India’s largest discounter in the online grocery space, Grofers has announced the addition of electric vans to its last-mile delivery fleet. This makes the grocery delivery startup the first company to attempt something of this scale and nature. The step has been taken as part of Grofers' commitment to working towards a sustainable future. The first set of vehicles will be deployed in Jaipur. The company is set to introduce 50 E-Vans in the city and aims to deploy 500 such vehicles across 50 operational markets by the end of this year. 

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The move is also in line with the government of India’s commitment to reduce carbon footprint, which encourages fuel-based vehicles to be replaced with electrically powered vehicles. Earlier, Grofers had employed e-rickshaws for delivery in Delhi region last year in order to reduce carbon footprint and bring down last-mile delivery costs.

The latest addition of E-Vans will help cut delivery costs by up to 50 per cent and carbon footprint by more than 40 per cent. The project which started in the Pink City recently has witnessed much success and the company plans to replace 30 % of its fuel-based delivery vans with Electric Vans by the end of this year.

"With environmental sustainability at the heart of doing business at Grofers, we are focused towards exploring new measures to reduce carbon footprint, in order to minimize the environmental impact. The initiative which honours government’s commitment of introducing environmental friendly mobility will not only help us bring down carbon footprint by 40 per cent but also reduce our overall delivery costs by up to 50 per cent," Saurabh Kumar, Founder, Grofers, said about company's new initiative. 

With market leadership in Delhi NCR, Mumbai and Kolkata, the company is also eyeing to strengthen its operations in Southern India in key markets including Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad in addition to its latest offering of Grofers offline stores.