Ahmedabad IIM sets up retail tech consortium with Flipkart and other partners

Flipkart has joined as a principal partner for the inaugural year of the consortium, bringing to the table its industry knowledge, experience and consumer insights into the internet ecosystem.

This consortium would bring to the fore unbiased voices of customers on the digitisation of retail to help retailers understand their consumers better.

Speaking about the need for setting up the consortium, Pankaj Setia, chairperson of the centre, said, “Through this collaboration, we aim to initiate cutting-edge research on issues the retail sector is facing, gather insights and facilitate knowledge sharing to help retailers across the industry meet current demands. We identify this as an urgent need as retailers need to quickly react to the constantly changing preferences of customers and the advent of new technological innovations.”

“Managing inventories, labour shortages, supply-chain logistics, and adhering to sustainable practices are a few other challenges that most online sellers are facing. The Centre for Digital Transformation will create and share insights gathered through research that can enable the development of solutions by partners across the board,” he added.

In the past two years of the pandemic, the retail sector has undergone massive adaptation. The digitisation of retail has happened at a fast pace and affected both online and traditional retailers.

The consortium will hold nationwide consumer surveys, prepare case studies, conduct field experiments and undertake research studies, and organise retail tech webinars and conferences.

A statement from the centre said such interventions would not only allow a “healthy cross-pollination” of ideas and imparting of knowledge among companies and industries but also help create “open-data sources to enable learning across consumer cohorts with respect to their habits, usage, triggers and barriers”.

Jeyandran Venugopal, chief product and technology officer at Flipkart, said, “The modern retail ecosystem in India has accelerated at an unprecedented speed over the past several years driven by rapid digital adoption. With fast-changing consumer preferences and needs, the only way for brands to thrive in this dynamic market is to capitalise on the power of technology.”

“Through our collaboration with IIMA and insights gathered from the consumer survey, we intend to identify opportunities and create forums for knowledge sharing, research and training that will help transform the retail ecosystem to drive greater value for kiranas, retailers and customers,” he said.

The centre was inaugurated last year to focus on activities “that enhance an understanding of the digital ecosystem and catalyse leadership, as it leverages its expertise in research and development to provide thought leadership for digital transformation”.