What are people saying about Alcohol Home Delivery, after Delhi Government's Nod on Online Orders?

In 2018-19, Delhi earned around Rs 5,007 crore through the sale of liquor, according to budget documents. For 2020-21, the city-state projected a total revenue of around Rs 6,279 crore through the sale of liquor, compared to the revised estimate of around Rs 5,480 crore for the previous fiscal.

The Delhi government has allowed home delivery of liquor under the amended excise rules. The Delhi Excise (Amendment) Rules, 2021, notified on 1st June 2021, allow licence holders to deliver liquor booked through an app or a website at the doorstep of the buyers. The rules also permit the holders of the necessary licences to serve liquor in open spaces such as terraces, the courtyards of clubs, bars and restaurants. This comes under the policy with the Aam Aadmi Party Govt has been planning for a long time.

Even if it's critiqued a lot of people, many others are happy and excited about it. While the google search trends have gone up by millions, searching for the apps or websites which would take the orders in Delhi, a few are also considering a fear scenarios where underage might also get the access to it!

What are People Saying?

I tried to reach out to my social network to gauge what were their purview on this new rule, tried covering both genders, age groups and professions. Here are some of the view points:

Sachin Saxena, Assistant General Manager-Brand Solutions - WWM (Times of India Group), is quite okay with this step, though he feels that last mile check on who is ordering and who is finally accepting the order is going to be a challenge. He says, " if every rule of liquor policy is being followed, then this would bring a respite of standing in long queue. But only a licensed retailer should be able to deliver and none below 25 should be able to place the order. Over that only an adult shall be able to take the delivery".

Kushal Walia, Associate Manager, Brand Marketing, Innovaccer believes that Alcohol should be always kept under the essential tabs. Amid the Covid restrictions, while people can't and should not step out, Home Delivery of Alcohol is a welcome step.

Dinesh Jain, Business Consultant, Stanford Seed, takes this step as breaking the old barriers. He believes that this decision will draw new boundaries and more to do with changing mindset than just looking at it as Alcohol Delivery.

Anish Malhotra, Associate Project Manager at Rakuten Insight is a Gurugram resident. He believes that buying his favourite alcohol is more of an experience since majority of Liquor / Wine Shopes in his city have been made luxurious and sassy. He loves his drive to his favourite Lake Forest store & pick up what he desires for that moment, which is quite similar to why people still love the brick and mortar format in retail than just buying groceries online.

He also hopes to have online delivery available as an option for people who would rather just order it online.

Kaushik Bagchi, Sales Head - Corporate at Reliance Big Broadcasting Pvt. Ltd, is quite positive about this step from the government, considering the huge crowd at liquor shop would attract once shops open up, this step would help in curbing the spreading the virus.

As soon as the news broke, The Twitterati also started the Memes was to express their opinions on this decision! Here are few of the hilarious ones:

Does current set of Food Ordering Apps like Zomato, Dunzo or Swiggy are good enough or Do we need a specialist like Drizly?

In 2020, during the nation-wide lockdown, Authorities in Jharkhand, West Bengal and Odisha had allowed Zomato and Swiggy to deliver liquor in the states to curb crowding at liquor stores.

In a strange outcome, Zomato exited the business due to poor response and unscalable economics, according to a report by Inc42. The Gurugram-based company took the decision to shut the liquor delivery business in January 2021, while Swiggy continues to run the business in these 3 states.

Last year, states including Kolkata, Maharashtra, Odisha, Siliguri, and West Bengal allowed online delivery of liquor through platforms such as Amazon, BigBasket, Swiggy, and Zomato.

Kerala also launched its dedicated liquor app called BevQ for people to take tokens in order to buy liquor, to ensure social distancing, and the app was so much in demand that it crossed over a lakh downloads in just hours after its launch in May 2020.

Drizly is a pure online liquor market place, where registered vendors or brands can list their products and let consumer enjoy the best prices and offers. Using Drizly is simple, you need to enter pin code, choose what you want to buy, compare prices or offers, buy and get alcohol delivered under 60 minutes!

What are your views on this step, Will it really help and ease things for consumers or will it poise a strict challenge in terms of logistics and delivery? Share your feedback in comments section below!

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