Kerala State Beverages Corporation (Bevco), the state-owned liquor monopoly, intends to open self-service shops for all brands in the state shortly.

Yogesh Gupta, Chairman and Managing Director, Bevco, told BusinessLine here that lack of hands to man counters for premium brands has come in the way of opening new counters. It will instead opt for the self- service shop model along with the existing outlets. Such a model may also help reduce unnecessary crowding at the outlets.

Initially, there will be one or two self-service outlets in Thiruvananthapuram, which would be later expanded to other regions. Liquor companies will be allowed to display their products right up in the front rake for a fee. All these shops will also be provided with swiping machines to enhance digital payments, Gupta said.

The company plans to minimise cash transactions both in shops and warehouses. Plans are also afoot to start online payment by linking the stock to the company's website.

Asked on the plans to start online sales of liquor, Gupta said, "We are in the process of implementing an ERP by integrating sales with accounts that allows auto reconciliation of sales collections. The minute we link our stocks to the website, we will be in a position to start online sales. We are designing a software for online sales with ERP in the background."

Bevco posted a sales turnover of ₹ 13,195 crore in the last financial year ending March 31 against the previous year’s figures of ₹ 14,672 crore. The Covid lockdown has affected sales in the initial two months of the previous fiscal, impacting turnover. However, business started picking up later and the month of March this year recorded the highest sales of ₹ 1,500 crore.

Bevco proposes to convert all shops and warehouses into profit centres by allowing each shop and warehouse to prepare individual profit and loss statement, says Gupta. The financial performance will be evaluated accordingly, and incentives provided to shops showing good performance.

A level playing field will be provided to suppliers by further streamlining the purchase system which will be based on the 'Economic Order Quantity' concept. More godowns will be hired to provide optimum utlisation of storage space. To plug all leakages, live accounting of transactions will be implemented.

The company plans to implement e-labelling since physical sticking of security labels is proving a major impediment in seamless movement of stock. Barcoding or QR code scanning will ensure proper tracking of stock and prevent illegal sales and also ensure quicker loading and unloading as also issue of stocks, Gupta added.

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