The Murugappa group is keen to give a thrust to rural retail. The group started the rural retail business three years ago and it is today profitable with a turnover of Rs 1,300 crore.

Murugappa group runs 700 retail stores across rural Andhra Pradesh (branded Mana Gromor) and Karnataka (Namma Gromor). Plans are on to expand into Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. The target is to have 1,000 rural retail stores.

What began as centres for soil and farmer education has today diversified into selling urea, pesticides, seeds, micronutrients, sulphur, boron, zinc, farm merchanisation services, crop and weather insurance. They have now started selling organic manure and cattle feed.

“When we started the rural retail stores, there was no prescribed model; we made our own model. Today on paper, we have more retail space than Pantaloon,” says Mr A. Vellayan, Chairman. Most stores span an area of 2,500 sq ft; while some as big as 5,000 sq ft. Each store has about 5,000 farmer members.

Murugappa has tied up with banks for loans. Farmer members are give them kisan cards loaded with some amount of money and part of that to be spent in the store, while the rest can spent elsewhere.

Down the line, the group tried selling lifestyle products like FMCG and garments across 100 stores. But that did not work as the group realised that the farmer coming to these stores was “serious about farm input” and not looking for lifestyle products.

“We want our rural retail stores to have everything that is input for the farmer,” says Mr Vellayan. There is a vested interest in this, he adds. “We are helping the farmer mechanise and become more productive – as this will help us sell more.”

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