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Within days of retail giants Reliance Industries and Amazon India announcing their intent to accelerate their plans of onboarding local retailers and grocers, a group of retail traders has announced a tie-up with the Centre to launch a national e-commerce marketplace, which will help small retailers across the country take orders online.
The DPIIT has joined hands with CAIT for development of this platform, which, according to sources, is expected to be launched in a staggered manner starting early next week. “This is an initiative to help kirana shops and the customers connect with each other in tier-II and tier-III towns, where they face issues of connectivity and supply chain,” a senior government official said.
The DPIIT is facilitating the conception and designing of the portal through its Startup India wing. CAIT general secretary Praveen Khandelwal told The Indian Express that pilots have already been done across the country and tests have been conducted from the customer level to retailer and up to the level of distributors.
“This vast, and purely Indian, e-commerce portal will make all efforts to onboard about 7 crore traders of the country. Manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers of all verticals of domestic trade and consumers will be an integral part of this e-commerce platform,” Khandelwal said.
CAIT, which has traditionally opposed business practices of online retail majors such as Amazon and Flipkart, is leading the project.
“There is a mandate from the Government to ensure adequate supply of essential goods to consumers during the lockdown period due to the COVID-19 situation. The Government has also instructed pharmacy and grocery stores to remain open through the lockdown period and to provide home delivery of essential food supplies and medicines. With the current crisis, the population in the Tier 2 and 3 cities of India that were highly dependent on these Kirana stores for their daily supplies are now facing challenges,” the Startup India webpage for the ‘Kirana e-Supply’ project says.
“To solve the challenge of providing essential goods to the Indian citizens during the COVID-19 situation, the Department for Promotion of Industry & Internal Trade (DPIIT) along with the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) is synergising the efforts of various companies and startups working in supply chain to help the local Kirana stores take orders online and ensure last mile contactless delivery,” it adds.
The launch of the national e-commerce marketplace will come at a time when online grocers are overburdened with orders from customers staying at home during the countrywide lockdown announced by the Centre to contain the Covid-19 outbreak.
Additionally, several in the non-essentials or food delivery space like Flipkart, Zomato, Swiggy have also entered the grocery segment to cater to the explosion in demand for essentials.
Subsequently, this rise in demand has made companies move fast towards adopting e-commerce or expanding their existing projects.
On Wednesday, Reliance Retail and Jio Platforms announced an arrangement with WhatsApp, concurrent to the messaging app’s owner Facebook’s 9.99 per cent stake purchase in Jio Platforms for $5.7 billion, which will see Reliance’s new commerce venture Jio Mart leverage the 400 million-wide user base of WhatsApp to onboard 3 crore Kirana shops on Jio Mart.
On Thursday, online retailer Amazon India announced a Rs 10-crore investment in its ‘Local Shops on Amazon’ project, aimed at enabling local shops and retailers to sell their products online.
Experts say onboarding unorganised mom-and-pop stores is the next avenue of growth for online platforms, which contribute less than 5 per cent to India’s retail pie. “Compared to other retail segments, food and grocery would have the least impact as it falls under essential category. Moreover, post the lockdown, this segment is expected to take the centre-stage as the demand for non-essentials shall take a longer time to pick up,” CARE Ratings said in a research note.
