We deliver grocery essentials to thousands of houses. That’s the simplest way to describe what we do.
It is our collective endeavour to serve millions of families, by providing them the choice of the finest quality of essentials at the most affordable price delivered to the convenience of their doorstep. But this is happening in the present. Which brings us to the question, what about the future?
There is no viable path forward that does not take into account the needs of the future generations. The concept of sustainability entails that we live and work in the present in a manner that does not jeopardise the future.
As an organization that is dedicated to serving Indians for decades to come, sustainability is a core priority for us. While we humbly acknowledge there is a lot of ground for us to cover on this front, these are the four main areas of action that we are currently focusing on:
Shipping: To reduce carbon emissions we deployed some electric vehicles – wherever we can with respect to replacing the normal CNG, Diesel or Petrol vehicles – moving from 4 wheelers to 2 wheelers.
The electric vehicle usage and higher efficiency offered helps in reducing more than 9% of CO2 emission if compared with traditional IC vehicles .
Currently, our last mile fleet at Gurugram has about 80% Electric vehicles . Overall we have currently deployed close to 40+ EV vehicle with 3PL partnership for last mile delivery
Packaging: Earlier our packaging used to have industry food grade plastic – now we have been using only biodegradable packaging since the last one year.
Material is 100% recyclable and polybags are above 51 microns and compliant with all the government regulatory norms. Material is ROHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive) compliant and is safe for any food applications.
Apart from replacing the delivery packaging, we have also built up several sustainability programmes for packaging specification reduction in the packaging of our private label products. With these programmes we are reducing the amount of plastic used in packaging products such as staples, atta, sugar, etc.
Pesticide-free food: Pesticides can contaminate soil, water, turf, and other vegetation. In addition to killing insects or weeds, pesticides can be toxic to a host of other organisms including birds, fish, beneficial insects, and non-target plants. Insecticides are generally the most acutely toxic class of pesticides, but herbicides can also pose risks to non-target organisms.
We are making a concentrated effort on solving this problem by engaging with farmers who understand the significance of maintaining a balance between healthy food and fertile environment.
As a small step towards tackling this problem, we have introduced a new range of Staple products with Pesticide-Free Goodness under our new Brand “Whole Farm“, which undergoes a robust 3 Stage Quality check process, is tested against 114 Chemicals and is traceable end-to-end.
The assortment is lean, currently consisting of 43 articles in categories ranging from Flours, pulses, rice, millets, sugar and spices. These are grown at farms that do not use chemicals or fertilizers, and every batch of produce gets certified Pesticide-Free only by NABL accredited external labs.
Consumer participation: In the not-so-distant future, we are exploring opportunities for people who are concerned about sustainability to start donating for ₹1 or 2 towards recycling plastic wastage in the primary and secondary packaging of food products. We believe this is one of the small measures that could create a dent in the ongoing plastic pollution going on across the country.
If you have thoughts or ideas on what else we could be doing on this front please do write to us at [email protected]
