StarQuik aims to bring the ease of online shopping of daily needs like grocery, bakery, fruits and vegetables and thousands of household products
Tata Group, the $144.7 billion multinational conglomerate, has jumped the online grocery shopping bandwagon with the soft launch of its etailing platform StarQuik.com.
Earlier this year in June, it had acquired (for an undisclosed sum) Gurgaon-based GrocerMax that was co-founded by food and grocery retailing veteran K Radhakrishnan who is currently co-founder at Tata STARQUIK.COM. The management team, expertise and technology infrastructure that came along with the GrocerMax's acquisition was utilised by Tata's to put together the StarQuik.com etailing platform that's currently in the pilot stage.
DNA Money had first reported about Tata Group's plans of entering food and grocery retailing in April 2013. Trent Ltd, the group's retail arm that operates an equal joint venture with UK retail major Tesco called Trent Hypermarket Ltd, was testing the waters and had launched an online grocery retailing pilot. The grocery e-commerce platform launched in 2013 was christened my247market.com and was owned and operated by Fiora Hypermarket Ltd (FHL), a subsidiary instituted by Trent in March 2014. It currently operates 42 physical stores under the Star banner in three formats viz. Daily, Market and Hyper, with around 42 stores.
Interestingly, the StarQuik platform is also owned and operated by Fiora Hypermarket Ltd and with the pilot being rolled out already, the fate of its earlier food and grocery etailing platform my247market.com is unknown. The my247market website which claims to be servicing selected pincodes across Mumbai (4) and Bengaluru (2) now displays an “Under Construction” message that says, “We are updating our system”. What this basically indicates that FHL may gradually shut down operations of the my247market etailing platform once StarQuik reaches the final launch stage in this fiscal.
StarQuik, according to the company website, is a Tata Enterprise that aims to bring the ease of online shopping of daily needs like grocery, bakery, fruits and vegetables and thousands of household products. Consumers have the option of buying directly via mobile or web browser and get the products delivered at their doorstep. 'In short, over 15,000 household products from a supermarket available at your doorstep within three hours', claims the company. Majority of products on offer are being sold at discounted prices ranging from a few rupees to a few hundred rupees depending on the product pack size.
“StarQuik.com finally it's up,” wrote K Radhakrishnan, co-founder, Tata StarQuik.com in his post on Linkedin on Friday afternoon. “It is Tata's omni-channel foray into grocery retailing. We serve 10k stock keeping units (SKUs) in Andheri west and cover a wide area. Our hero categories are fruits and vegetables, chicken, meat, paneer, fish, cheese, tandoori chicken (ready to gobble), bakery, ice cream and a host of branded goods. The idea is to make grocery shopping top quality in fresh and perishable categories and door step delivery in three hours,” said Radha (as he is popularly known in the retailing circle) in his post.
The mobile application, he said, is not fully done and still has mismatched pics and descriptions etc. “In a month we will get it right. In my entire career in grocery retailing I believe this is a big milestone for me. I make no pretences of it being the best. But we will get better with time. The day will be when someone tells me 'hey even my grandma can order online, StarQuik has made grocery shopping that easy',” Radha wrote in his post.
In the testing phase, StarQuik.com is delivering only in areas like Juhu, Versova, Andheri (West), Amboli, Oshiwara, Lokhandwala and Vile Parle (West) in Mumbai with plans to gradually go pan-India. The omni-channel etailing platform charges delivery fee of Rs 50 in case the order value does not reach the minimum order value (over Rs 500) for free delivery. Other than that, there are no additional charges added', the website claims adding that customers can choose delivery slots as per convenience at the time of placing the order. Among payment modes include online payments using credit cards, cebit cards, netbanking, PayTM and other wallets, meal vouchers from Sodexo, Ticket Restaurants as well as cash on delivery (COD).
Still in its infancy with just under 1% penetration, the online food and grocery category has witnessed some shake-up in the recent past with players like LocalBanya and Pepper-Tap suspending operations while another player Grofers had to limit operations by exiting from various cities. The online grocery space is currently led by players like Mukesh Ambani's Reliancesmart.in, BigBasket and Godrej Group's venture Nature's Basket while e-marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart also planning to make a big splash soon. A Morgan Stanley report pegs online food and grocery retailing to be the fastest-growing segment in India over the next few years. The segment is set to expand at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 141% by 2020 and contribute $15 billion, or 12.5%, of overall retail sales.
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