Mobile apps help urban Indians meet daily needs in second COVID-19 wave

For 28yearold Pratyush Ranjan the Covidhit 2020 taught him hard lessons in embracing a digital life not only for shopping clothes or shoes but also daily essentials like groceries milk vegetables meat and moreA year later living in a highrise apartment in Noida which has over 40 Covidpositive cases and rising he is well prepared to cope with the unprecedented second Covid wave thanks to easytooperate apps and a robust digital payments system just few clicks awayLife is so easy now As I and several of my friends now work from home ordering daily essentials was never so easy thanks to userfriendly apps Last year made us realise the importance of going digital said RanjanHe is not alone as thousands of urban Indians who never looked at using smartphones to purchase items of daily needs and are once again locked up in their homes across the country have become comfortable in using apps like BigBasket JioMart Grofers Country Delight FreshToHome Licious and Zappfresh etc to fulfil their needs without venturing outMoreover digital payments providers like Paytm PhonePe Google Pay and BharatPe have made their digital journey easyWhether it be hyperlocal O2O commerce models contactless deliveries and pickups and new mobile apps for an array of use cases and contexts there has been a rapid progress in experimenting and improvising to deliver strong digital experiences for consumers Prabhu Ram HeadIndustry Intelligence Group IIG CMR told IANSDuring the pandemic consumption of online branded meat has also increased by more than two timesSince Covid customers increasingly preferred purchasing meat online This was driven by the assurance of safety and hygiene availability of various products under one umbrella doorstep service provided by online meat providers according to Bengalurubased market research firm RedSeerThe reality is that the pandemic has resulted in a significant increase in meat orders online and key delivery players have seen three times growth in meat orders since the outbreak of the pandemic in the countryCovid19 transformed the fish and meat purchasing behaviour of consumers dramatically Due to safety concerns consumers made the habitforming shift to ecommerce and we saw online demand for our products going up many folds this year said Shan Kadavil CoFounder and CEO of FreshToHomeReliance Industries ecommerce venture JioMart is now giving a fight to BigBasketAccording to a BofA Global Research report JioMart launched in May last year has gained a 20 per cent market share among distributors in BengaluruWhen it comes to dailymonthly user base the DAUMAU ratio a function of retention is also highest for Big Basket and JioMart at 17 per cent and 16 per cent respectively said BofABigBasket which saw a huge slump last year as the country went into lockdown later doubled its business servicing over 300000 deliveries a day compared to around 150000 deliveries prior to the lockdownWhile directtoconsumer dairy market is still in the nascent stage in India Country Delight is performing really well sourcing milk and eggs directly through farmers and processing several products such as paneer curd ghee and bread etc It claims to have over 5 dozen stringent tests for impurities and toxinsIn the aftermath of the daunting and disruptive challenges that the pandemic posed at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 there has been a significant acceleration in all things digital which is helping people stuck at homes in the lethal second wave of Covid19This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever