Flipkart’s Shopsy Enters Grocery Biz In 700 Cities; To Take On DealShare, JioMart, BigBasket

Flipkart’s social commerce venture Shopsy which was launched in July 2021, has now forayed into the grocery segment. The venture will host 6K+ products across 230 categories which will be deliverable in 700 cities spanning over 5,800 pin codes. This is to further intensify Flipkart’s objective to capture a larger share of shoppers on the internet. 

Shopsy will leverage Flipkart’s supply chain infrastructure and tech capabilities, matching the selection and range available on Flipkart Grocery. According to the company, it will utilise  Flipkart’s Grocery fulfilment centres including those in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Patna and Pune.

The digitised processes and product quality checks will enable it to bring safe and high-quality grocery products to pan-India consumers. 

Launched in 2007, Flipkart Group is one of India’s leading digital commerce entities. It includes group companies such as Flipkart, Myntra, Flipkart Wholesale, Flipkart Health+, Cleartrip, Shopsy and a majority stake in payments app PhonePe.

Its social commerce platform Shopsy, which claims to have amassed over 2.5 Lakh sellers, 51 Lakh users and a catalogue of over 150 Mn products, is a zero-commission marketplace. The venture allows local entrepreneurs and small businesses to adopt social commerce by simply reaching out to their trusted network of people on common social media apps.

With the new move, Shopsy users will now be able to shop for value groceries, combining orders for multiple individuals in their network and sharing grocery items over social media through the app. It will enable the small entrepreneurs to earn a flat five per cent commission margin, while the end-user will receive up to 50 per cent savings.

It is interesting to note that according to Statista, in the e-groceries market, the predominant platforms include BigBasket (35%), Amazon Pantry/Fresh (31%), BlinkIt (formerly Grofers) (31%), and JioMart, Meesho’s Farmiso, Flipkart among others (12%). In fact, Flipkart’s share of e-groceries in its total GMV is less than 3%.

Previously, in interaction with Inc42, Prakash Sikaria, senior VP – growth & monetisation at Flipkart, said, “Flipkart is eyeing different cohorts of consumers — trying to solve their needs more deeply. Thus, in the next 3-6 months, we will see a lot more continued focus on grocery shopping, with Shopsy participating in it, more meaningfully.”

He then added, “There are many supply chain models within Flipkart such as community buying on whether it is ecommerce or Shopsy. Our focus would be scaling hyperlocal grocery because we have doubled down on a lot of these initiatives. You will see a lot of continued growth coming in the quarter, and the coming months.”

According to an IBEF report, the last-mile delivery market in India is expected to reach $6 Bn – $7 Bn by 2024. On the other hand, a RedSeer report from 2021 pegged India’s grocery market size at $850 Bn in 2025, while e-groceries could account for 3% of the market – amounting to a little over $25 Bn in market value.

“Grocery is a key consumer need…[and] we have achieved best in class cost structure which makes us confident of scaling groceries on Shopsy. Our core focus will be to bring benefits of community commerce to Indian consumers. We believe this model can solve challenges such as small ticket buying, assisted buying, instant delivery, leveraging resellers who act as a conduit between us and end-users,” Sikaria said in a statement.

The social commerce segment in India, too, is a fast-growing sector, with companies like Meesho, YouTube-acquired SimSim, GlowRoad, Trell who recently acquired Womaniya, DealShare who recently raised $144 Mn in Series D from Tiger Global and Elevation Capital-backed CityMall and Bulbul getting attention from both customers and investors. 

Expected to reach a $60 Bn – $70 Bn valuation in 2030, the market is currently pegged at $1.5 Bn – $2 Bn gross market value.