Amid e-tail battle, DMart turns 2 stores into fulfilment centres

As the e-commerce battle intensifies in India, with Reliance Retail's JioMart being the latest major entrant with a massive potential to disrupt the space, Radhakishan Damani-led DMart also is giving a major emphasis on the online segment.

DMart has shut two of its stores in the city and converted them to fulfilment centres for its e-commerce business, "DMart Ready".

Noting that the company continues to focus on opening new stores, Avenue Supermarts which runs DMart, said in a regulatory filing: "We have closed two of our Mumbai stores for customers and converted them into fulfilment centers (FC) for our e-Commerce business. One each in Mira Road and Kalyan. Both these locations have an alternate DMart store within 4 km."

It further said that DMart Ready continues to increase its footprint in Mumbai Metropolitan Region covering additional pin codes.

"Mira Road and Kalyan FC addition was to deepen our reach and serve customers better in these regions. We have also expanded our E-Commerce operations in select pin codes of Pune City," it said.

On the offline space, the company said that six new DMart stores were opened during the July-September quarter.

Regarding the business scenario post the gradual lifting of the lockdowns, Avenue Supermarts said that the business has seen improvement and it continues to gradually progress towards pre-pandemic levels.

Month-on-month sales improved during the second quarter of FY21.

"The highlight being that footfalls continue to be significantly lower than pre-Covid levels but basket values are significantly higher than pre-Covid levels. Both these data points are trending towards pre-Covid levels. Footfalls are getting better and basket values are reducing month over month," the company said.

During the July-September quarter, the company reported a 38.4 per cent fall in its consolidated net profit on a year-on-year basis to Rs 198.53 crore.