Blinkit- A rebranding story
One of the rebranding stories that caught the attention, late 2021 to till date has been that of Grofers, to Blinkit. But how was this a pure branding exercise?
Grofers has always been synonymous with the Delhi-NCR populace since the 2015s. While Grofers operated a hyperlocal model in their early days stretching to 90 minute deliveries, it couldn’t fuel the start-up much and a rethink was imminent.
Grofers, then somewhat coincidental to its name, changed its MVP to be the grocery platform offering the lowest prices (GROcery ofFERS, see the coincidence?)
The go-to pen picture of the customer was your typical housewife or the woman of the house who would want groceries delivered to them, but who would be counting every rupee.
But with the likes of bigbasket.com and the e-commerce behemoths like Amazon & Flipkart too investing in their grocery segments, offering quicker deliveries, strategic rethinking was always on the platter.
Pat came the pandemic and Grofers aka Blinkit, started piloting and delivering on quick deliveries, as people locked indoors, needed things for which they couldn’t go out or didn’t have groceries to cook (well most were first-time cooks!)
As Albinder Dhindsa put it across, the rebranding was to give its customer base the recall that the organization went beyond grocery delivery. It’s something akin to you think, blink and we bring.
The model was carefully planned and well-suited to the NCR dynamics, adaptable in other cities with the right partnership network. Network design was also an inevitable part of the exercise, such that the constant operations modeling exercise seemed to be a major trigger towards the rebranding.
But look at the other side of branding, Grofers delivery executives donning the orange, rings a bell about Swiggy who have always been associated with the colour in the Indian Q-Commerce space. The brand recall was thus never there, not that Grofers tried it. RedFM and Grofers once partnered together to create a co-branding initiative wherein Red FM turned to “Orange FM”, during the Grofers Grand Orange Bag Days (GOBD) which coincided with revenues north of INR 400 crores during the period.
The branding also gave them the identity of yellow and green, a novel attempt against its competition that resonates with freshness. However, while the branding worked just about right, the operations part of the business was impacted.
Operations were winded down in several cities, with the enterprise choosing to serve what it saw as key, strategic areas, and with a partnership and network of dark stores. With the 10-minute grocery delivery space heated up, Blinkit was acquired by Zomato for a whopping INR 4,447 crores in an all-stock deal, though the valuations were quite short of its peak valuation of 1 Billion USD.
