Home Delivery – The Mumbai Way

We are all accustomed to and love the convenience of pizza delivery, Chinese takeout, and sometimes even grocery delivery (mostly ordered online at your grocer’s site). But in Mumbai, home delivery takes on a whole new meaning regarding what you can get, how you get it, and how loyalty is built.

In Mumbai, consumers can get a variety of items delivered to their homes including everyday CPG categories; meats; vegetables; seasonal, locally grown fruits; prescription and OTC drugs; DVDs; home-repair goods; décor products; pressed laundry; alcohol (even a pint of beer); and the list goes on. One man even mentioned how he manages to get something as small as one single cigarette delivered to his apartment. Essentially, if it’s sold at a store, ninety percent of the time, you can be confident it can be delivered to you for free.

Mumbai locals I know rave about this service; some even say “can’t imagine my life without it”. For them, it is more than just convenience that makes these services so valued. Consumers canbuild a relationship; have “the guy” who you always call when you need that one thing and you know you can rely on him.

If loyalty had another avatar, this is what it would be. No loyalty cards, no emails exchange, nodatabase maintenance, just human interaction. Perhaps this is why U.S. shoppers have ~18 loyalty memberships but only use ~8 (Source: 2011 Colloquy Loyalty Census). Loyalty programs continue to boom in the U.S., but perhaps some should offer more than just a piece of plastic if they aim to retain and grow loyalty among shoppers.

-Contributed by Priyanka Sah, Integer India