Indian grocery startup BigBasket has raised $60 million to meet growing demand in a country from customers stuck at home in a bridge led by Alibaba and other existing investors including Mirae Asset and CDC Group.

According to CB Insights, the startup attained the unicorn status last year, has raised about $720 million in venture capital and debt financing to date. In the last week, BigBasket has partnered with Uber and other two-wheeler mobility firm Rapido for delivering groceries.

BigBasket recorded 150,000 daily orders in just the last year. Now the number has surged by up to five times in recent times. Another SoftBank backed grocery startup Grofers has delivered orders to 1 million homes in the last three weeks.

Why the demand for grocery apps is increasing these days?

• According to Statista, the number of adult online grocery shoppers in the USA will be increased to 30.4M in 2022 from 12M in 2017. 
• 63% of smartphone users prefer to buy items from apps or sites.
• Most importantly after the coronavirus outbreak grocery apps like Instacart, Walmart Grocery, Shipt and others including Instashop usually have 20,000+ per day downloads, seen a record-breaking increase of download rate by 218%, 160%, and 124% respectively every day.

Certainly, it is high time to enter the market with the custom grocery mobile app to capture the substantial segment of the market. But for that, it is very crucial to provide much-needed convenience of shopping more than basic essentials.

Essential features for on-demand grocery app:

User panel:

• Secure registration with social media account
• Location information through an in-app map
• Address and contact information
• Product categories
• Order details
• Price calculation
• Multiple payment gateways
• Order and payment history
• In-app message
• Push notification
• Feedback and support

Vendor panel:

• Registration and login
• Accept/Confirm orders
• Manage the availability of products
• Order details
• Accept payment
• Push notification 
• In-app call/message 
• Feedback and support

Delivery panel:

• Registration and login
• Accept/Reject delivery requests
• In-app map
• User and vendor details
• Delivery history
• Accept payment 
• Push notification
• In-app call/message 

Admin panel:

• Login
• View/edit/delete vendor
• View/edit/delete user
• View/edit/delete delivery partner
• View and manage orders
• Access Compeled/ongoing/pending deliveries
• Access completed/failed/pending payments
• Reports and statistics
• In-app message/call

Unique features to have in your app:

• Rich UI/UX:

UI/UX designs are the soul of an app. Have the most simple and easy to navigate User Interface (UI) as it boosts User Experience.

• Powerful backend:

Strong backend admin panel makes the app work in-sync and has the entire control over stock management and functionality of the app.

• Categorization of products:

Build a high-ordered application and categorize the products into various fields to ensure a smooth shopping experience.

• The flexibility of delivery timings:

Allow customers to place their orders with suitable dates and time-slots.

• Voice search option:

With advanced AI technology you can provide such advanced features to beat the competition and ensure more convenience for users. 

• Multi-lingual support:

To target the local market more effectively.

• Offers and rewards:

You can launch redeemable reward points on shopping or referral.

Strategies that can be adopted to give an initial push to your startup:

• Offering contact-less deliveries
• Joining hands with local businesses
• Expand customer loyalty
• Offer multi-delivery options such as grocery/medications/dairy products
• Hire experienced app development company to design app on a real-time basis

Here are the few points you need to consider before hiring the app developers:

• Decide the business model and a type of grocery app you want for your business e.g. Aggregator App/Marketplace App/Single Stores App/Grocery Chains App/Personalized Grocery Apps.
• Define your target audience and design app accordingly
• Integrate basic and advanced features to enhance the user experience
• Decide app monetization strategy 
• Estimate the budget for your app development accordingly

Cost to build a grocery app like BigBasket?

The cost of any app depends on what features and technologies you integrate to develop an app, quality of the mobile app, complexity of the idea, time for development, whether you want a native/hybrid/cross-platform application, charges of the app development team, etc. If we consider the basic features of an app and average charges of development then the app may cost somewhere between $10000 to $30000. 

How Coruscate can help you to develop on demand grocery app?

Coruscate has expertise in mobile app development for businesses of various industries. Coruscate assure you to deliver an excellent online grocery app on-time that will surely meet the needs of your business and its customers. Contact us now to get a personalized quote and app demo for your idea of an online grocery business.