Akrosh Sharma, after running vegetable mandi for his brick and mortar start up, has made it all online. You can now can “see” the fresh vegetables, check prices and place orders online and need not worry about your precious time haggling with Vegetable vendors. He has also come up with an innovative idea to order a gift, made up of Fruits and Vegetables.

Our View: Selling vegetables and fruits needs a lot of caution because of their perishable nature. Selling vegetables online has to take into consideration the quality (freshness, need for specific characteristic of a fruit and vegetable, its organic nature), price, storage and affect of transportation. The costs involved to provide good fresh vegetables might not justify the costs that final customer has to pay. And you can not ask customers for very high prices unless you have substantial value addition that customers care about.

We also remember an online vegetables and fruit selling website (Webvan?) that failed badly in logistics and sales in 1999-2000. The main challenge is to maintain profit margins on the perishable items. Vegetable buyers can be finicky and if customers who are very busy have delegated the buying decisions to their cook who would have a preferred store for vegetables. If the business does not keep stock, and buys after orders and adds delivery charges, then that could be an interesting model to see.

Reference: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/surat/IIM-A-grad-launches-subzi-mandi-on-laptop/articleshow/5178351.cms

Unfortunately, none of the news reports have published the website URL.