Also read: Mukesh Ambani's JioMart to be available on WhatsApp in next six months