Sanjeev Jha, MD & Chief Business Architect, 30rupees(dot)com speaks with THE ECONOMIC TIMES on Online Grocery Shopping in India

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Online Grocery Shopping in India is getting increasingly popular with definite benefits that the customers are reaping from the services

Gurgaon, Haryana, India., January 28, 2013 - (PressReleasePoint) -

Even the idea of being able to Shop for Groceries Online along with getting Free Same Day Home/Office Delivery would stir up any house maker’s mood to delightfulness. Being already neck deep in busy work schedules and other daily household chores, Grocery Shopping is the last thing anyone would want to delve into.

 “30rupees.com was conceived as an idea, while shopping inside one of the biggest super-marts in India. The many hours spent from our precious weekends, the long queues we experienced at the billing counters, the struggle for parking space, only a few items on discount and rest of the SKU’s (stock keeping units) sold at their Maximum Retail Prices, in-house brands not of optimal quality, inability to wish for any product and home/office delivery facilities- these were some of the concerns that inspired our founding team to launch an on-the-ground survey on the viability of an online platform, which can help save the precious time of the working population today” shares Sanjeev, on the idea behind starting an Online Supermarket portal in India.

The concept of launching an Online Grocery Portal in Delhi NCR was well researched upon and tested on a few customers before expanding its operations to a larger scale."Our research revealed that some of the major problems faced by customers like the lack of one service provider with multiple location-based services, irregularities in their services, delay in the order processing and order delivery and product expiries have been the major niggling areas. The portal was launched last year as an online grocery-shopping portal and currently provides free home delivery to customers across Noida, Gurgaon, Delhi and Faridabad. Customers can choose from over 10,000 SKUs in different product categories” says Sanjeev.

30rupees.com provides the best selection of products across categories, same day shipping, helpful customer care service convenient and easy-to-navigate shopping experience for all the customers. Clients include households and individual people. The company also caters to Corporate Customers such as Multinational Companies, Guest Houses, Restaurants, Hotel Chains, etc. Specially designs customized packages are also available that match with the clients’ requirements and provide them with necessary discounts. “Interestingly, we cater to more women clients than men, the ratio of women customers to men would be 5:2. From amongst our women customers, working women happen to be higher in number, the ratio of working women to household women would be 4:2”, mentions Sanjeev.

The key growth driver is the very basic need for the ‘convenience of home delivery of monthly grocery. There are obvious infrastructural and cultural enablers that feed the growth of that need, such as the increasingly stressed work-life balance across booming cities & metros leaving little time for family, the rapidly expanding Internet accessibility, the growing population of Internet shoppers – willing to buy online through their laptops or smart phones, the ever-cramped parking lots in malls on weekends.


“As a food & grocery retailer, we inherit some of basic challenges in the space including slim margins and steeper working capital requirements. From a business perspective, we believe the key barrier is establishing and maintaining trust in the eyes of our users for a virtual food & groceries store. The major operational challenges for us have been managing inventory and controlling costs, considering the margins. Keeping an eye on product quality protocols to ensure consistency is another concern. We also see a very healthy competition from other regional players in this domain, but it is actually helping us, as any new activity by the new/existing players draw people to search online for such services and we get more traffic to our website”, signs off Sanjeev
 
For complete interview article, please visit the following link:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/features/dhl-logistics-arena/high-rentals-logistic-issues-force-e-retailers-to-build-warehouses-in-ncr/articleshow/16061955.cms