Home delivery eats DMart Ready's grocery lunch
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The instant commerce avalanche has caught Avenue Supermarts Ltd's DMart Ready stores off-guard, forcing India's largest listed retailer to shutter many of these pick-up points and shift focus to the home delivery space. Avenue Supermarts rolled out the DMart Ready model following the covid pandemic outbreak in 2020, where customers could order online and collect groceries from a pick-up point.
However, the model has struggled, even as the company's long-time CEO Neville Noronha prepares to exit. On Saturday, the company announced, for the first time since it went public in March 2017, that it will offer only home delivery options to consumers in some towns, ending the model of small stores acting as pick-up points. "In the rapidly evolving dynamics of the grocery e-commerce market, we are seeing significantly more demand for home delivery compared to the pick-up point, and hence, we continue to align our business to that extent.
Our home delivery business now far exceeds our pick-up point sales contribution…In several towns, we now only operate home delivery as a delivery channel," said DMart. Also read | For DMart, quick commerce threat comes to the fore Alongside, the company said Unilever veteran Anshul Asawa will become CEO on 1 February, 2026, succeeding Noronha who built up DMart since joining as CEO in 2007 as India's largest listed organized retailer by revenue. DMart, which ended FY24 with ₹50,936 crore in revenue, had a market capitalization of ₹2,39,841 crore at the end of last week, making it again the most valued retailer.
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