China’s grocery delivery market has been embraced by the e-commerce giants like Yihaodian, which is majority owned by Walmart and Alibaba’s Tmall along with other product categories. With Jingdong launching its grocery channel, several startups showed up to fill in the grocery delivery niche customers such as 51Qiquai.com covering University campus while BenLai.com offering quality groceries to solely Beijing area.
Today e-commerce giant Alibaba’s logistic affiliate China Smart Logistics (“Cainiao”) announced that it has established the largest distribution center supporting Alibaba’s supermarket sales in eastern China. The center will enable next-day delivery of groceries purchased online via Tmall Supermarket in 25 cities in Jiangsu Province, Zhejiang province and Shanghai.
Cainiao operates a logistics information platform which provides real-time access to information for both buyers and sellers, as well as information that allows delivery service providers to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their services. The company invested in supply chain and logistics platform KKTX last year to open logistic parks and transit centers to each other while saving costs in establishing transit hubs in the same cities.
When fully operational, this distribution center will align with Cainiao’s existing warehouses in Shanghai and Suzhou to cover logistic support in the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui and Shanghai. In the future, delivery from the new center is expected to be expanded to all of Jiangsu Province and the northern part of Fujian Province. Cainiao plans to support Tmall Supermarket to deliver products to over 250 cities across 25 provincial areas by the end of 2015. Amongst these 250 cities, residents in 50 cities shall receive their packages the next day after they make their purchases.
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