SoftBank-Backed Grofers Hires 4K Employees For Shopping Event

Online grocery company Grofers has contributed ₹100 crore to boost its India operations. A top official also confirmed that the company has hired 4,000 more employees to staff its nine-day shopping event, according to a report.

The “Grand Orange Bag Days” (GOBD) online event began on Jan. 18 and will continue through Jan. 26.

“We are investing close to ₹100 crore into this event. The expectation is that we will do GMV sales north of ₹500 crore. When we started, our target [was] around ₹450 crore. We received much better response than we had anticipated, ” Grofers Co-founder Albinder Dhindsa told MINT over the phone.

In December 2019, billionaire Mukesh Ambani quietly rolled out a “new commerce” venture, primarily selling grocery items. And global online giant Amazon recently invested $1 billion in India development to sell groceries and other items.

After a significant round of funding last year, Grofers, in addition to the new staff hires, has nearly doubled the amount of its partner stores and secured over 3,000 delivery service partners so far in 2020. Three warehouses were being prepped in advance of the sales event.

“We concentrate a lot of annual marketing around this event. Through this event, a lot of new users know what our value proposition is. So it is important that we tell the users, and at the same time go back to our suppliers [and] manufacturing partners and negotiate deals [that] are good for the customers,” Dhindsa said.

The company expects a large return on investment for the 2020 event.

“While the earlier two editions were about discounts and offers, this time we have put surprise elements in the form of awards. For instance, we are giving away cars, [scooters], mobile phones and a washing machine through lottery,” Dhindsa noted.