Reliance JioMart shuts its 90-minute delivery service 'Express': Report

Reliance's JioMart has stopped the operations of its quick grocery delivery service JioMart Express, a report in the Economic Times (ET) said citing people aware of the matter. The service was launched by the company in March 2022. It is no longer available for download on the Google Play Store and its website is also inactive. 

JioMart Express offered 90-minute delivery to customers. Now, JioMart is asking users to use WhatsApp to order groceries for a delivery time of a few hours to a day. "They do not want to be in this kind of heavy-burn business. Amid the hype last year, they also experimented with express deliveries but it's not going to be continued," a source told ET. 

Several companies in the quick delivery business have been facing a cash crunch. Zomato's Blinkit has moved from "10-minute delivery" to "Delivery in minutes". Swiggy's Instamart has also changed its communication from 15-30 min to groceries in "minutes". Zepto's median delivery time has also increased from 8 min to 9-10 min in June 2022. All these companies are now trying to cut their costs and improve margins. 

In Q3FY23, Zomato recorded a higher loss of Rs 346.6 crore compared with Rs 63.2 crore in the corresponding period of the previous financial year. Losses widened nearly 5.5x year-on-year (YoY) owing to the inclusion of Blinkit. It was the first full quarter after the completion of the acquisition of Blinkit.

"No one has unlimited funding. It's a very competitive and hard space to compete at these parameters. What grocery platforms have been doing is that they offer a spectrum of services with same-day to next-day deliveries, with some platforms offering two-day deliveries also. There were a lot of experiments, and it would be fair to imagine that some would work and some won't," said Ashutosh Sharma, vice president of research at Forrester told ET. 

"It's not easy to deliver fast on a sustained basis. The ultra-fast offering might have helped in creating new users, but it comes with a cost to acquire those users and then spend on them. Consumers are also not willing to pay any premium for fast deliveries," he added.