Here’s why your grocery delivery is screwed

The Morning

Context

Business

Ashish K. Mishra

Mumbai

31 March 2020

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Under normal circumstances, India is a tough place to do business. In times of crisis, we put our best, chaotic self on display.

Take the case of e-commerce. Just around the time the COVID-19 pandemic was hitting our shores, whoever could flocked to e-commerce companies for ordering stuff. Things were jammed because of high demand, but somehow manageable.

But after the central government announced a countrywide lockdown starting 24 March is when shit kind of hit the roof. While the government put e-commerce on a list of exceptions from the lockdown, so companies could move around and deliver essentials, that’s not exactly how it panned out on the ground.

Every state government sort of stepped back to figure out its own rules and processes, ignoring the central government’s exceptions list. This meant delays; as orders piled up, e-commerce companies could not deliver, and customer angst grew.

Take Amazon India, which has been going around

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