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. 

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.

State of Grocery Home Delivery Report : India

As part of our constant endevour to understand the evolving trends & shopping behavior of grocery

consumers, AaramShop undertook an exhaustive research across 150 stores in the Delhi & NCR. The core objective was to understand the entire scope of "home delivery" within the FMCG segment and its current and future impact on brands. 

The research results are in and they indicate that Home Orders at the neighborhood retail stores are starting to become very significant indeed.  This, of course, has significant implications for brands from the following points:

a.    How to influence the customer when she is planning her monthly purchase

b.    How to influence her when she is placing the order

c.    How to influence her when she is getting the delivery

We found that 60% of the shops surveyed had more than 40% of their business coming from the Home Orders. Y-axis represents the % of business via home orders.

If you are interested to get hold of the full report, please send me an email or a tweet.

Related articles

• The changing profile of Indian retailers & AaramShop.
• Point of Sale has moved - from the store to the consumers' home.
• Mobile Disrupting Path to Purchase.
• Simplified Online Plan for FMCG brands in India.

Prof Rajiv Lal on retailing in India.

Came across Prof. Rajiv Lal's interview in the recent Forbes and this brief interview with Mint. His views echo our business premise and his jargon-less logic is superb especially on food retail.