In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a three-week nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the virus. This had resulted in a panic with people rushing out to buy daily essentials. He later clarified that shops that provide daily needs will remain open. However, on Day 1 of the lockdown, many online delivery stores said that they will not be able to deliver since they are not getting the requisite clearance.
However, later on the same day, supermarket chain Biz Bazaar announced that it is offering doorstep delivery services in Mumbai with numbers of all its stores on which people can call to place their orders. Apart from Mumbai, Big Bazaar is also offering this service in Delhi, Bengaluru, Ranchi, Uttarakhand, Noida, Ghaziabad, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Rajasthan.
Ministry of Home Affairs on Thursday again issued a statement stating that online delivery of essentials goods should not be stopped. They even insisted that every state should have a helpline number to ensure that people delivering essential goods are able to share their challenges and the functions can go on smoothly.
This was followed by an announcement by Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Thursday announced that essential services including medical stories and grocery shops will remain open for 24 hours. This decision was taken in a meeting held on March 26. Along with Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, State Environment Minister Aaditya Thackeray, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) Commissioner Praveen Pardeshi and other senior officials were also present in the meeting.
After this Walmart Inc's Flipkart has also announced resuming its grocery and essential services after the local law enforcement authorities assured of safe passage of supply chain and delivery executives. The announcement was made by Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy who said, "We have been assured of the safe and smooth passage of our supply chain and delivery executives by local law enforcement authorities and are resuming our grocery and essentials services later today (Wednesday)."
Big Basket and Amazon too have restarted taking orders for delivery. Grofers, on the other hand, has mentioned that it is still working with the authorities to start operations once again. While it has already started delivering in Delhi, Gurugram, Faridabad, Noida, Ghaziabad, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow and Mohali, it is still working on getting things up and running in Mumbai. In an email to its customers, Grofers shared that they are expecting to start functioning in Mumbai in coming couple of days.
The ones that are running also shared that they are flooded with phone calls and have a long list order pending. Big Bazaar even issued a statement regarding this, which reads, " “In light of the recent announcement, we are receiving unprecedented numbers of request for doorstep delivery. There could be delay due to the restrictions on movements”.
Have you been able to place your orders successfully? If yes, how has the experience been and how long did it take you to get the products delivered. Write to us content@MumbaiLive.com or Tweet at @MumbaiLiveNews.
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