Leaving others behind
Leaving others behind

Ambuj Jhunjhunwala, CEO & Founder, Mygrahak.com, points out the convenience factor that has made online shopping easier for consumers.

Aadeetya Sriram (AS): How did the model Mygrahak come into existence? What was the idea?

Ambuj Jhunjhunwala (AJ): During my previous experience in offline-retail, what we saw was that our intention, as a retailer, is always to move closer to the customer to understand his needs and ways to satisfy those needs while meeting your organisational goals. We realised that offline players are not able to satisfy those needs of the customer in time, which led us to constantly find newer ways. We launched a franchising model and various other models to move closer, but we saw that the limitation of physical space was constraining you to invest in customer needs, which is an integral aspect of your investment, which is recovered over a period of time. This made us realise that what a customer prefers is a one-stop shop for all his needs; secondly, the products offered should of high quality and available at a good price; finally, we realized that a customer should have the liberty of shopping at his/her convenience.  All this made us incline to the online platform and this way Mygrahak was formed.

AS: The e-grocery model is being adopted quite aggressively. What has contributed to the sudden demand?

 AJ: While the online platform is developing, I am a firm believer that channels don’t develop on their own. You need the organisation to come and create the development. If you ask me, consumers have been ready for not only 1 or 2 years but since the time the offline channel was formed, ie 5 to 8 years back. It is just the merchants who have never been ready, which is rapidly changing over the last 2 years, wherein merchants have started investing and understanding the potential of this business. This is clearly a product that meets the needs of the customer and it is a more advanced product than what the customer gets today. We keep adding up newer items at regular intervals to make sure that the customer feels comfortable on the platform with our services.

AS: What is your opinion on the e-grocery segment in general?

AJ: This is a very open segment, with very little competition. Certainly there have been a lot of new entrants into the segment in the past 6-8 months because the cost of entering e-commerce is negligible, but we’ve seen a few commercial players coming in and starting their own channel in the delivery and logistic network. This is a high-volume game, so you need to manage the volumes, which can be taken care of with in-house delivery fleet and supply-chain, which not many have felt the need to venture into, and this highlights the shortcomings of the e-commerce platform.

AS: Which region in the country are you catering to for the time being?

AJ: With our range of network and distribution services, we are primarily concentrating on the top 4 metros as of now, and in the meantime, slowly and gradually building the repertoire to cater to the lower 10 cities in the country. We’ve started with Delhi-NCR for perfecting our model, so that we have a better opportunity at operating elsewhere. Now that the customer patterns have been more or less understood, we hope to enter the other parts of the country by the end of this year. This preference is largely due to the dense population in metros, higher consumption trends and their need for convenience and one-stop solutions.   

AS: Please tell us about your various product offerings, something that differentiates you from the offline-model.

AJ: We are one of the few who offer Hagen Daz ice-cream, which is not easily available. Ice-cream is consumed on a monthly basis, but there is a large market for these. At Mygrahak, we offer our customers free home delivery of Hagen Daz ice creams across Delhi-NCR. Within the groceries segment, we have Gourmet groceries, which includes Thai paste. Then we have an organic range, where we offer pulses that are organic. We also offer muesli, which is not available easily. We are basically an agglomeration of all these retailers at one point, easing the shopping hassles of consumers.

AS: What trend have you seen from the customer and what is the average basket size daily for Mygrahak?

AJ: The average size of basket that we get on a daily basis is around Rs 1,500, but what we have seen is that the customer starts on the lower side, and then upscale over the next couple of months. We’ve enabled people to buy grocery online, which has resulted in the success of this concept. 

AS: How do you source your products from the vendors?

AJ:  We source the products from vendors directly, we warehouse the goods and then we distribute. Our vendor network comprises of 500. We have our own in-house logistic set-up that handles the warehousing and distribution of the stock. We also source from brands, which is again warehoused and distributed by us. Even on our last-mile logistic, there is no third-party involvement.

AS: What sort of marketing strategy have you adopted for Mygrahak? How essential is a platforms like Facebook for you?

AJ: We have actively been engaging ourselves in BTL initiatives, but we have not experimented much with the ATL activities. Over the next few months, we will be aggressively undertaking marketing operations. From the BTL perspective, we engage by connecting with residents’ welfare associations across Delhi. We’ve also tried radio; print is something in which we will involve ourselves in the near future. In terms of optimisation, we rely on the digital platform. Generating awareness through the likes of Facebook and Twitter has been our primary preference.

AS: How do you strategise the pricing of products?

AJ: Whenever you want to change a consumer habit, you need to give them an incentive, which is not only convenience and range of products but also pricing. Henceforth, we are priced lower than typical offline outlets. This has been possible because whatever we save on infrastructural costs, we pass that on to the customer in the form of discounts. 

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