Home Delivery of Alcohol: What will be the Delivery Charges? How Technology will be used? Details

Food aggregators in the country are now actively involved in alcohol delivery and it is said to be the next biggest e-commerce trend in India. Swiggy and Zomato have already started services in Jharkand, Odisha and West Bengal. Big Basket and Amazon has also joined the club by recently acquiring delivery license for alcohol in West Bengal. 

Startups such as HipBar, Drinkiify and Liqhub were involved in alcohol delivery but faced regulatory hurdles. Since state governments incurred huge losses during lockdown, the regulations have been eased at present. This has attracted many e- commerce firms.

The e-commerce firms that are growing in this space are investing in technology for age verification at present since it is an important part of regulatory compliance rules. As per media reports, Zomato has adopted a two- step verification process for determining the age of the user Whereas, Swiggy has developed an AI- based feature based on face recognition, which will be used coupled with OTP to automate age verification and user authentication.

A Swiggy spokesperson told Financial Express, “We have mandated a one-time instant age verification followed by a selfie of the customer. The integrated solution instantly digitizes the customer’s identity card, checks if the customer’s selfie matches the picture on the card, and then checks if the customer is really present in it or if it is a photo of a photo.”

This step also enables companies to avoid overcrowding at retail stores during the peak hours. Companies are trying to work in partnership with authorized retailers in specific cities. Zomato already has 250 retailers on board and is also planning to collaborate with authorized government retailers in cities where the company is active. 

So far, Zomato and Swiggy are charging Rs 60-100 per order for delivery on average but it mostly depends on the order size and distance covered.

All the aforementioned companies are now in talks with other state governments to commence services but the principle focus is still on getting the process right.