JUNE 15, 2020 FINANCIAL EXPRESS: Bengaluru-based Snapbizz has been a discovery enabler for local kirana stores for quite sometime now. The recent Covid-19 lockdown has now given the startup an opportunity to expand its footprint, all the while enabling the supply of groceries in a hyperlocal setup, ensuring people do not have to travel long distances and risk falling prey to the virus.

“During the last two months, many FMCG brands that supply kirana stores across the country have made use of our platform. We are also one of the largest repositories of FMCG data in the country and so a lot of big brands showed interest in us during the lockdown to reach out to the kirana stores,” says Prem Kumar, co-founder and CEO, Snapbizz. The firm has a network of over 8,000 kirana stores across seven major Indian cities, with over a billion dollars in business a year.

Snapbizz’s analytics platform helps brands assess which of their stock keeping units (SKUs) are performing well and helps them ensure smooth supply of those. The platform uses machine learning algorithm which analyses data collected on the platform and gives analytics for both the brands and the kirana store owners. The platform also brings together e-commerce players, fintech service providers and distributor network covering major stakeholders in the supply chain.

“We do not want to manage any inventory and begin our own e-commerce platform. We believe that ours is a value based model and so we want to be positioned in the centre of many stakeholders in the supply chain,” explains Kumar. All of the work that goes on the platform finally leads to bringing visibility to the kirana stores in various localities. Customers also get hyperlocal, targeted information of the items in the kirana stores in their locality.

Kumar says that the platform has grown to an extent where even the addition and modification of the new SKUs and categories are now automated via an engine, which sorts the catalog in the backend and makes it available in real time to all the stakeholders involved. “We do not charge our merchants and instead make money out of the ecosystem, especially through marketers. We are close to break-even today,” says Kumar.

Snappbizz is backed by Jungle Ventures, Taurus, Blume Ventures and strategic investors such as Nielsen, Qualcomm, AUO and Ratan Tata. So far it has raised over $12 million in seed and Series A funding rounds.