When subhiksha announced in last IAMAI meet that they would be soon launched online grocery retailing it really made me think that after working and living in a developed country like australia where big grocery retailers like safeway and coles were providing online grocery shopping what made me waste my sunday morning specially going to the stores and shopping.
Talking to couple of friends on phone made me realized online grocery shopping cannot work in any country as lot of people dont plan out their groceries in advance and the next business day delivery being offered is not as attractive to within 2 hours telephone delivery being offered even though store might be just opposite to your place.
Secondly in store shopped 40% of grocery bills include items which were never planned for which means need to go around the store look and feel thing forms a very important aspect while doing shopping.
Lastly lot of friends did point out this is the only family time together they get and removing this activity from the week only cleans up space to do more office work then spend quality time with family.
Now looking at Indian scenario with different kind of formats being followed by retailers to reach every corner or neighborhood the need and necessity to shop for vegetables,fruits,pulses online goes away.
What does storrz.com offer ?
storrz.com tend to act as a shopping platform pretty much similar to one being offered by fabmall.com which means retailers host their products on storrz.com website and storrz.com takes care of logistics and payment collections.
Currently they are retailing MTR food packs and cookie man’s delicious cookies though they are not so tempting that you will just buy them online.
What models can E- Grocery Retailing platforms can implement to increase reach out or help existing formats?
i)Develop automated tool on their online website to create shopping list and ability for registered users to sms list to their mobile phones. They can now sms this list to some one from family going to the store with quantity required and when the person reach store they can use the same reference# in mobile phone to bring up order list on convenient touch screen kiosks available with ability to pay by credit card and someone from store pack their order.
ii) Offer discounted inventory online this is something which can push online grocery shopping so that people can check for things expiring in 15 days item or things available for mass clearance at better prices online as they might be stocked in Area Warehouse but not stocked on shelves due to lack of acceptance from buyers.
Their are many other ideas which can be implemented but just offering online grocery retailing is something which india can do without for another year or two.
“Lastly lot of friends did point out this is the only family time together they get and removing this activity from the week only cleans up space to do more office work then spend quality time with family.”
People in india wants to spend time in shopping and i agree they want look and feel of the products.
They also worry about the freshness of the product. If ordered product was more than a 5 days back or is it fresh one.
As i seen in bangalore, foodword keep very stale green leaf products. People purchased only packaged products.
BTW: Very inspiring Blog
. Keep up.
My general opinion is very similar to the one above, and i had articulated this on alootechie or contentsutra as well. The primary TG in my opinion would be DINK families but even then its a very difficut model to take off. My local retailer offers me credit , home delivery and good prices. Why would i want anything else?
this concept can surely work for the thousands of bachelors working in bangalore who hate to go out shopping for groceries. I would say that in bangalore even married people find it very cumbersome to visit say food world or reliance fresh due to the long queues at the checkout counters … so i would say that there is definitely a market to be explored. depends on how well these guys execute it.
I think it will work to shopping at home. http://www.oxyshopping.com is an online shopping engine for Indian products. Shoppers may choose from several ways to shop such as shopping by brand, products search by keywords. Major Indian online stores are at one place.Just check out http://oxyshopping.com
To add to the above mentioned fact, there are other grocery items that you need to select from the available brands, quality and price. e.g rice. It would be very difficult to identify the quality of rice and then price justification without having a look on it. At the same time different varieties of rice have got many names depending on the region and places. To handle that problem will be equally difficult.
No doubt there are many operational issues that online grocery store would need to address, but i would support the fact saying that there is good market potential for this business. Bachelors and nuclear family might opt for this kind of purchase as they hardly bother for the kind of purchase they make (mostly packed items). One real challenge would be the traffic movement in website, navigation controlls and design.
Egroceryshop.in is a worlwide Online Supermarket dealing in all kinds of Goods & Services for Family,Industries,Small & Medium enterprises.
Egroceryshop.in invites people from all walks of life to showcase their skills and talents and enable them to sell their goods or services online worldwide or locally as they wish for a small Membership Fee.Once they became Member of Egroceryshop.in they will get orders online & get payment online immediately.
try http://www.ishopd.com. its a new site, looks cool, is built around the social shopping model. though they dont have ecommerce right now, but i am sure thats a matter of time. i love the simplicity of the site and its intuitiveness!
India is absolutely ready for online grocery shopping. This idea is something similar to Amazon fresh. There are many websites that offer huge lists of products and brands from various suppliers, but E-grocery should be confined to a particular chain of supermarket’s. This would take care of certain problems like the fresh product delivery, as a big supermarket chain would not risk its business by a stale product delivery considering its future online business.
E-grocery seems to be a major step, but a simpler shopping model could be implemented initially, like the arrangement of touch screen shopping kiosks and self checkout counters (supervisor monitored). These can save a considerable amount of time for a small quantity shopper. A small example would be to wait in a long queue for a shampoo or a coke on the first of the month, with people ahead, lined up with carts loaded with grocery. There are hardly any express counters in most of the grocery stores. They can provide smaller facilities like taking the order through the touch screen kiosk and try to deliver it to the customer at a different service desk. This would save a considerable amount of time for small grocery shoppers. Why would I like to feel the freshness of certain products like a Cadbury dairymilk , shampoo, soap, coca cola etc. at a supermarket.
Such small steps can be taken care of in order to facilitate the customer. E-grocery is a huge step, but there are many other ways to satisfy the customer. This would save some time and also keep the culture of family shopping time alive to certain extent.
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Egroceryshop provides a levelling play field for small shopowners to compete with Big store by enabling them to open a FREE ONLINE Store.For more info pls mail to egroceryshop@gmail.com