Horizontal classifieds major Quikr is testing a hyperlocal fulfillment service in select areas of north Bengaluru. Under Quikr Easy, customers can virtually buy anything (such as grocery, street food, and documents etc.) and get it delivered to their doorstep.
“We’re doing an experiment on very small scale across five-six areas of north Bengaluru,” says one of the senior employees of Quikr on condition of anonymity. The pilot is essentially covering areas like Yelahanka, Krishnarajapuram, Hobli, Rajkumar Road, including a couple of other areas.
“There is no validation or confirmation for full-fledged execution of this model. However, so far the response from the pilot has been encouraging,” added the above source.
Currently, a lot of company’s employees, including a few set of early customers are requesting purchase/pick up and drop feature. The company is leveraging its existing fleet of Quikr Doorstep (delivery boys) to ensure pick and drop facility.
Earlier this month, Quikr Service re-branded its services vertical QuikrServices to QuikrEasy. In April this year, the company had launched Doorstep service to allow consumers across the country to buy and sell mobiles, tablets, electronics & appliances and Home & Lifestyle goods across cities.
Quikr was founded by Pranay Chulet and Jiby Thomas in early 2008. Funded by Tiger Global Management and Sweden’s Kinnevik AB, it has also acquired eight companies in 18 months to boost its verticals.
After completing the pilot if the company executes it on a large scale, it surely takes on Blume Ventures-backed Dunzo.
Also read: Zomato acquires hyperlocal delivery startup Runnr in all stock deal
Founded by Ankur Aggarwal, Dalvir Suri, Mukund Jha and Kabeer Biswas in 2015 Dunzo solves the deep local discovery and fulfillment problem. With a chat based interface, dunzo allows individuals to create ‘To do lists’ and collaborate with vendors to strike off the tasks from the list.
The market for hyperlocal fulfilment (virtually anything) is certainly a big opportunity, especially in top three metros – Bangalore, Delhi (NCR) and Mumbai. Currently, space is dominated by Dunzo in Bengaluru, however, it’s been struggling to raise fresh funding for a year now. Meanwhile, Quikr has required financial muscle to make a big dent in this space.
Going forward it would be exciting to see how Quikr (in case it gets into hyperlocal fulfillment space at scale) sees opportunity in this space.
Check out Quikr Easy here
