Quikr Begins Pilot Of Hyperlocal Fulfillment Service Under QuikrEasy

Online classifieds portal Quikr is testing waters in the hyperlocal fulfilment domain. The company has recently floated a pilot on a very small scale in select areas of North Bengaluru.

As part of the pilot, current employees and existing users in these areas can order virtually anything on QuikrEasy to deliver at their doorstep. QuikrEasy is the company’s service vertical, which got rebranded from the earlier Quikr Services in November 2017. As mentioned on its blog, with this rebranding, the company aims to enhance the ease of meeting any kind of service need of its consumers.

As shared by a Quikr spokesperson with Inc42, “We have been running a pilot in 10 areas of North Bengaluru for about two weeks and the initial response has been encouraging. We deliver “Anything Anywhere” as long as its legal and falls in above delivery areas. From Pani Puri to cough medicine to eggs to cakes to samosas, sweets to spectacles & distilled water for the battery to picking up a garment from a tailor or bringing lunch from home and dropping off the keys and documents – people have been using the service to get their day to day chores done and save time.”

Recently, the news also surfaced around Quikr’s plans to roll out on-demand grocery and food delivery service by partnering with neighbourhood stores and restaurants.

What If The Quikr’s Hyperlocal Fulfillment Pilot Is Successful?

If the pilot is successful and Quikr decides to pull it off on a larger scale, then Quikr will have to face direct competition in individual segments. Also, the existing chat based personal assistant apps that deliver almost anything to consumers and cater to all their service needs will be a threat.

For instance, in the hyperlocal services space, there are players like UrbanClap and HouseJoy. Then in grocery, there are Big Basket and Grofers as major contenders. Not only this, even biggies like Paytm, Flipkart, Amazon, and Google are now eyeing the hyperlocal delivery and services sector. Moving ahead, we have a battalion of players such as Dunzo, Haptik, HelpChat, Lookup, Joe Hukum, Niki.ai, Zootout, Instagetit.in, Hike’s personal assistant bot Natasha, and Facebook’s personal assistant bot, M, as well trying to disrupt this space.

However, Quikr seems optimistic with its hyperlocal drive. As shared by the Quikr spokesperson, “With over 30 mm monthly UV’s, Quikr caters to a very large number of consumers, addressing their needs in a variety of areas. The brand has always stood for simplifying people’s lives and helping them do things in a simpler, quikr fashion. So a service like this forms a natural part of QuikrEasy, the services vertical of Quikr. The large number of consumers that already use Quikr will find it to be one more reason to use Quikr. To that extent, cost of customer acquisition is going to be minimal. On the logistics front, the service is built on top of Quikr’s existing Doorstep capability offering present across India. Beauty of the service is that consumers are not tied to a merchant and we respect their choice.”

So What Quikr Is Counting On?

Since its launch as a classified portal, Quikr has extended its verticals slowly and steadily in domains such as home rental, beauty services, goods, cars as well as online recruitment.

So far, whenever Quikr has forayed into any segment, a potential acquisition has been made in that sector.

Looking at the trend, to excel in the hyperlocal fulfilment segment, Quikr will most probably again go with its acquisition strategy to acquire the necessary talent. Right now, Dunzo and DoneThing are existing players that working fine for now. While Dunzo had raised a funding round led by Aspada Investment Advisors, Blume Ventures, Rajan Anandan and Sandipan Chattopadhyay in March 2016, DoneThing is reported to have raised $300K from Brand Capital earlier this year.

Coming to Quikr, for the quarter ending on September 30, 2017, Quikr’s platform generated 12.4 Mn responses compared to 11.7 Mn responses in the June quarter, owing to the roll-out of a low-cost data network in the country. The company also showcased an uptick in responses at the end of December 2016 due to product innovation and strengthening the appeal of its verticals.

Being a company with over $1 Bn valuation, the doors of opportunities are wider for Quikr than other existing hyperlocal fulfilment startups in the space. Let’s see how the hyperlocal drive comes out for Quikr.

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