New-age kirana stores being upgraded to offer supermarket experience

New age kirana shop-owners are fast remodelling their stores to the modern trade store format to give consumers a similar experience of that in supermarkets. While supermarket chains witnessed challenging times during the pandemic waves, the neighbourhood standalone modern trade stores thrived. According to a study by Bizom, a retail intelligence platform, India now has over 2 lakh standalone modern trade stores and the segment has been clocking sales growth in double digits.

With large number of supermarkets, also known as modern trade store chains, located in malls, they faced restrictions during the two pandemic waves. Also consumers are being more cautious of stepping into large-format stores where there could be possibility of crowding. “We are seeing the evolution of a new class of stores across India, one that lets customers choose their favourite product from shelves arranged in an aisle shopping format with a modern trade like checkout experience. This is the emergence of standalone modern trade stores also known as open format outlets. These standalone stores are also scaling up rapidly in smaller towns and rural region,” said Akshay D’Souza, Chief Marketing Officer, Bizom.

Growth of 14 per cent

As per Bizom, in March 2021, sales growth of standalone modern store segment was up 13.9 per cent compared to same month last year. Contribution by rural India to standalone modern trade store segment is pegged at 42 per cent.

The Bizom report stated that the emergence of these new class of stores can be attributed to successful kirana owners or their second generation investing to upgrade their stores to offer better shopping experience, among other factors. “The value proposition of these stores is that they sit neatly between the choice offered by an organized modern trade chain and the service offered by the local kirana store, thus providing customers the best of both worlds. We do see this evolving to be the new face of modern trade in India as margins are better than kirana store format and brands are jumping in to offer strong schemes and promotions to get customer attention to such stores,” D’Souza pointed out.

Also read: Kirana partners register 30% increase in monthly delivery income: Flipkart

Panaji, Pune, Pondicherry, Thiruvanthapuram, Chandigarh, Ahmednagar, Bangalore, Mangalore, Bilaspur and Bijapur are among the top ten cities with the highest density of standalone modern trade stores in the country.

“Goa tops the charts and it's only natural that India's favourite tourist destination evolves at a fast pace. Maharashtra, which is among India’s traditionally biggest kirana markets, is transforming fast. It has 3 cities in the top 10 where there is a high density of standalone modern trade stores emerging while Karnataka has 2 cities in this list,” the Bizom report added.

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