Buy Now Pay Later - demonitization special

Demonetization led to neighbourhood retailers, especially grocery stores, been adversely effected as business volumes dipped due to lack of availability of loose cash and the mindset amongst consumers to hold on to their low denomination currently.

However, rather than getting pulled down by that, we worked with our partner retailers to ensure they leverage their years of relationships & trust within their community. 

We have enabled a great feature on our mobile apps for our partner retailers keeping in mind the scarcity of monies on account of demonitization. 

Our retailers can now extend informal credit to their known consumers, using our merchant app (AaramOn). The retailer himself decides the amount of credit extended and it’s duration. AaramShop communicates the info of the credit amount etc seamlessly to the customers. 

This informal credit line means that the consumers can shop for the daily needs without needing to worry about cash in hand. The shopping can be done not just on the app and the website, but also in-store. The customers can pay at the end of the credit term, using cards, JioMoney, cheque or even cash.

AaramShop has extended this service to all retailers at zero cost to them and their customers. This is to ensure that the pain demonitization is eased by the years of relationship and trust between the retailers and their customers. 

Mobile Coupons Drive Traffic to the small retailers.

The independent retailers have had a drawback. Their marketing efforts lacked teeth. Unlike the large format stores, the neighborhood based independent stores have been unable to undertake precise and results oriented marketing. 

Mobile Coupons are known to drive consumer engagement and usage, but their usage has traditionally been limited larger establishments with well defined CRM practices. 

AaramShop has finally brought forth a solution that combines the power of mobile coupons with the ease of use and flexibility. A solution which is custom designed for small retailers and their specific requirements.

Our coupon solution helps the retailers drive:

1. increased awareness among the shoppers in the neighborhood.

2. sales of specific product lines or bill cuts of higher value.

3. increased footfalls and orders. 

And all with the flexibility of using our free merchant solutions on the app, cloud or in-store - AaramOn

Blurring the offline online divide.

 

The more I interact with our partner retailers (and potential partners), the more convinced I am, that the advantages enjoyed by the offline neighborhood retailers - that of close proximity to the consumers, perfect mix of assortment & pricing, low cost delivery model and ownership of real estate; when integrated with the opportunities offered by the digital mediums, makes for a perfect commerce model. 

More so in the grocery and personal care domain. 

Neighborhood based commerce needs to be hybrid in nature, and enabled on all possible touch-points for the consumers. 

Hybrid Retail is what we at AaramShop have enabled for thousands of independent retailers - wherein we help them not just with relevant in-store technology, but seamlessly help take their inventories online via smart web-stores and mobile apps and supported by unique assisted shopping for customers. 

To learn more, please visit www.aaramon.com or write to me. 

AaramOn POS Solution - going beyond "billing @ store"

AaramOn is a technology innovation for retailers of all sizes, but speciaclally designed keeping in view the business needs of the independent retailers, and ensures they can use it as a dependable tool to grow their business. Retailers use AaramOn as a mainstream and modern alternative to traditional POS terminals which have been designed to address the single issue of “billing @ store”, and are expensive to implement. 

AaramOn supports multi-device integration.

Business demands are more complex and are ever evolving. AaramOn has been built with the smart phone at its core and hence it ensures full integration on the AaramOn app, enabling the business manager to have all relevant business indicators available to him at all times. It further integrates web & app based orders, tracks the entire delivery and payment process. It comes bundled with CRM and store-market on the finger tips, while at the same time it also does the “billing @ store”.

AaramOn POS has been designed in a way that it can either operate on the cloud or in the unforeseen event where the network connectivity between the POS and cloud breaks, AaramOn with its native database ensures business continuity. The application, which supports both windows and android OS, allows the retailer to continue business as usual and ensures data integrity when the connection is restored. Give it a try here.

Shopping Bag Analytics - on steroids.

Beta testing AaramShop's new Analytics Engine. 

This is the 1st look into product category intelligence based on the content of the shopping bags. Objective is to understand purchase patterns on which products categories are most likely to get into shopping bags together. 

More updates soon.

Since the video is low res, have added a couple of screen shots as references.

Fig 1 : Soaps and Sanitizers.

Fig 2 : Cereals and Breakfast

Fig 1 is the % of other categories which get into the shoppers bag, when products in the "soaps and sanitizers" category are bought. 25% of the shopping bags also contain "hair care and styling aids" products. 

Fig 2 on the other hand is about buying behavior around Cereals and Breakfast and I am curious about the 37% buyers also buying into the Skin Care category. :-) 

Do share your views with me. 

Punctuating the shoppers' phone based journey.

The growth in the Home Order segment has significant implications for brands.

Most current in-store marketing strategies are primarily focused on influencing the customers @ the store, however, with the customer reducing her visits to the store, and Home-Order segment increasing rapidly, brands might miss out on this large section of busy-consumers.

Research undertaken by AaramShop indicates that almost 50% of FMCG shopping in urban India happens on the phone.

AaramShop has innovated to punctuate the consumer's phone based order journey at over 10000 partner AaramShops, with relevant brands in order to make a more informed shopping decision.

Thus, by intercepting phone orders, AaramOncall enables brands tap this increasing segment directing the brand message straight into the households.

Know more here

General Trade & its evolution - our take on it.

General Trade in India (and a number of other emerging economies) continues to be at the forefront of the grocery business, with as much as 90% of the business flowing thru them. 

AaramOn - blurring the difference.

However, the very nature of the general trade is rapidly changing with outlets adopting the modern business methods, be it store design, self-service, methods of stocking etc, while at the same time continuing to service their consumers with finer aspects like quick service etc. 

The change is gradual, but given the huge numbers ... even when a small percentage of 13 million retailers upgrade the impact is significant. 

Our experience at AaramShop, makes us believe that biggest change would be in the way the retailers adopt to technology in the next 1 to 2 years, and the technology that would lead would be mobile based and will help the local retailer connect with his local consumer, with ease and effectiveness. 

With this increased adoption to technology, the difference between "modern" and "general" trade seems to blur out.

The retailers now have access to an awesome solution in the form of AaramOn to get digital in a meaningful manner.