Ola debuts its hyperlocal delivery app Ola Store, starts with Bangalore

Ola Store, the standalone hyperlocal grocery and daily needs delivery app from online cab hailing service Ola, is now operational in Bangalore.

Ola, which is run by Mumbai-based ANI Technologies, has been piloting the app since June this year with a select set of customers.

Ola Store is now available on Google Play Store for Android users while the apps' iOS version of the app will be launched soon.

Ola Store offers over 12,000 products across 13 different product categories including groceries, fruits, vegetables and dairy products in addition to health supplements and medicines. The app has been downloaded over 100 times already.

Customers can get free delivery for purchases above Rs 250 while anything below that minimum order value will cost them an extra charge of Rs 30. Users have the option of setting their preferred time slot for delivery. They can also choose the 'Deliver Now' option under which the orders are delivered in 90 minutes. Deliveries are done from 9 AM to 10 PM everyday

Payments for this service can either be made through Ola Money or other options such as cash on delivery, net banking, or credit/ debit card on delivery.

Ola, which is backed by Japan's SoftBank, had emailed some of its customers in early June to try out the app. The select customers were offered 50 per cent discount on their first order.

In March, the company had launched 'Ola Cafe', its food ordering and delivery service in parts of Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi and Mumbai. While Ola Cafe is integrated into Ola's cab hailing app, Ola Store is a new app altogether.

The online grocery and delivery market has been witnessing increased investor interest for some time now. Techcircle.in had recently reported that PremjiInvest, the private investment arm of Wipro chairman Azim Premji, is in discussions to lead a $50 million (Rs 312 crore) Series C investment round in Bangalore-based BigBasket.com. On the other hand, Bangalore-based ZopNow raised $10 million (Rs 61 crore) from Dragoneer Investment Group with participation from the existing investors Accel Partners, Qualcomm Ventures and Times Internet in April.

Grofers, PepperTap and LocalBanya are the other players to have recently secured funding.

All major horizontal e-commerce players have also evinced interest in the Indian online grocery space. While Flipkart is expected to start selling groceries some time this year, Snapdeal has tied up with gourmet food retailer Godrej Nature's Basket to sell about 400 of its products online. Amazon is testing local deliveries with neighbourhood grocers as partners on its marketplace (starting with Bangalore). Recently, Paytm's parent company One97 Communication launched a new app named Zip to connect users to both local offline as well as online grocers.

Ola, which competes with Google-backed Uber, had recently raised $400 million (over Rs 2,500 crore) in its fresh round of funding led by Russian investment firm DST Global, which valued it at around $2.4 billion (Rs 18,000 crore).