Driving technology adoption among Kirana Stores

In the YourStory article titled “How to build for the Indian B2B retailer”, Udaan’s Abhilash Pillai has highlighted the key learnings on building B2B products for Kirana stores and more importantly, making these stores to adopt the technology.

There are a few learnings that we would like to share while we were closely working with Kirana stores for the adoption of SnapBizz solutions in their stores:

  1. Trusted partners and sustainable metrics: The right way to get stickiness of the technology among these stores is to be a trusted supply chain partner and not a seller of line items. This can only be achieved by understanding the dynamics/data of the store. It is not just about what you sell to the store but also about what you don’t sell to the store ie. it is about the value you add to the retailer beyond discounts and working capital requirements. It is imperative to have sustainable unit metrics in order to work effectively with these stores and increase the share of wallet/line-ups bought/frequency of purchase
  2. Change in retailer focus: The need for a good supply chain partner is more important than ever before. The biggest behavioral change that we see in a retailer today (given the change in landscape and competition) is that he wants to spend 90% of his time optimising the demand side and acquiring/managing his customer better. Few years back, he would spend 90 percent of the time on the supply side of the business and optimising his transactions with his suppliers.
  3. Supply-side trends: The supply side opportunity lies primarily in the smaller stores which are underserviced by distributors. However, in all this play, what has been probably discounted is the thinking of the FMCG marketers. They play an important role in the FMCG ecosystem and their perspective on all that is happening in B2B space is yet to be played out. The network of FMCG distributors is a competitive edge of major FMCG players in India. Besides, only 15%-20% of the SKUs of these players enjoy great pull and velocity and it is these distributors who ensure that the rest of the SKUs reach the shelf. Therefore, any material disruption of the current supply chain will not be encouraged by the major players on a sustained basis. These major players understand that consolidation will only drive their gross margins south. 

With our learnings gained and implemented over the past few years, we at SnapBizz, have been able to build a solution that understands the store in totality, optimises the demand and supply-side of the retailer and becomes the retailer’s trusted partner. By partnering with SnapBizz, the eB2B supply players can increase the adoption of the offerings among the Kirana store owners and become their trusted supply partner.