Ola Plans To Shut Its Hyperlocal Grocery Service ‘Ola Store’

Days after Flipkart announced the shutdown of its hyperlocal grocery service Nearby, Ola is reportedly shutting down Ola Store.

Ola started beta testing of its app ‘Ola store’ for grocery and daily needs in June 2015. The app, which is operational in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Gurgaon, had tied up with retail chains such as PNP Retail, Topintown, and Namdhari’s Fresh, among others. It started with more than 12000 products under 13 product categories including Fruits & Vegetables, Breakfast, Dairy, Bread & Eggs, Grocery & Staples, Sweets & Snacks,  Beverages & Drinks, Bottled & Packaged food, Gourmet, Frozen Food, Household,  Health Supplements & Medicines, Baby Care and  Pet Care.

Ola Share’s Android app has over 250 grocery stores providing over 16,000 products in 13 categories and the iOS version notes that it has over 60 stores.

Amidst the shutting down and launching of hyperlocal grocery services, various startups have gone under the turbulent ride. The year started with Gurgaon-based on-demand delivery startup, Grofers, shutting down its operations in 9 cities, followed by another on-demand grocery delivery startup, PepperTap, shutting operations in six cities.

Does it mean that hyperlocal grocery service is getting exhausted? Or is it facing a downturn like the startups in the food and logistics space. Hyperlocal was one of the hottest buzzwords in the Indian startup space during 2015, with several companies raising several rounds of capital in a very short period of time. However, being a highly capital-intensive space, competition forced several players to undercut costs for customers, making the business model unsustainable.

Flipkart recently shut down its grocery delivery division ‘Nearby’ exclaiming it to be a part of restructuring in the company.

Apart from Flipkart, the other Indian Unicorns are also aiming for a pie of the hyperlocal market. Paytm is eyeing the hyperlocal services with Paytm Zip, Amazon plans to expand its Kirana Now initiative into a full-fledged business and Snapdeal has a partnership with Godrej Nature’s Basket.

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