Online grocery shopping used to be a small part of the retail world, but it’s now a major player, thanks to changing customer habits and new technology. A 2023 McKinsey study showed that 11.1% of the $884 billion U.S. grocery market came from online sales, and that number is expected to hit 15% by 2026. The pandemic changed everything. People turned to online platforms for safety and convenience, speeding up a digital shift that would’ve taken years. Retailers scrambled to keep up, pouring money into their online systems. By late 2024, top U.S. grocers were seeing 7–15% of their sales come from e-commerce, according to their earnings reports.
Driving Retail Tech Transformation
Sharath Chandra Edupuganti, a tech expert at a major grocery retailer in the US, has been a driving force in this transformation. With over ten years in retail technology, he’s tackled the toughest challenges in online grocery shopping, making it faster and more customer-friendly. His two big innovations, AcuPick and ShopAssist, have changed how online orders get fulfilled efficiently and with quality, setting a new standard for the industry.
Transforming Online Order Fulfillment with AcuPick
When the pandemic hit, there was a sudden increase in online orders, but slow processes, high costs, and uneven customer experiences held them back. Edupuganti’s AcuPick system turned things around with smart, practical solutions.
One of his standout creations is dynamic multimode picking, a system that’s the first of its kind. It decides in real time whether to group orders or pick them one by one, depending on what’s happening in the store. Grouping orders saves time, letting workers grab items for multiple customers at once, which boosts efficiency by 16%. But when accuracy matters most, the system switches to single-order picking to avoid mistakes. The best part? Workers don’t notice the switch; the interface stays simple, cutting training time from two days to just a few hours. This helped retailers expand online shopping to 1,534 stores by April 2021, up from 586 the year before.
Edupuganti also made 30-minute Flash delivery a reality, something competitors haven’t cracked at scale because it’s so expensive. AcuPick figures out which workers can drop less urgent tasks to focus on these super-fast orders, keeping costs low for both the company and customers. In 2024, these quick deliveries made up 6% of online orders. A McKinsey report says rapid delivery like this was thought impossible with manual picking, but Edupuganti proved it could work.
For curbside pickup, which covers the majority of online orders, AcuPick slashed wait times. Before, only 70% of pickups happened within the five-minute goal because workers were stretched thin. Edupuganti’s system picks the best worker for the job based on what they’re doing, pushing on-time pickups to 90% and cutting wait times from seven to under four minutes. Customers noticed the difference, giving a 14% boost in satisfaction scores (Net Promoter Score).
Revolutionizing the Grocery Game
Edupuganti knew that trust is everything in grocery shopping, so he created ShopAssist, a tool that lets customers chat with workers in real time as their orders are being picked. This service is offered to every customer for free, a first for a major U.S. grocer. By letting multiple workers handle a single customer’s chat, Edupuganti kept things efficient while making the experience personal. This cut the time to handle item swaps to 20 seconds or less, even though 65% of orders involve substitutions; only 9% need a chat.
To keep up with 60,000 weekly chats, Edupuganti used AI to track how responsive and helpful workers are, helping managers coach their teams. AI also checks chats in real time to make sure no customer request, like swapping an item, gets missed, improving substitution satisfaction by 31%. Now, 10% of orders involve a chat, and 65% of those end with customers getting exactly what they want.
Big wins
Edupuganti’s work has made a huge difference. AcuPick doubled the number of stores offering online shopping in less than a year, cut support issues by 72%, and reduced missing items from 2% to 0.6% with better bag tracking. ShopAssist lowered out-of-stock items by 16%, adding millions in yearly revenue, and made customers happier with more control over their orders.
Changing the grocery game
His Fulfillment as a Service model lets marketplace partners send orders to AcuPick for pickup across 2,000 stores. This shows how his ideas bridge traditional stores and online platforms, inspiring others in the industry.
A 2024 Research and Markets report points to a growing trend toward automated fulfillment, which aligns with Edupuganti’s approach. His success in making fast delivery affordable challenges the idea that it’s too costly, as noted in a McKinsey analysis. By showing manual picking can handle 30-minute deliveries, he’s rewriting the rules for grocers and delivery platforms.
What’s next for grocery shopping
With online grocery shopping expected to hit 30–40% of sales in the next decade, Edupuganti’s work is redefining what is possible. AcuPick and ShopAssist show how technology can make things efficient without losing the human touch. Looking forward, his ideas are setting the stage for innovations like AI that predicts what customers need or automated warehouses that speed up orders. Edupuganti’s blend of smart tech and customer focus is shaping a future where grocery shopping is easier, cheaper, and tailored to every shopper.
