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| Edited By: Praveena Sharma |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 20, 2018, 05:50 AM IST
Q. In the recent past, we have seen online groceries mushrooming in the domestic market. Do you think shopping for grocery online has picked up enough for it to become commercially viable for so many players?
A. When we started SRSGrocery.com in January (this year), we got 160 orders on the first day, but slowly the trend is changing. In the last ten months, we have seen the number of orders grow five times. Currently, we are doing 800 orders per day on an average basket size of Rs 1100. Since we also have offline presence, we gain over many other players in the market. We have our brick-and-mortar brand of SRS Value Bazaar, which is present in five areas of Delhi-NCR – Gurgaon, Noida, Faridabad, Indirapuram and South Delhi. What we have gathered from tracking our customers from January is that the average size of their order has grown from just Rs 7 to at least Rs 5,500 per month today. We have also been able to gain their loyalty with 50-55% customers returning because of their shopping experience on our platform. We are all (online grocers) testing the waters. If the market is ready and we can make money out it, then it's great.
Q. What is the profile of an online grocery shopper on SRSGrocery.com?
A. I would say our customer would be in the age group of 22-40 years. Essentially, he is a professional with a hectic lifestyle. But since everyone shops for grocery, we expect everyone to come to us. We have passed the stage where we are telling customers to go and shop online. Now, we are trying to harness the shopping behaviour of our customer to serve them better.
Q. What are your expansion plans in terms of market and product additions?
A. We are growing slowly. We are not targeting 100 cities or 10,000 customers per day, at a go. We want to serve the people right. We don't just want to acquire customers but also want to serve them right so that we can grow in a sustainable way. We also do not want to get into irrational price war. We are offering discount but we do not go overboard with it. Our offline and online grocery businesses complement each other. We currently have 45 offline stores and are working on a warehouse model but would like to soon shift to omni-channel model, wherein we will be having express delivery from our stores. We will soon be adding pharmacy and jewellery to our online offering. We started our offline pharmacy last Sunday and will be launching it online in another month. We are getting our model for it tested and verified by the government. We have 10 offline jewellery stores and will do a soft launch of an online store in 15-20 days.
Q. Why did you decide to go online?
A. I have done my e-commerce course from Harvard in the US. The idea to start an online grocery came out of a lazy banter with friends in the US. Next, we found ourselves developing an application (app) for blood donation. When I returned to India, I wanted to do something online (for SRS), which would be new and exciting, and to which I could contribute. After some brainstorming, we concluded have to be hyper local model since we have a very strong presence here (Delhi-NCR) and so we started SRSGroceries.com.
Q. Since you began your online venture, competition in the space has heated up, how has it impacted you?
A. They (rivals) are not eating into our market. Also, unlike most of them, we are not into the valuation game, so we are growing at a healthy pace, and not irrationally expanding or announcing discounts that are not commercially viable in the long run. Their entry has not impacted our sales volumes, which is growing at 30% month-on-month.
Q. Are you looking for fresh funding to scale up?
A. Since we are supported by our group, we are not really looking out for funding. Yes, if there is a good funding deal in the market with the right kind of strategy, we are open to it. We have invested Rs 7-9 crore till now and are planning to invest Rs 50 crore over the next two years. These numbers may go up as we are now looking to add pharmacy and jewellery.
Q. Will you come out with a mobile app for your grocery?
A. We could have launched it last month but it wasn't robust enough. We want an app, which will allow customers to place the order, pay and leave in 10 minutes. It should be out by mid-December.
