Chandigarh-based on-demand auto rickshaw aggregator Jugnoo has restarted its hyperlocal delivery service ‘Fatafat’.
The service which is currently available in Chandigarh will facilitate fresh fruits and vegetables to the doorsteps at affordable prices. Fatafat will use the auto-rickshaws as its logistic partners.
Jugnoo has also acquired on demand fruits and vegetable deliverer SabKuchFresh to augment procurement and logistics functions of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Founder of Jugnoo, Samar Singla said that the service will soon expand to other cities, beginning with Gurgaon, in the next one month.
Jugnoo had first launched the service in March last year and continued it for about eight months. The service was initially meant to deliver custom orders for products such as groceries within the city. Fatafat had then seen about 2 lakh users registered on the platform and was receiving more than 1,000 orders a day across four cities. However, the service was withdrawn temporarily by the company due to lack of adequate supply to cater to demands at that scale.
Singla added that the service was withdrawn for multiple reasons. While Jugnoo’s network of autorickshaws was not that big earlier, there was a lot of competition from other grocery delivery apps which were giving huge discounts. Also, we realised that not everything in hyperlocal delivery is profitable. Products under the FMCG have very low margins and are available everywhere; making profit out of them is impossible.
Jugnoo has now decided to keep its focus exclusively on fruits and vegetables through the company’s network of autorickshaws. According to Jugnoo, its autorickshaw aggregation business has expanded to 10,000 autorickshaws registered on its network in over 20 cities. It recently raised a total of $10 Mn in its second round of Series B funding led by Paytm.
Hyperlocal delivery segment saw massive funding in 2015. However, the year 2016 has not been good to these firms. Lately, many online grocery firms have shut shops. Some have even shut operations in specific cities like Peppertap and Grofers.
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