Tata is piloting its super app in the east and west | Economic Times

New Delhi: The Tata Group is putting its ecommerce logistics in place in Jamshedpur in Jharkhand and Mithapur in Gujarat, as part of an expansion of online deliveries to its employees in those cities through its new super app, two people familiar with the matter said.Both places are major production hubs for salt-to-software conglomerate — Jamshedpur for steel and Mithapur for salt and chemicals. Both are largely Tata-managed cities and house a large number of Tata employees.Tata Digital is currently testing its TataNeu super app — which seeks to bring almost all of the group's consumer and financial products rolled into one application — among more than half a million employees. The Mumbai-based group plans to roll it out to the general consumers in January or February, the people said. “Tata has set a January deadline but it will depend on how things pan out during the testing,” said one of the people.So far, as part of its test marketing among employees, services of Taj Hotels, Tata Cliq, BigBasket, Croma and Air Asia are uploaded onto the Tata super app. Employees were given access to it on Gandhi Jayanti. TataNeu is in the process of “soon” integrating online pharmacy 1mg and that would be followed by bringing retail arm Trent and Titan in the coming weeks onto the super app. After that, Tata also plans to onboard Vistara, Starbucks and even Air India once it completes the acquisition of the airline next year, the people said.A Tata Digital spokesperson declined to comment.Tata has for years been working on the super app, seeking to offer all the group consumer-centric services on one platform. The group recently made large acquisitions including online grocer BigBasket and digital pharmacy platform 1mg. Tata Digital said it would invest $75 million in fitness startup Curefit. According to analysts, the acquisitions are part of Tata’s super app initiative.Tata is bracing for a major digital commerce play in India that is currently dominated by Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart. Rival Reliance Industries is also digitally selling, or has plans to do so, everything from grocery to services.Amid the pandemic, a sizeable chunk of Indians gravitated to online platforms to purchase everything from consumer items to services like insurances to bill payments.