Update (19/12/2011) – A PR communication from the Startup says that although the founder’s family owns the retail chain mentioned below, the startup itself has no association with the retail chain. The website earlier reflected an association but now does not.
MyGrahak is an online grocery store from Rei Six Ten Retail Ltd., a retail chain network of about 350 stores in the NCR, Punjab, Baddi and Nagpur. This is one of the first attempts from a retail grocery giant to enter the online space and leverage their existing network of offline stores.
MyGrahak covers the basic FMCG categories of food, non-food and grocery. The delivery is currently offered in Delhi-NCR only. The site comes with the regular frills of an online store, viz. discount on all product (min. 4%), 48hrs delivery, CoD, customer support etc.. The portal boasts of 7000+ products.
Though the UI has been worked upon a little but it still needs some basic features like filter/narrow-down, a less cluttered shopping cart view and maybe the team would like to re-look at color combo on the site.
This move is seriously appreciable and will open up competition from more retail chains attempting to leverage the online space.
From what we realised through their pitch, they seem to lack a product guy in their team, somebody who ‘understands’ online. Sending pitches from a personal email ID of a marketing manager may not be a good sign. Spelling mistakes in the first line of press release is a serious no, especially if we are talking about a Rs.357Cr. market cap. company talking about their initiatives. We actually had to figure out that it is from a retail giant. Though, we still like the fact that it did not come from a PR agency but somebody from the team itself.
eCommerce in India is widening itself to include everything possible. Though most known eCommerce companies have stuck to selling standard electronic products online but there is some bit of interest in selling stuff which the regular early adopter of everything-web may not be the best target audience for. Once a while we hear about some startup attempting to take this route but no interesting story so far.
We haven’t had any move from big players like Spencer’s, Reliance Fresh etc. India’s biggest retail network, Future Group has a strong online presence but hasn’t explored selling grocery yet.
What do you think about this market? Can a startup play this game?
Do try out MyGrahak and share your views.
PS: If you come to think of it, isn’t MyGrahak a B2B name? More apt for a retail PoS/CRM tool?
[Naman is a startup enthusiast and has worked with couple of Indian startups as Product Manager. He is the founder of FindYogi]
