CIOIN

In recent years, the traditional kirana store has been losing some of its business to large retail formats. While these huge retailers have taken to technology, kiranawalas have remained largely backward in their methods and operations.

AaramShop wants to change that. AaramShop is a hybrid, online retail platform designed for sales and marketing of FMCG/CPG (consumer packaged) goods that bridges the strength of kiranawalas with the power of the Web.

“We realized that local neighborhood retailers already have existing distribution channels but these small stores owners didn’t have an online storefront--and that’s where today’s consumers are,” says Vijay Singh, MD and CEO, AaramShop.  “That’s why we are leveraging technology and the kiranawalas’ existing inventory and distribution channels to connect them to a set of consumers who are low on time and high on stress.”

Currently, customers can choose from over 32 categories of products from over 100 companies on the AaramShop website. Items are added to a shopping basket, after which customers can choose from a list of AaramShop kiranas closest to their residence and a preferred time for delivery.

An application built in-house by the AaramShop’s IT team shoots an SMS and an e-mail to a store owner with the details of the order, order value, and preferred time of delivery. A confirmation e-mail and SMS is sent to the customer confirming the order simultaneously.

“These neighborhood stores savor long-term relationships with their customers, hence it’s easier and less time-consuming to get an item changed or replaced if a customer is not happy with it,” says Singh.

The website, currently in beta allows cash-on-delivery as the only mode of payment. “Interoperability between online and offline is easier with cash-on-delivery. If a customer orders for 20 items and the retailer has 19 of them, refunds with an online payment model for so many transactions can become troublesome,” explains Singhn. “However, we are planning to add online payments options soon, in view of customer convenience.”

AaramShop started in April 2011 with around 145 AaramShops in Delhi and NCR and has added 20 retailers in Bengaluru as of now. The company plans to move into Mumbai by the end of September and says it will expand it’s presence to the top 15 cities (state capitals and metropolitans) with 2,000 retailers by the end of 2011.

“A cloud-based environment and incessant in-house development of applications makes our systems capable and scalable enough to handle rapid growth,” says Ritesh Raj Gupta, VP-Technology, AaramShop.

AaramShop is widely using the benefits of social media and plans to launch a mobile apps version soon which will allow customers to shop from their mobile phones. “The AaramShop Facebook application is completely integrated with the AaramShop back-end systems. Hence customers are not redirected to another page and can shop directly by logging in to Facebook,” says Gupta.

Gupta plans to make AaramShop an Open Source platform where developers can contribute to make the AaramShop applications compatible with the various OSes, multiple versions, display formats, and screen sizes, etcetera.

AaramShop is also targeting FMCG companies with aaramshoppro.com which helps them figure out how they can market their goods on the website--and how well their brand is doing using analytics and customer feedback.

AaramShop is pushing to take advantage of its first-mover lead. Although, there are others in its space--ChennaiOnlineGrocery.com and Infibeam’s Grocery Section--these are limited to geographic areas or only offer limited items.