Major online grocery shopping stores tie up with MobiKwik

MobiKwik, India's largest independent mobile payments network, has expanded its reach to the online grocery market. Now users can start paying for their grocery purchases at Grofers, BigBasket, MeraGrocer, and GrocerMax using MobiKwik wallet. Most MobiKwik users make 10 purchases every month using their wallet balance across diverse use cases such as recharge, bill payments, food, travel & cabs, shopping, and entertainment. The latest tie up brings the convenience of mobile payments to grocery purchases and is a welcome move for MobiKwik’s 25 million users.

Stemming from early adoption by Millennials and Generation Z, online grocery shopping in India is evolving very fast across generations. Increasing smartphone penetration and usage is paving the way for rapid growth of hyper-local grocery apps that promise doorstep delivery. Currently there are over a dozen hyper-local grocery apps in the Indian online grocery market, which is the sixth largest in the world.

Commenting on the partnership, Albinder Dhindsa, Co-Founder and CEO, Grofers, said, “With users becoming increasingly comfortable making digital payments on mobile, we wanted to partner with MobiKwik to facilitate easy and fast transactions. Joining hands with them was an easy decision since MobiKwik has sharply focused on the business of solving payments for both retailers and users”.

Commenting on the partnership, Bipin Preet Singh, Founder and CEO, MobiKwik said, “The explosive growth of hyper-local grocery app is testament to the fact that convenience and speed are two key attributes that drive user behavior today. Now that MobiKwik wallet is live across all the big players in the grocery app segment, users would find the purchase experience become all the more faster and convenient.” He further added, “A smooth payment experience is key to the success of m-commerce. Customers tend to tire of re-entering payment information and that leads to high rates of sales abandonment. MobiKwik’s 1-tap payments do away with those hassles.”

Research firm IGD predicts that India’s online grocery market, estimated to be less than $100 million at present, will cross $25 billion by 2020. By 2016, it is expected to overtake Japan to become the third-largest market globally.

Vipul Parekh, Co-Founder, BigBasket, said, “We are excited to give users the flexibility of making payments using MobiKwik wallet. The MobiKwik wallet integration will give us access to thousands of customers who have adopted it as a preferred payment mechanism. It will also allow us to present to our users a secure, easy, and fast way of paying for groceries.”

Other popular brands currently using MobiKwik’s services include Uber, Meru Cabs, Big Bazaar, WHSmith India, Café Coffee Day, PVR, BookMyShow, Domino's, Pizza Hut, Star Sports, GoDaddy, eBay, ShopClues, Myntra, Jabong, Pepperfry, HomeShop18, MakeMyTrip, Cleartrip, and Yatra.

MobiKwik has so far raised close to $30 million in funding till now from Sequoia Capital, American Express, Tree Line Asia, and Cisco Investments. The company plans to raise another $50-100 million in 2015. MobiKwik is disrupting the payments space further by creating an offline retail network of more than 100,000 merchants across India that will serve both, as points for cash loading into the wallet and for wallet payments acceptance.