Couple of weeks ago one of my colleagues from KLISMA connected back after almost 7 years. Kunal Vora worked with me as an intern for 6 months in 2013 and he now works for Tesla in the US. Since Kunal was very keen to work on a supply chain project, I chose to deploy him to fine tune our grocery delivery model to same day delivery with his help.

This week we decided to catch-up over a Zoom call and Kunal was generous to tell me that for both his jobs with Amazon and now with Tesla, his experience with KLISMA was well appreciated. I think the key is that very retail brand is trying to figure out this same day delivery model.

Imagine we worked on this in 2013 and did it successfully, may be at a city level but the basics were in place. I guess we were well ahead of times, no one really cared. Consumers were happy to get deliveries in 48 hours + from other brands and didn’t really appreciate the value of getting their order delivered the same day.

Now when the market is matured, grocery being an essential category with timely convenience as the big value factor, every brand is struggling to deliver this and still keep some margins. Grocery is a very tricky category with low bill value v/s volume/weight ratio and poor gross margins. If I am asked to do this again, I will do it the same way I did it in 2013 with few minor changes. Also, I will put all my marketing money in using tech and driving subscription models to bring some amount of predictability in my supply chain and planning. If I understand modern consumers well, they will be willing to sign-up for regular supplies if they have confidence in the brand on quality and timely delivery. In fact I feel with the digital maturity of the merchants it is even possible to fulfill within minutes or hours.

Though Kunal is now involved with delivering cars to his customer’s homes, not sure if he will agree with my contemporary opinion on this complex puzzle of online grocery retailers. But I must say Kunal, it was quite touching to know that you still value our time spent together.