In a new book, Blinkit co-founder AS Dhindsa recounts how the quick commerce platform survived Covid
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“How bad is it? Will we survive it?” asked Vikas Parekh, who represented Softbank on Grofers’s board.
He was asking the question on WhatsApp after I had sent him a picture of our largest warehouse in the country, in flames. A 2,00,000-square-foot building with products worth Rs 30 crores inside it had gone up in flames within hours. Thankfully, no lives were lost, but everything else was gone – the facility, the products, the machinery, the racks and the servers. When a 20-year-old garbage truck parked outside our Kundli warehouse had blown its faulty engine, the resultant flames had quickly caught on to its contents of discarded cardboard, eventually spreading to the inside of the warehouse. The fire had taken only two hours to fully engulf and finish off the biggest ever investment in our supply chain, till then. That cold morning in November 2020, I had relayed the information to our board members.
At the time, it felt like a real body blow. After a long time, we had been feeling like we were getting somewhere and were in a position to control our destiny. Then that feeling of control literally went up in smoke.
When COVID-19 engulfed the world and brought supply chains to...