The business of online food retail is presently experiencing unprecedented growth, with online retail sales projected to increase by 12% every year up to 2027, as per a 2024 Gartner report. But this growth is accompanied by numerous challenges. Retailers are responsible for streamlining fulfillment processes to attain operational efficiency, keep costs in line, and ensure customer satisfaction, while at the same time grappling with an increasing number of orders. Conventional processes typically lead to delays, errors, and unhappy customers. Get to know Sharath Chandra Edupuganti, a veteran product leader at a leading U.S. grocery retailer, whose innovative solutions have squarely addressed these challenges, thus transforming the industry’s benchmarks.
A Problem-Solver with a Vision
Sharath Chandra Edupuganti is not merely a technical specialist; instead, he is a visionary who bridges technical know-how with practical applications. A UC Irvine MBA graduate with extensive software engineering experience, he has been working for more than a decade in converting hard problems into implementable solutions. “Technology has to make things easier for businesses and customers,” he often asserts. At his company, he found some serious issues with grocery fulfillment and customer interaction, and in turn developed two revolutionary products: AcuPick and ShopAssist.
AcuPick: Revolutionizing the Way Orders Get Done
AcuPick, one of Sharath’s crown jewels, has introduced a triplet of first-to-market innovations that have made a major impact on grocery fulfillment. These innovations address inefficiencies and customer inconvenience in a very effective manner, thus proving that fast and affordable service is possible.
Dynamic Multimode Picking: A Smarter Way
Traditionally, grocery retailers have had to make a trade-off between batching multiple orders for efficiency or picking one order at a time for accuracy. Sharath identified this as a false dilemma and went on to create a dynamic multimode picking system. This advanced tool considers real-time order information along with store conditions to decide if batching or one-at-a-time picking would be more productive. It minimizes associate workflows, leading to a 16% gain in picking efficiency in 2024, based on internal company data. It also incorporates built-in checks to avoid mixing up orders, so quality is never sacrificed. To associates, the process is seamless; whether picking one order or dozens, the interface and procedural steps are the same.
Quick Delivery Without the Overpriced Tag
The 30-minute grocery delivery dream has been elusive for most large retailers. Large retailers have failed to make the service profitable, and startups trying out fast delivery have generally shut down due to the high cost. Sharath defied such common convention with AcuPick, creating a system that integrates quick orders into normal fulfillment processes seamlessly without the added labor or cost. The system prioritizes quick orders, repurposing associates from less critical orders as required. This new process has made quick delivery a profitable venture, contributing 6% of the retailer’s e-commerce sales, demonstrating that speed and profitability can go together.
Faster Handoffs, Happy Customers
Pickup orders represent a majority of the retailer’s e-commerce volume, but timely handoffs have historically been a problem, and only 70% achieved the five-minute mark. Sharath addressed this issue by implementing an intelligent interjection logic that monitors associate activity in real-time and distributes handoff work to the most available team member. The outcome of the project was a staggering increase in on-time handoffs to 90%, with a reduction in customer wait times from seven minutes to under four. For a retailer where pickup is the focal point, this innovation has been life-changing for customer satisfaction.
ShopAssist: Transforming Customer Interaction
Sharath did not take things for granted. With ShopAssist, he shifted his attention to improving customer interactions with retailers during the process of shopping, hence delivering features that have set a new benchmark for service in grocery e-commerce.
Multi-Associate Chat: Where Technology Meets Teamwork
While other competitors have tried customer chat capability, they have failed to scale it effectively. Sharath’s multi-associate chat capability allows multiple store associates to help a single customer at the same time, the first by a major U.S. mass market grocery retailer. The solution delivers timely answers without disrupting efficient picking activity. Offered at no extra charge to all customers, it has been a huge success. 10% of orders now involve chats, 65% of which have successful outcomes, such as getting a desired item. Customers have had unprecedented control of their orders with this technology, while the business has maintained costs in check.
Artificial Intelligence that Guarantees Service Excellence
With 60,000 weekly chats, quality can’t be managed manually. Sharath employed generative AI to score chats on responsiveness, timeliness, and helpfulness, so managers could view top performers and areas to improve. He also used AI to monitor customer requests such as substitutions in real-time, so associates never lag behind. These tools have boosted substitution satisfaction rates by 31%, solidifying ShopAssist’s leadership in providing consistent, high-quality service at scale.
Ripple Effects Across the Industry
Sharath’s innovations have benefited his employer in addition to benefiting the broader grocery e-commerce market. For example, AcuPick’s “Fulfillment as a Service” model has enabled a partnership with grocery marketplace partners, enabling orders placed on with partners to be fillable through the retailer’s system. Additionally, ShopAssist’s AI-driven chat functions are being utilized as a model for scalable customer service, with industry players acknowledging its successful balance of efficiency and engagement.
The statistics are self-explanatory: AcuPick doubled the retailer’s number of online stores in 12 months, from 586 in early 2020 to 1,534 in April 2021. It has also driven average annual e-commerce sales growth of 25% since the pandemic. ShopAssist, on the other hand, has increased the Net Promoter Score by 14% and eliminated out-of-stock positions by 16%, adding millions in additional revenue annually. These statistics reflect the colossal impact of Sharath’s work, both within his organization and outside of it.
Constructing the Framework for Future Development
Sharath Chandra Edupuganti has done more than simply solve problems; he has actually changed the approach to grocery e-commerce. His efforts with AcuPick and ShopAssist break with conventional thinking, demonstrating that rapid delivery, effective fulfillment, and quality customer service need not be expensive. “It’s about making things better for everyone involved,” he has said. As the company continues to look to the future, his efforts are a blueprint for combining innovation with pragmatism, ensuring that grocery e-commerce can meet the expectations of customers and still be profitable. His legacy is the building block for future advancements in a business that he has already revolutionized.
