BHUBANESWAR: Bhubaneswar saw a surge in demand for snacks, ready-to-eat food, biscuits, nutritional bars, men’s grooming products, cleaning supplies and laundry essentials on online platform Amazon during the ongoing festive season.The city recorded five-fold growth in ready-to-eat meals, snacks and biscuits, two fold in chocolates, four fold in men’s grooming products, three fold in nutritional (energy) bars and 2.5 fold in cleaning supplies on Amazon.in.
Energy bars are supplements containing cereals, micro-nutrients, and flavours. Surprisingly, the demand for laundry items witnessed an 13 fold increase as compared to last year. Laundry essentials are basically detergent, stain removers, fabric softeners, fragrance boosters, additives, drying rack, iron and dryer. Amazon India Director (Consumables) Nishant Raman said unlike other cities, the growth in ready-to-eat food and snacks in a city like Bhubaneswar, where people prefer home-cooked food is quite encouraging for online trade.
“We observed more than 80 per cent growth in tier-2 and 3 cities. The preference of new customers was to shop ready-to-eat meals, chocolates, grooming, hygiene, pet and baby products besides laundry essentials,” he said. The online trade that grew by leaps and bounds during the Covid-19 pandemic registered eight times growth in the last few months prompting aggregators to hire more delivery associates to ensure the purchased products reach the remotest corners of the State.
Owing to demand, Nishant said, the local shops programme has been scaled rapidly and more than two lakh local stores from over 350 cities including 10,000 sellers from the State, are now associated with Amazon.in.