In this difficult situation of lockdown due to COVID-19, many online delivery and e-commerce companies have sourced out essential goods from neighbourhood stores or kirana stores and deliver them to households.
This has reiterated the belief of online delivery firms on kirana stores that they could be helped to innovate with technology solutions.
“We realized that technology and better logistics is something most offline shopkeepers can be equipped with. They need robust cataloguing, inventory, and order management system that is intelligent enough to figure out which stock-keeping unit (SKUs) they need, when, and in what quantity. This is important to maximize profits, prioritize orders, and help keep pilferage and wastage low," said Srinivas Mothey, Senior Vice President, Paytm Mall.
“A good back-end inventory management system logged seamlessly to an e-commerce platform will help offline stores get more orders and increase revenue," Mothey said.
Paytm Mall is aiming to strengthen kirana stores with a technology ecosystem for payments and logistics.
Swiggy, which has on-boarded several kiranas on its platform, has been adding features and training partner-store owners for post-lockdown activity. “We might add more features and equip store partners with a more sophisticated app. Mirroring the offline purchasing behaviour, we might urge users to move to alternative SKUs, if a product is running out. There might be technology integrations to let store owners know which products are running low and which are popular," said Swiggy’s Chief Operating Officer Vivek Sunder.
