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March 29, 2022
Writankar Mukherjee & Sagar Malviya, Economic Times
Kolkata / Mumbai, March 28, 2022
The war for instant grocery delivery is going to intensify with Reliance Retail entering the segment with its JioMart platform. The company will start the trial in next 2-4 days in Navi Mumbai for ‘JioMart Express’ which will sell and deliver around 2,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) in a few hours, two senior industry executives aware of the plans said.
Reliance has plans to take instant grocery sales to over 200 cities and towns where JioMart is currently operational by end of next quarter and double the reach in next few months to make it India’s largest instant grocer. The company will also tap its network of kirana stores for such fulfillment, apart from its own chain of grocery stores, the executives said. It is testing a separate app for express grocery deliveries as well as integrating it into the JioMart platform.
The plans of India’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer to enter quick commerce is to further grow its e-grocery business and Reliance will compete against Tata-owned Big Basket which will launch it in April, Zomato-funded Blinkit, Swiggy’s Instamart, Walmart-owned Flipkart Quick and Zepto. Earlier this year, Reliance had led a $240 million funding round in quick commerce hyperlocal firm Dunzo owning the largest 26% stake.
“JioMart Express will utilize Dunzo in the markets where it is strong like the metros as well as its own delivery fleet. JioMart Express can be quickly scaled up since Reliance has onboarded lakhs of kiranas under its B2B programme ‘JioMart Partner’ who buys the merchandise from Reliance and sells through the JioMart platform,” an executive said.
An email sent to Reliance Retail remained unanswered till Sunday press time.
Devangshu Dutta, chief executive of consulting firm Third Eyesight, said Reliance needs to ensure that it is in the right catchment which has a high concentration of demand, low competition and keep supply centres close to it to make instant grocery service profitable. “Margin contribution is low in grocery and hence apart from these there could be a higher focus on high margin products in the assortment,” he said.
To be sure, quick commerce is not new for Reliance Retail. It has been delivering orders in less than three hours placed through Reliance Digital online or app for smaller consumer electronics such as mobile phones and laptops. “However, order volumes are going to be much more frequent in grocery, and hence it would need a robust backend and delivery fleet,” an executive said.
While the pilot in Navi Mumbai will start with 1-3 hours delivery time, Reliance will progressively reduce the delivery time to match the industry standard of 45 minutes to an hour and will also expand the range. According to researcher RedSeer, India’s quick commerce market is all set to grow 15 times by 2025 reaching a market size of close to $5.5 billion. Online shoppers in the metros have been using quick commerce for their unplanned and top-up purchases.
(Published in Economic Times)
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January 17, 2022
Financial Express, 17 January 2022
The e-grocery market has seen the emergence of new-age, hyperlocal players, each outmaneuvering the other in terms of delivery timelines. Vaishnavi Gupta asks experts if online and offline grocery retailers ought to worry as quick commerce companies like Dunzo, Zepto and Blinkit, which promise delivery in a matter of minutes, get in the fast lane.
‘Knowing your customer’s needs is key’ – Devangshu Dutta, Founder, Third Eyesight
The answer to various questions around the e-grocery space in India lies in how you respond to this one question: if grocery is delivered tomorrow instead of in 10 minutes or even on the same day, who cares? Knowing the customer you are targeting, and what they need, is what helps in crystallising a unique value proposition. The online grocery market is made up of diverse customers with diverse needs/ wants. There’s a whole spectrum from digital natives to those for whom shopping online is an add-on for specific products or specific needs. Figuratively speaking, most customers won’t put all their grocery eggs in one basket.
If ‘authoritative selection’ is the value proposition you want to play off, a hyperlocal infrastructure is virtually impossible to create. On the other hand, if hyperfast, hyperlocality is what your customer is after, then product selection must be strictly narrow. Time-criticality is also determined by the nature of the product. Fresh produce that is ordered regularly and frequently won’t shift en masse to a hyperfast website.
‘Impulse purchases small fraction of total purchases’ – Alagu Balaraman, CEO, Augmented SCM
Customers normally plan bulk purchases and prefer to get them out of the way. So, fewer orders are more convenient. Customers also like to browse for new brands and packs. So, it is likely that a 10-minute delivery will be useful for impulse purchases or emergencies. This accounts for a small fraction of the total purchase basket of the customer. Servicing small orders will raise the unit delivery cost per item. Initially, this might be funded by investors, but eventually, the customer will pay. Or will they?
From a sustainability perspective, the “oops I forgot” or “I want it now” style of purchase is counter to the green style of the new generation. Having small orders transported to doorsteps will substantially damage our collective carbon footprint and aggravate climate change issues. We have seen this excitement over hyperlocal delivery companies before — first in 2015 and again in 2018. Most have retreated on plans or have allowed themselves to be acquired at presumably modest valuations.
‘E-grocery profitability a major challenge’ – Rajat Wahi, Partner, Deloitte India
The majority (around 85%) of the grocery sales are done through the 10-12 million kirana/ mom-and-pop stores spread across India; 8-10% sales happen through modern retail chains; while online sales account for less than 3% of the total grocery sales today. Online grocers need to surpass the services that end customers demand — such as products to suit local tastes, sales credit, instant delivery on orders via phone or WhatsApp, small orders with no minimums, personal touch, returns and exchange — which is being done at a very low cost and margin by the kirana stores.
This is a tall order for e-grocery players. They are tying up with kiranas for last mile order fulfilment and delivery, offering a differentiated range of products, and better value using their EDLP (every day, low price) model, focussing on fresh meats through a better cold chain, offering credit and discounts, and more. Unless we see a major consolidation of retail in the coming years, building a successful and profitable e-grocery business will continue to be a major challenge.
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January 10, 2022
Written By Vaishnavi Gupta
UAE-based Tablez has launched a kids’ super store in India
Tablez, the retail arm of UAE-based LuLu Group, has launched its kids’ super store House of Toys in India. Tablez has been around in the country as the master franchisee of brands such as Desigual, Build-A-Bear, Go Sport, Yoyoso, Cold Stone Creamery, and Galito’s. The toy market in India, currently pegged at $1 billion, is estimated to double in size by 2025, according to a FICCI-KPMG report.
All stacked up
The first House of Toys store was unveiled at Global Malls, Bengaluru, in December, 2021. The store offers more than 20,000 products, from feeding bottles, strollers, and bathtubs, to wearable tech, remote-controlled toys, and stationery. Spread across 5,100 sq ft, the store also houses the Build-a-Bear shop, where kids can make their own soft toys. “We have toys starting from Rs 30, going up to Rs 30,000 in our assortment. We have 3,000 toys in the value segment of below Rs 500,” says Adeeb Ahamed, managing director, Tablez.
House of Toys aims to open 12-15 stores by the end of this year, initially in South India, and metros, followed by tier I cities and beyond. Tablez also plans to rebrand at least 10 Toys“R”Us stores in India to House of Toys in the second half of this year. The store’s products are available on Tablez’s own e-commerce platform, and will soon be listed on third-party marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart. “House of Toys has potential to be one of the top revenue contributors of Tablez,” Ahamed says.
Tablez has been consolidating its presence in the Indian market lately. Last year, Tablez launched Yoyoso’s seventh outlet in India, and opened another outlet, its 33rd, of American ice cream brand Cold Stone Creamery, both in Kerala. Further, it has earmarked an investment of Rs 100 crore for the expansion of sportswear store Go Sport. Fashion brand Desigual, which caters to women in the 25-45 age group, is now present on Tata CLiQ Luxury, and will soon make inroads into Mumbai and Bengaluru, followed by Chandigarh and Hyderabad.
Presently, Tablez operates 80 brand stores in India; it plans to take this number to 250 over the next five years.
Playing smart
Given that more than a quarter of India’s population is under 15 years of age, intuitively, it makes for a “great market for toys,” says Devangshu Dutta, founder, Third Eyesight. He says upper-income households with fewer children tend to buy more toys, games and learning aids, especially since children have been much more confined to the home environment in recent years.
According to Angshuman Bhattacharya, partner and sector leader (consumer products & retail), EY India, the growth of this market has been driven by improved availability and penetration of branded toys, upgradation from manual to automated toys, and improved awareness and availability brought about by e-commerce.
However, any kids category, whether apparel or toys, has been a difficult model to crack, owing to factors such as low SKU proliferation, and difficulty in inventory management, says Bhattacharya.
To stand out in the market, analysts say, brands need to create an authoritative and diverse product mix, which, in turn, requires a relatively large store footprint in high-visibility high-footfall locations. “The stock turnover is also slower than many other product categories, so merchandising and replenishment strategies need to be really smart. Branded merchandise offers lower margins, so private labels and unique products are necessary to add to the margin mix,” Dutta notes.
Deeply understanding a store’s catchment, so that consumer engagement can be kept high through the year — rather than being limited to local celebratory peaks and holidays — could be a useful strategy, say analysts.
Source: financialexpress
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December 23, 2021
Devika Singh, Moneycontrol
December 23, 2021
Male grooming products startup The Man Company, known for its online-first strategy, is looking at offline expansion for its next leg of growth. The company, which operates 28 exclusive brand outlets in the country, plans to launch 60-70 more stores by the end of this fiscal to gain presence across at least 100 locations.
“A lot of growth will come from the offline channel for the next one year at least, especially in Tier II and III cities where launching exclusive stores is a good way to introduce the brand to the consumer as shopping malls are weekend destinations there,” co-founder Hitesh Dhingra told Moneycontrol.
The company, backed by fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) major Emami which holds a 48.49 percent stake in it, is also looking at introducing its products in more multi-brand outlets. The Man Company is present in 1,200 multi-brand outlets which include lifestyle stores such as Shoppers Stop, Central and Lifestyle as well as hypermarkets, supermarkets and pharmacies. The company plans to be in 2,500 multi-brand outlets by the end of financial year 2022-23.
It currently draws about 70 percent of its sales from online channels including its own direct-to-consumer (D2C) platform and online marketplaces and 30 percent from offline channels. The startup’s strategy is focused on expanding its base in Tier II cities and beyond, which account for 50-55 percent of its sales even on online marketplaces.
“Out of our 28 exclusive brand outlets, only five to six are in top 10 cities and the rest in Tier II and smaller towns. For the new store openings also, we are going to adopt a similar strategy and only 10 percent of the new outlets will be in large cities,” said Dhingra.
The offline way
Several D2C brands have been eyeing the physical retail channel as they try to scale up and tap a wider set of consumers. Brands in the women’s beauty and personal care segment such as Mamaearth, Sugar Cosmetics and Plum Goodness are expanding their presence in the offline retail format. Plum, for instance, is looking to launch 50 exclusive brand outlets in the next two years.
Male grooming startups, too, are following a similar trajectory. For instance, Bombay Shaving Company and Baeardo are launching their products in more and more offline stores.
Devangshu Dutta, chief executive of retail consultancy Third Eyesight, said it makes sense for digitally-native companies that have achieved some brand recognition to launch in offline format for the next phase of growth. Brands in the 1990s for example, he said, who wanted to establish an identity, entered new formats or channels besides the existing ones. Similarly, digitally-native brands need not restrict themselves to online platforms alone, he added.
But he pointed out that these brands will have to address challenges such as ensuring availability of their products in offline channels. “In the online segment, companies can cater to customers with limited stocks. However, in the offline channel, they need to ensure availability of products across stores,” he said.
New categories
Apart from new retail categories, The Man Company has plans to enter categories such as sexual wellness and personal appliances. It has tied up with a marketplace for the launch of personal appliances such as beard trimmers and shavers and the category will be launched exclusively on the platform. The sexual wellness products, too, will be introduced on its D2C platform and later to other marketplaces and offline stores.
“We always launch a product on our platform to test it and get consumer feedback and, based on the response, we introduce the product to the wider market,” said Dhingra.
Launched in 2015, The Man Company caters to the men’s grooming segment and claims to have developed more than 65 stock keeping units. According to Dhingra, the company which competes with Beardo, Bombay Shaving Company and Ustraa will double its sales to Rs 100 crore by the end of this financial year.
Male grooming startups have of late attracted attention from FMCG companies. Marico last year completed the acquisition of Ahmedabad-based Beardo by buying an additional 55 percent stake in the company. It had acquired an initial 45 percent stake in 2019. British consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser Group invested Rs 45 crore in Bombay Shaving in February 2021. LetsShave and Ustraa are backed by Wipro Consumer Care.
According to industry estimates, the male grooming market in India was valued at Rs 15,806 crore in 2019 and is expected to cross Rs 36,402 crore by 2025, growing at a compound annual rate of 15-14 percent. Though growth was hit by the pandemic, experts are still bullish about the segment.
(Published in Moneycontrol)
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November 28, 2021
By Rasul Bailay & Writankar Mukherjee, Economic Times
November 27, 2021
Reliance Retail aims to be one of the world’s top retailers, but for the last couple of years, it has been a buyer, not a seller. It has bought a string of retail brands — from online pharmacy Netmeds and online furniture retailer Urban Ladder to digital lingerie seller Zivame, online grocer MilkBasket and haute couture label Ritu Kumar. The latest acquisition was Sri Lankan lingerie brand Amante.
These acquisitions are crucial cogs in Reliance Retail’s further push into brick-and-mortar and ecommerce, and are part of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) unit’s larger strategy: To break into the global top ten retailers. India’s largest retailer (by sales as well as by the number of stores) is currently ranked 53rd in the world, according to Deloitte’s Global Powers of Retailing 2021. Reliance Retail reported an annual revenue of $22 billion and a net profit of $750 million for the fiscal year ending March 2021.
At the same time, the company is looking beyond pure retailing. It’s pursuing a larger play to tap into the growing pie of the country’s overall consumption story — from contract manufacturing to distribution of everything from affordable fashion and consumer electronics to grocery products in India’s $850 billion annual retail market that is expected to swell to $1.3 trillion in the next few years. (Reliance did not respond to ET’s questionnaire.)
Analysts say Reliance’s overall plan is to engage India’s burgeoning consumers in its ecosystem one way or the other at any given point of time: shopping in its vast network of physical stores or on JioMart ecommerce platform, using Jio’s mobile or WiFi networks, watching movies on Jio Cinema, paying through Jio wallet so on and so forth that it is dubbed by the petroleum-to-telecommunications conglomerate as “retail plus” strategy.
“Their plan is to weave their products and services so deeply into your life that from morning to evening you are spending time and money on their networks either directly or indirectly,” says a top executive of an online grocery retailer. “Their idea is to constantly keep consumers engaged in a Jio bubble or in a Jio world.” The executive estimates India has a middle class of around 40 crore people. “Even if they succeed in capturing 10% of that wallet share, it is going to be huge,” he says.
That’s the reason Reliance Retail is betting big on business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce, with a digital wholesale marketplace along the lines of Alibaba for products such as smartphones, televisions, garments and grocery items, among other products, according to people aware of the plan. It’s looking to service a whole gamut of retailers in cities and villages.
Reliance has already started distributing its licencee products of Kelvinator- and BPL-branded consumer electronic items and its smartphone JioPhone Next, produced in collaboration with Google, to retailers outside of Reliance’s stable. The company also boasts a whole host of private brands and many of them are making inroads into general trade.
“The market for modern retail and ecommerce put together would be 15-20% in India. The rest 80% is still in the traditional market. If Reliance can make an entry into the traditional market and partner the smaller stores, the opportunity for growth and revenue is much more,” says an industry executive aware of the plans.
“Reliance’s approach is not to be a threat to small stores or merchants, but to be their enabler, provide them merchandise at best wholesale rates, upgrade their stores and even list them on their ecommerce platforms to help them reach newer consumers,” he adds.
Reliance is doing exactly that. Earlier this year, it started supplying Puric InstaSafe-branded FMCG products like soaps, home disinfectants and sanitisers to kiranas in Punjab and West Bengal. It is planning to roll these items nationwide. The company has put in place a marketing team for the first time to push these products. Similarly, B2B portal Ajio Business is selling T-shirts for Rs 79 onwards, a pair of jeans for Rs 220 and shirts for Rs 170 onwards to small businesses. Last quarter, Reliance Retail forayed into the wholesale business of medicines through Netmeds by roping in neighbourhood pharmacies under its B2B initiative.
These are some of the steps in the conglomerate’s bet not just on pure retail play but on end-to-end gameplay in the retail ecosystem, controlling manufacturing, wholesale, supply chain, ecommerce and payments.
To augment its digital wholesale plans, Reliance Retail has already converted its network of cash-and-carry outlets into fulfilment centres.
Analysts say Reliance’s ambitions are long-term and capital intensive and the company is ready for the long haul and to spend. “Reliance’s plan to rope in and aggregate many elements together — retailers, B2B buyers, suppliers, small players — and bring them on board takes time and is a capital-hungry business,” says Devangshu Dutta, chief executive of consulting firm Third Eyesight. “But controlling end-to-end is Reliance’s game plan in any business, including telecom, where it spans the entire value chain of not just providing the mobile network but also a digital interface with consumers.”
In a bid to feed its ambitious consumption plans, Reliance Retail is lapping up stores and warehouses nationwide to service both ecommerce and B2B sales through its “new commerce” omnichannel plans that will also involve legions of kiranas as last-mile delivery agents as well as buyers of Reliance’s products. Reliance Retail, which operates more than 13,000 stores of various formats, plans to open around 5,000 outlets of its Smart Point that would entail a convenience store, a pharmacy, agnostic centre, a telecom services and financial services products outlet all rolled into one across the country.
Reliance is planning to take this format to even tehsils, according to sources. Real estate agents and mall executives say Reliance is scouting for space for supermarkets, fashion outlets and jewellery and footwear stores.
They say Reliance is also planning to enter newer retail formats like a department store chain to compete with Shoppers Stop and Lifestyle. Also in the works is a Sephora-style beauty and cosmetics chain, they say.
“We will focus on expanding our store footprint multifold this year with co-located delivery hubs over the next few years. They will provide a strong network to reach and serve millions of merchants and customers,” Ambani said at the last AGM of shareholders.
Deloitte’s Global Powers of Retailing 2021 report ranked Reliance Retail as the world’s second fastest growing retailer, behind South Korea’s Coupang Corp.
Global financial and tech titans have taken notice of Reliance Retail’s play and pumped billions of dollars into it. Last year, the holding company Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd raised Rs 47,265 crore by selling about 10% stake to some of the biggest names in global private equity, including Silver Lake, KKR, General Atlantic, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and TPG.
Reliance will continue with its acquisition spree, say analysts. However, Reliance Retail’s largest, the Rs 25,000 crore acquisition of Future Group, is bogged down by Amazon’s opposition to the proposed deal.
(Published in Economic Times)
