On Thursday, Kishore Biyani led Future group's retail chain Big Bazaar announced its entry into the instant home delivery service, where the company will deliver products ordered online in around two hours' time.

Big Bazaar's 2-hour delivery assure is on products crosswise fashion, food, FMCG, and home segments for orders placed online through its mobile app and portal and will be served through its nearest physical store.

Future Group President – Food and FMCG Kamaldeep Singh, states, “The Company has started the 2-hour delivery service at Delhi NCR, Mumbai, and Bengaluru and plans to add more cities in this network. We are looking to serve around one lakh orders per day in the next 2-3 months.”

Big Bazaar would soon extend this 2-hour delivery service in 21 cities in the next 45 days in the second phase and in the next 5-6 months all Big Bazaar stores would be offering this service.

Under this service, Big Bazaar would charge a delivery fee of Rs 49 for up to Rs 1,000, and above that it would be free. The minimum order amount for this service is Rs 500.

Big Bazaar is the flagship retail format of Future Retail and operates over 280 stores in 150 cities across the country. According to Kamaldeep, this service is a 'game changer' and first in the physical retail industry. It is also working with partners for last-mile delivery.

Kamaldeep, adds, “In any market, just to deliver in 2 hours is not possible. We are making a very objective promise, based on our network of 285 stores. We are going to see a new kind of scale with this new initiative. Debt-ridden Future Retail, the parent firm of Big Bazaar, also owns other retail formats such as HyperCity, Foodhall, fbb, Food Bazaar, Easyday Club, and Heritage Fresh.”

On August 29, 2020, Future Group had announced that its retail and wholesale business would be sold to Reliance Retail, owned by oil-to-chemical conglomerate RIL in a Rs 24,713 crore deal.

The deal was contested by e-commerce major Amazon. As per the scheme of the arrangement, which is pending before NCLT for endorsement, all future group retail entities would merge into Future Enterprises and then would be transferred to RIL's retail arm by way of sale.