PANJIM: An area sales manager in retail jewellery in Panjim, Supreetha V Sombhotla believes in using technology for her convenience, even for grocery shopping.
“Technology is such a boon. It is meant to save our time and provide more information at a short time. I use it to purchase my groceries and use my laptop to place my order with certainty and trust that a good quality product will be delivered at my door step at my convenient time. I save on time, fuel and hassles and can spend quality time with family.”
Gaganpreet Kaur a homemaker and former teacher from Taleigao is of the belief that we tend to get a better product if it is home delivered. “I get better product and I save on impulse buying too. I do not have to bother about parking woes in the market area. It is convenient, clean, easy and timely.”
With advent of new technology, the trend on shopping in Goa, is gradually shifting from the conventional touch and feel buying, to purchasing items purely based on element of trust. This is evident when we see that online buying while availing the facility of home delivery is growing.
Be it youngsters or even senior citizens, all need comfort and time for themselves and they would rather avoid wasting time in queuing up at parking slots at various malls or shops and then at the check out counter.
Goans are frequently using their laptops and mobile to purchase items ranging from groceries, vegetables, meat products and even cosmetics.
In Goa, at least two such big service providers are doing this business to meet the demands of this section of the society. While one is operational only on web orders like Urban Ration, the other, Delivery Corner is a mobile-based service provider. However, Delivery Corner is also launching its website very soon.
Proprietor of Delivery Corner, Vijay Pal, who was initially a store manager for Vishal Megamart in Goa took up the challenge and started this business of home delivery early. Delivery Corner with a tagline ‘Daily Fresh’ was launched in August 2011 with an initial seed capital of Rs five lakh and now with March closing in 2015 the turnover has touched Rs five crore. Now they have four shops in Taleigao, St Inez, Carenzalem and the latest one being at Miramar which was launched in May this year.
“We have our valued customer base of over 2000 in Panjim area alone. We are now searching for channel partners who can take up franchise and spread all over Goa. We are also launching our website (www.deliverycorner.com) soon. The majority of our business is done through mobile. Our growth is more than 100 per cent in the last four years. We ensure that our customer is absolutely satisfied with perishable or non-perishable goods. We even take the goods back if the customer is not satisfied with our supply. We want to expand our business and we want to take up supplies of fresh uncooked non-veg products too in the next six month,” said Mr Pal.
However, he was miffed that the banks are not liberal enough in Goa to offer loans to any such start-up endeavours. “I have to save money from our profit to reinvest in our business and this is very time consuming. Our other challenge is shortage of quality manpower, but we are working on it,” said Mr Pal.
Director of Urban Ration, Tejpal Singh says that he left his comfortable job in the real estate sector in Mumbai after his wife Susheela Nayak got inspired by ‘Big Basket’ of Bangaluru.
Both decided to open Urban Ration in Goa and it was finally launched in October 2013 with a seed capital of Rs 50 lakh and four member team with about 2000 products on their website to begin with. The business model is based on inventory model and claims that “we are the first to introduce in India the same day delivery pan Goa.”
They deliver to their customers in two time slots – 1 to 4 pm and 6 to 9 pm on a daily basis. This slot has been kept flexible for Panjim.
Urban Ration has grown over the years both in North as well as South Goa and they now have a strength of 20 employees.
“Our biggest advantage is that we were the first online supermarket in Goa and our establishment expenditure is low as we do not have shops and we operate from our warehouse at Carenzalem where storage and packaging is done. We now have about 5500 variants with 3000 products in 20 categories in our website www.urbanration.com. We are now working on launching a mobile app very soon,” said Mr Singh. He added that the advantage of having a web portal is that people can login in anytime of the day or night and order.
“We have a satisfied loyal customer base of over 2500 people in Goa with an average basket size of over Rs 2500. We do not ask any question if a product has to be returned or exchanged by our customers. For the satisfaction of our customers we accept payments through COD, netbanking, credit and debit cards and if asked for, we send card swiping machines at home with the delivery. Interestingly for our customer comfort we have also done habit analysis,” said Mr Singh.
Most of the customers for Urban Ration are either expats from foreign countries or people settling in Goa from metro cities like Delhi, Mumbai etc.
