Forfeiting weekends in the name of grocery shopping is not something customers look forward to, especially after they’ve busied themselves the entire week and hence the concept of online grocery retail was brought to prominence with customers flocking to websites that can deliver their daily, weekly, and monthly grocery needs to the doorstep.
However, the span of time dedicated for a food item or perishable commodity to retain its freshness depends on the temperature, environment, moisture, and other similar factors working in sync with each other and this is where the primary challenge of up-keeping the freshness of the perishable commodity until it reaches the end-user arises.

Stepping up the E-Grocery game
Digitization of businesses unfolded quite a few exciting conveniences for the end-users and the global grocery market decided to cash in on this opportunity to not just expand and prosper in terms of business, but also to make grocery shopping convenient and economical for the consumers. Acknowledging customer’s affinity towards online shopping to be more than that of offline, e-retails for groceries have started perfecting their business module to maximize customer satisfaction and that means, e-retails must start reinventing the way they handle last-mile delivery.
While non-perishable products come with an added advantage when it comes to last-mile delivery, the same cannot be said for groceries and e-retails dabbling in food items. However, the competition for both perishable and non-perishable commodities is neck-to-neck which means e-groceries must step up their game and overcome setbacks that affect end-users in order to match up to the industry standards.
This brings us to the top two problems e-groceries are facing in today’s world, namely,

• Untimely deliveries that pave the path for customer dissatisfaction is one major issue e-grocery retails are facing. Unlike e-commerce products, delivering grocery items to a neighbor while the consumer is out, or simply leaving it at the doorstep is not a preferred option.
• The untimely delivery also causes problems like inability to retain freshness or quality of perishable commodities during last-mile delivery.

Apart from this, e-groceries are also facing high operational costs in terms of temperature-controlled logistics with many a time, the lack of technologically advanced solutions being a major problem. So does this mean, outdated logistics are restraining the growth of grocery retail delivery?

The Smart Solution
Digitization has teamed up with new innovative technologies that are simplifying day-to-day solutions, especially in the end consumer delivery area. Since more than 60% of grocery retailers identified last-mile delivery as the primary area of expense and error, innovative brands trying to boost customer experience, launched intelligent smart lockers that automate storage and retrieval as per the delivery agent and customer’s convenience. Smartbox is one such trailblazing company that pushed the concept of technology-driven smart lockers into the Indian market. But, here’s the best part! These smart lockers come with temperature control settings which makes storage of grocery until retrieval easy and convenient with the perishable food items retaining its freshness thanks to the controlled temperature – we call them the Refrigerated Smart Lockers.

The Indian E-Grocery Market
With new upcoming brands boosting the concept of e-groceries rampantly, the need to come up with refrigerated lockers became evident which is one of the reasons why Smartbox pioneered the concept of automated refrigerated and non-refrigerated lockers with the prime intention being – curbing last-mile delivery dilemmas.
To sum up, radical solutions like automated temperature-controlled lockers by Smartbox can proactively give you the solution you were looking for. These smart lockers are combating e-grocery and end-user delivery complications through automated storage and retrieval refrigerated lockers.

To know more about Smartbox or our locker solutions, please reach out to us at +91-8882-760-760 to speak with one of our representatives or send an email to info@smartbox.in. We would be glad to assist you.