A major portion of the Indian FMCG market is constituted by many small businesses serving local community in a small geographical area. These local small grocery businesses are set up as Provision stores, Departmental Stores, General Stores, Kirana Stores, Rice Traders, Grocery Mart, Mini Market or independent supermarket etc. As the grocery market in India is growing rapidly owing to the increasing purchasing power of its population, there are many new entrants crowding this space. Many big established corporations are offering the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) products in the form of huge hypermarkets or a chain of supermarkets and there are several others who are making it big in the ecommerce space and not to forget the new entrants with the quick commerce model.
If you are one of the 12 million small grocery business owners, you would surely be concerned with the increasing competition and the threat of losing many of your customers to these new businesses, especially the ecommerce and quick commerce players who promise fast and quick grocery delivery and also good discounts.
It is important that you also reinvent yourself and adapt to the changing market dynamics and get an online presence and also offer competitive prices to ensure to retain your customers and also get new customers. There are several ways in which you can take your grocery business online.
Build a website and/or mobile app
Build a website or mobile app to sell your grocery inventory online. You can do this by having your own inhouse team of tech team or by outsourcing to some agencies which can build website or apps for you and also help you setup some very basic inventory management and other tool sets. However, this would have some drawbacks:
- Substantial Investment required
- Good technical knowhow required
- You will have to advertise to get customers
Use a Ready to use platforms to setting up micro website
There are now several new businesses in the market who are providing platform as a service for a small brick and mortar grocery businesses to start selling their groceries online within a matter of few minutes and hours. These platform as service providers promise to get you online in a matter of seconds for a very high subscription fees and little support in building these mini micro sites for you. Although in some cases this could be useful, there are several drawbacks one should be aware of.
- Substantial amount of time required to enter each item of inventory
- You should market and advertise to get customers yourself
- Moderate technical know how required
Sign up on the marketplace offered by big established ecommerce players
In this case, you can easily sign up on a marketplace which gives you an option to sell your groceries online to the customers who visit these online marketplaces. This is especially good, as you will not have to spend on advertising and marketing your online shop to acquire customers. You of course will have to pay a commission for using their service, but here are few drawbacks too.
- Substantial time invest required to setup and manage online shop
- Moderate technical know-how required
- Most marketplaces have a very high commission model
We at team Santhe.in have worked on a new user interaction model to allow you to sell your groceries online with very little time and money investment. Our user interaction model is setup such that the users can create and manage a grocery shopping list on the Santhe app. Whenever they are ready to buy, they can easily share that grocery shopping list with the local grocery stores and supermarkets nearby. These nearby grocery stores and supermarkets can then access the list using the Santhe Merchant app and add their best prices to send an offer to the entire list. Once the customer has the list, they can compare the grocery deals from the nearby grocery shops and supermarkets and choose the best grocery deal for them. As a small grocery business owner all you have to do is just download and register on the Santhe Merchant app and we will do the rest. We will get customers to you and ask them to share their grocery shopping list with you. When you have the grocery list available, you can then add your best prices and reach out to customer to ensure they accept your offer. Get the Santhe Merchant App today to sell your groceries online to make money and grow your grocery business.
For more information, please refer to: Sell Groceries Online and Grow your Business
Sell Grocery Online, Make Money and Grow your Business
Register on FREE Santhe Merchant App now!
