What: Lotte Shopping has signed a contract with British-based retail tech company Ocado to become a top online grocery mall in Korea.

Why it is important: To capture the 135 trillion won market for online grocery in Korea, Lotte plans to invest 1 trillion won in smart logistics and adopt the Ocado Smart Platform (OSP) to all its e-commerce sector operations.

The OSP uses automated customer fulfilment centres (CFCs), self-developed robots, artificial intelligence and big data to carry out rapid and accurate delivery. Lotte Shopping plans to build six CFCs over the next eight years and make changes to its mobile shopping platform by collaborating with Lotte Department store.

Lotte partners with Ocado to become best online grocer in Korea