they may be hunting for juicy discounts while shopping for tvs and phones but when it comes to their daily dose of greens online shoppers are not hesitating to pay a premium blame it on convenience peeled and diced fruits bundled in bitesized packs extremely short delivery times and a wide assortment of chemicalfree produce made available throughout the year irrespective of the season these reasons are prompting many to overcome convention we are trying to make it as easy as possible says hari menon cofounder and ceo of bigbasket the countrys largest online grocery store from scientific packaging that keeps veggies and fruits fresh to no questionsasked returns thoughtful initiatives by egrocers are enticing many to give up ageold habits such as bargaining with vendors and snapping an okra into half to check for freshness at present around 70 of bigbaskets daily orders contain fruits and vegetables says menon this is a vast improvement over last year when fresh produce did not contribute much to an egrocers topline currently it accounts for 17 and 24 by value of bigbaskets and grofers total sales when we started selling greens on our website our primary challenge was assuring the user that despite not touching or feeling the vegetables they should have confidence in buying from us says albinder dhindsa cofounder of grofers having a noquestions asked return and refund policy helped from humble beginnings fresh produce has become the fastest growing category on grofers today starting november we will introduce a quality score on all fruits and vegetables bought through us and our vendors will have to adhere to it adds dhindsa meanwhile a handful of indians not necessarily in the metros are leading the shift from offline to online around 30 of orders on grofers for fruits and veggies come from tier2 towns noidabased photographer rohit chawla says his sister has stopped going to the market she doesnt step out of the house anymore he says earlier she and my mom would go out every evening to buy veggiesnow when i ask her to go step outside she shrugs and shows me her phone i hope she is getting some sort of exercise so is the ease of ebuying making indians consume more greens we cannot say for sure yet says menon but the frequency of buying has gone up around 30 of our express delivery sales are for fruits and veggies the shift seems to be also driven by the availability of exotics something that roadside vendors have difficulty procuring indians are also experimenting with their cuisinethey are just not cooking indian food at home anymore says mohit khattar head retail strategy at godrej industries which operate natures basket chain of stores along with organic produce certain herbs celery parsley etc are often the reason why many people are turning to online stores by john sarkar tnn published on oct 16 2016 at 1129 am ist telegram facebook copy link be the first one to comment