Grofers Ditches App Only Strategy, Launches Website

Gurugram-based  hyperlocal grocery delivery startup, Grofers has ditched its app-only model and has launched its desktop website.

Grofers is no longer an app-­only service. Users can now log on to grofers.com and get household items delivered to their doorstep via the website.

Founded in 2013 by IIT graduates Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar, the startup allows users to order products ranging from grocery to pet supplies and electronic products online.

Talking about the move to add a website, Albinder Dhindsa, co-­founder at Grofers, said, “While we started the app for the smartphone user, we realised there are people who love our service but prefer to use the web instead. There were also people who do not use our service because we were app­-only. We received plenty of queries around this. So, a couple of months back we assembled a team of talented engineers and designers to bring the Grofers ordering experience onto the web platform. This move should further help in driving order volumes for us.”

The team expects that the website shopping experience will also help in eliminating the occasional network issues or low battery or mobile software updates that prevented people from checking out on the app.

The website will be initially available in 10 cities ­Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, and Pune.

In January this year, Grofers shut down operations in 9 cities – Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Coimbatore, Kochi, Ludhiana, Mysuru, Nashik, Rajkot, and Visakhapatnam.

The startup also got in a legal tangle after it revoked the job offers of 67 students. In July 2016, a legal notice was sent by 20 students collectively to Grofers.