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A paradigm shift is taking place in the retail space and Ravi Chaudhary has made sure that he hasn’t missed it. His Gurgaon-based grocery store Milano Mart has seen its sales increase by 20 per cent in three months of partnering with two start-ups – PepperTap and Grofers.
In the next 12 months, adds Chaudhary, about 40 per cent of the sales will come from online orders that it gets through the online grocery delivery apps. “There is a paradigm shift happening. In the grocery space there is danger of being wiped out if owners do not focus on the online channel seriously. It is a win-win situation for the store as well as the online delivery companies,” he says.
Chaudhary’s family owns two stores in Delhi. He opened Milano Mart about a year ago. But he was able to attract consumers only in the immediate neighbourhood. That has now changed. “I think we are delivering to a much larger radius around the store after we have partnered with online grocery delivery companies like PepperTap,” he says.
Expanding presencePepperTap kick-started operations in November, 2014. The Gurgaon-based hyper local grocery service offers delivery within two hours. In two months, the start-up has expanded to cover the Delhi-NCR region and other cities such as Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai. Navneet Singh, CEO and co-founder of PepperTap claims that the company is assisting over 300 retailers in these cities. “We expect to expand to 30 cities by the end of 2015,” says Singh. PepperTap, which connects the neighbourhood grocery store to the nearby customers, earns a commission on every transaction.
The company does not have its own inventory. It hires and trains manpower, which is deployed at ‘partner stores’ in each location. These people get the orders on their mobile devices, collect the supplies from the partner stores and deliver to the consumers.
“Some of the stores working with us have seen their revenues increase by nearly two and half times after they decided to partner with us,” says Singh. He adds that delivering groceries within two hours is a unique proposition that PepperTap offers. Ravi Chaudhary would agree.
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