Online Supermarket-5

Hey another rapid upcoming grocery store Storrz.

This is their description:
"We have come up with a concept of shopping groceries online through our product www.storrz.com where customers can shop their daily needs like vegetables, fruits etc online.We have introduced a very convenient payment option for the customers like swiping their credit/debit card and using Sodexho meal pass at the time of delivery .The option of swiping the Credit/Debit card on delivery is really appreciated by our customers in Bangalore. We have our own delivery team to deliver products across Bangalore.Storrz.com is currently limited to Bangalore only when it comes to perishable goods but provides 24 hour delivery across the country for other products. We have tied up with Blue dart to deliver our products across India."

A littl criticism
"Curious to know how Storrz intends to make itself sustainable? It operates on a two-part business model of commissions as well as targeted advertising based on user activity and profile data. Basic enough, and in line with general trends in the industry. But it may be a bit too eager on the commission front. 10-25% of the sale price, is its claim for success."

-Raghu

Online Supermarket - Part 4

Raghav, thanks for the posts.. It did throw some light on some of the questions I was pondering on..
Some points which I wanted to add just to extend my idea.. and a few questions which should be answered before we can even think of the feasibility of this stuff...
Website:
For sure there are enough web technologies in the world to get a nice user friendly site up.. which doesnt make you go multiple pages to even select one item.. I saw the site you mentioned.. I felt it was not very user friendly.. They used ASP.NET pages but nothing else...
We can make the website incorporating AJAX.. which is supported in .NET 3.5 framework.. I have been using AJAX at workplace for some of the online tools we have developed for our customer... Infact one of the applications is only a single page with multiple tabs and everything.. every query you make is an AJAX call.. and the user never sees a page reload..
We could remember a customer's previous month's order.. or let him set up a custom order.. and store it in a SQL database or something.. and we should assure them of security...
Logistics:
Since we cannot have transport at once to cover a complete city I believe it has to start off with some areas where it will click off the most.. the most affluent areas or areas with busy people.. like IT employees concentration... etc.. The main problem is how to deal with home deliveries... what sort of transportation facilities will be needed for delivery personnel to carry on with their work... and how to facilitate taking orders etc... this is one major concern as far as this idea goes.. and tops the list of expenditures.. and how many people to start off with?
Support:
Do we need support? Issues desk to resolve any issues reported by customers? Do we need it immediately or can put it on hold?
Advertisements:
How will people come to know of such a portal? What should be the advertisement strategy? Something as simple a pamphlets will do?
Tie-ups:
With what sort of retailers would you like tie-ups... Once this idea gets into their minds.. our portal is out of question.. they definitely have enough potential and resources to make a better one.. so competition.. but can we afford to buy all rations by ourselves before we can start off with the portal.. will people buy? And can we give them an advantage of choosing from multiple retailers...? Like buy Boost from Reliance, Coffee from Heritage and Surf from Food Bazaar.. (they may do this as the respective retailers might be providing these at lowest prices).. What sort of agreement if any should be maintained with the retailers..
Online Payment:
This is one thing which obviously is an issue.. tie up with a bank or anything like that is bound to take time.. and with so many banks around it much more tougher and can we rely on our personnel completely for taking payments from customers? Is it a safe bet.. One solution is tie up with an already existing portal like Paynet, which supports online payment from many banks..
Min number of items:
And yes we would definitely need to set a min amount for which door delivery will be provided.. obviously a customer cannot ask for a single matchbox on our website and we start delivering it..

These are some points I was pondering upon.. well guys let me know what are your views....

Whats the scope?

Just read the blog today and this seems interesting and congrats to Raghu for starting this.  

Saw some of the ideas posted here and firstly what I wanted to ask is,  what kind of users are going be the targets here? The regular PC users or mobile users or both? As we know, we are going to see some sweeping changes in the way mobiles phones are gonna be used in the next few years especially with the 4G network which Sprint is going to introduce soon in an year or so. And speaking about mobile technology, how about the idea of developing apps for iphones and pdas? Also,  mobile gaming is something which is becoming a universal craze day by day and is here to stay for long.  The gaming industry is only getting bigger and bigger. What do you think guys? 

Online Supermarket - Part 3

In the last couple of days, spoke to a few people who've got enough experience in this field.

Key corrections:

• The fickle nature of the prices and quality may not be a big problem, once u mention the price of each commodity in the website itself.

Potential glitch:

• You lose the key shopkeeper-customer relationship. Which some people have felt was the main reason why customers go to one store and not the other. May not be much of a problem in todays fast paced world. Amazon's success could be taken as an example. But again, is the majority of Indian population ready for it ? Again, do you want to focus on the majority of the population or just with the typcal employee aged 20-35 ? (Sorry, i've been spewing out all the doubts sprouting in my brain. )

Another add-on that i would add to this service is a ordering on phone. This would serve customers who use the computer as much. Maybe my mom n all the above 35 women. Very little additional burden to serve these customers.

Dudes, after a little research found out that an online grocery store already exists in Chennai. http://anytimegrocery.com/

Looks like it is in its growing phase.
What irritates me in its website is that, If i wanna buy flour, I need to navigate 3 pages with 4 clicks before i add the flour to my shopping cart. What makes better sense is very little bull crap about your firm. Focus on what the customer wants.
Give him what he wants in just 2 clicks.

Entrepreneurship Summit in Mumbai

For all the dudes, who are around bombay.. there is an entrepreneurship cell coming up on 7th Feb in Mumbai.

The Entrepreneurship Summit is a unique initiative by E-Cell, IIT Bombay which serves as a social forum for the Entrepreneurial Community. This year, the Summit aims at Empowering Entrepreneurs. Workshops at E-Summit 09 will emphasize on critical issues faced by entrepreneurs and start-ups at early stages of development and will be taken by the best in the biz!.

The website is http://esummit.ecell.in/

Online Supermarket -Part 2

Hey Rama,

Good idea on the online supermarket stuff. I was thinking about the same couple of days back. I'll blabber a little about it.

Opportunity:

1. The last 5 years has seen increasing number of professionals who are busy all week and weekends are too precious to waste time at grocery stores to pick up mundane stuff.
2. 80% of the grocery list is the same every month. Only 20% of the list changes a little.

3. The present gloomy market scenario is the best for anyone foraying into this business. Attitudes have gone back to the 1980's when saving for tomorrow has become the key again.
The mindset has changed to giving importance to value rather than luxury. This is exactly vice-versa to what existed 1 year ago, when luxury of shopping in an expensive supermarket was primary than value for money.

4. Another key advantage would be the low overhead costs. The model should be more in the lines of a warehouse. This can be accomodated in low rental area, coz the location will not be a key. You would just need a supervisor and some helpers to see that things are moving smoothly and of course a very well designed e-commerce portal.

Operational details:
My dad had a supermarket for around 15 years. There are two main categories in the items available:

• Branded stuff: Includes everything prepackaged like Soaps, Oil, Ready to cook food, biscuits, brooms, bulbs, etc. The margin provided by the companies to retailers is very very low around 3-5%.
  
• Unbranded stuff(Kirana): Includes dal, chawal, sugar and all kinds of grains, cereals and pulses. The margin is very high.
  

So Kirana stuff is the lifelinefor any supermarket. This is where your money lies. You need branded stuff also in your portfolio because a customer likes to shop for all his needs under one roof.

So the main glitch is that the prices and quality of kirana stuff change every week unlike branded items like soaps. It is not easy to maintain the same quality at the same price every week. The best quality sugar mayb at Rs.25/kg this week and the same quality maybe Rs.32/kg after 3 weeks.
But a typical customer like you, who observes the bill a little would find it glaringly inconsistent, if prices of stuff are so fickle.


..To be continued (need to talk to my dad about some doubts before I explain further)