By Manu Sharma
One of the recent startup entrant’s in
the online grocery space -- Zopnow -- believes that technology is the way
forward and so along with their self-developed robust platform are also exploring
the supply chain, retail and Omni-channel (SCRO) solutions as they diversify
into apparels and fashion garments.
Technology Essential
for Seamless Connection
On the technology
front. Zopnow has already developed its own platform across various devices
like mobile, app and website. So technology enables the insight of the inventory
of all the outlets - Hypercity and More -stores across the five cities. IT also
helps acquire customers and route their deliveries within the shortest time. However,
seamless
connection in today's digital age is still a concern and so is the need to
reduce costs, increase profitability and improve collaboration & deliver on
the customer promises every time.
Scaling Up the IT Infra Critical
Addressing the gathering of the 9th Edition of Supply Chain
Practitioners’ Council held recently at the JDA Software campus in Bengaluru,
Mukesh Singh, CEO of Zopnow says, “Time and delivery are critical components in
our business and so have developed our own open source platform and the website
has been developed using php and Java. So today we have a team of IT staff who
manage and maintain the services. But as we move forward need to scale up our
network and security is essential for the company. As an entrepreneur, we are definitely interested in new and innovative SCM technologies.”
Healthy
Margins for Apparels & Fashion Brands
As per industry reports the
online retail segment is expected to turn into a $2.8-billion industry by 2016.
Lately India is indeed seeing a flourishing online
market for apparel & fashion brands,
which offers e-tailers a healthy margin of 30-40%. On the other hand, e-grocery
gets them a margin of 10-12%.
Diversify Next Step Forward
for the Business
Presently, Zopnow has an exclusive agreement with two of India’s
largest grocery chains – K Raheja Corp group’s ‘Hypercity’ and Aditya Birla Retail’s ‘More’
to deliver groceries across cities like Bangalore,
Pune, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Gurgaon. Zopnow also plans to expand into other
major cities in the coming months.
“Now that it has been three years since we
have entered into groceries, we have decided to diversify into apparels and fashion
garments. We have a technology tie-up with Hypercity and More, wherein we have
access to their inventory and also physical access to their chain of stores
across the country,” remarks Singh and adds, “we believe many customers already
appreciate our quick delivery, access to inventory and delivery network. We
definitely want to diversify and there is no doubt on that as it is the next
step forward for the business. We in talks with leading retail chains including
-- Pantaloon, Reliance Retail and also K Raheja.”
Earlier Model Not
Viable
In the beginning, Zopnow had come out
with the warehouse model with partnership with MNCs like HLL, P&G till 2014
to run their operations. Since then they have shut down on the warehouse model
and now station their staff at the physical stores.
Retail Solution
Success Story
Shoppers Stop, another
leading Indian branded store have scaled up from one format and one company to five
companies, eight format and 200+ stores. Initially, when they had about five
stores they looked for ERP solutions to scale up and that’s where JDA Software
came in. Today, the retailer has over 200 stores and since it difficult to track
all its customers' and so they needed a proper system & process in place and
the backbone was JDA’s Merchandise
Management System (MMS). Today the firm is very profitable due to
the availability of merchandise across stores and have gained from optimized
inventory and also replenish orders.