People seem to be trying just about everything with eCommerce. Latest to join the bandwagon is Farm2Kitchen, a NCR based startup looking to sell vegetables and fruits online. The focus is on selling organic produce including cereals and spices procured from all over, as well as fresh vegetables and fruits grown locally. They currently deliver in Gurgaon only. [Read: Gurgaon to get GPS based Vegetable Vendors]
Apart from the usual eCommerce experience, F2K has included features like “Auto Delivery” which allows the user to schedule a weekly delivery of regular stuff required in Indian kitchen.
One major problem I see with the startup is that they are not a team of techies. The whole site seems to have come out from a design studio and not guys who understand web and users.
The abundant nature of their competitors[offline vendors] requires them to provide fresh stock, at low prices, home delivered on time. Meeting 2 out of 3 here is not an option and meeting all 3 may not be worth it. The whole business of grocery would make more sense for an offline player like Spencer’s/Reliance Fresh to take the online route as an addon medium. Given their existing multi-store setup, they can meet all the above 3 conditions and still keep the proceedings as ‘additional sales’.
To me, online does not seem to be best solution for the problem that the startup is looking to solve. Also, it would be wrong to tag them an eCommerce startup for now. And definitely not a ‘social shopping’ site as they claim to be. It would be interesting to see how F2K cracks the market.
MandiOnWheels is another Surat based startup that started with mixing the offline/online route. They setup offline stores as well as looked at online as an ordering medium. I am not sure what’s the latest with them but they never made buzz in the city.
If you are in Gurgaon, do order from Farm2Kitchen and let us know your experience.
[Naman is a startup enthusiast and has worked with couple of Indian startups as Product Manager. He is the founder of FindYogi]
