kolkata bengaluru indias top food and grocery retail chains such as future group more reliance fresh spencers retail and natures basket have reported their highestever sales in march driven by panic buying of staples and food products before and during the lockdownthree senior industry executives said these chains posted 1520 higher sales than their previous best which was during diwali sequentially growth was 2530 more in march than february they saideven egrocers such as grofers and bigbasket joined the league with record sales in march and april despite disruptions due to lack of labour amid a surge in orders the nationwide lockdown began on march 25 but people began hoarding before that advt spencers retail and natures basket ceo devendra chawla said consumers advanced their april purchases to march as they bought more per shopping trip in the days ahead of the lockdown leading to a higher average bill value than usual while nonessential sales like apparel and general merchandise were down given lockdown restrictions the grocery business saw sales even higher than the diwali month he saidgrofers cofounder albinder dhindsa said march sales exceeded that of diwali as it got a lot of firsttime online shoppers making purchases clocking a gross merchandise value of rs 415 crore he said consumers are still buying in bulk and stocking up on a rotating basis higher average value per orderaverage value per order has increased by 48 in the first week of the lockdown and is continuing to remain significantly above normal said dhindsareliance retails grocery sales in march helped it to grow in this segment by a record 44 with sales of rs 10043 crore in the januarymarch quarter in january and february the grocery business had grown 35 the countrys largest retailer said in an analyst call on thursday that the average bill value was at a historic high for the grocery businessretailers said their smaller outlets led the trend in march with consumers preferring to buy from neighbourhood locations instead of traveling to malls advt for instance future groups 1000 or so smaller stores such as easyday nilgiris and heritage increased sales by a record 70100 in march while big bazaars food business was up by over 20 overall sales slowed due to the bar on nonessentials and lower footfall in mall outlets an industry executive said future group and more did not respond to querieschange in shopping basketthe shopping basket underwent a change with consumers buying more of basic staples such as rice flour and pulses in the first phase of the lockdown said wholesaler metro cash carry india md arvind mediratta they are now purchasing more processed food such as readytomake foods noodles pasta snacks and condimentssales tracker nielsen said almost a third of consumers in metros started purchasing fastmoving consumer goods fmcg from chain stores and ecommerce in the last quarter as compared to 27 in same period last year this pushed up the national average of these two channels to 137 from 115business