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Offline Store Aggregator O2Onow Aims To Be The Justdial For Kirana Stores




Offline Store Aggregator O2Onow Aims To Be The Justdial For Kirana Stores

India has an predicted 12 Mn Kirana stores. But the online visibility of those hundreds of thousands of stores has no longer been as top-rated as its think to be considering their vastness in presence and variety.But now not goodbye returned, the mother-and-pop neighbourhood grocery stores or what they're generally known as i.E. Kirana shops evolved from being simply the 2-minute-away answers for all gharwale wishes to being crucial entities to the ecommerce giants as they also started out to apply kirana stores as Intel to reach their nearby clients.

Amazon India did it, so did Myntra whilst it launched its MENSA Network. The country’s ubiquitous network of kirana shops become abruptly up for grabs by FMCG groups, Reliance Jio, and many others. This turned into the start of micro-control of save clusters.

But, the idea of these commercial enterprise possibilities changed into laid on the requirements of the ecommerce industry and people possibilities did now not always remedy the bigger difficulty of how the kirana shops can be found.

Interestingly, startups are coming to the leading edge to address this issue prematurely, exploiting technological way to permit kirana shops to be involved with the means of cutting-edge buying and selling. One such startup is O2Onow which Inc42 determined in the course of its 8-metropolis event series BIGShift, organised in affiliation with Amazon India.

Launched in September 2017 by means of Manoj Gaddam, Aradhana Kamidi, and Vikas Syam Navur, O2Onow is a smart-city spinoff mobile app geared toward enriching the shopping enjoy of customers in tier I and tier II towns.

With a group of 13 human beings, the Hyderabad-based startup features as an offline store aggregator and a virtual advertising platform for MSMEs anticipated closer to transforming mother-and-pop stores to a bricks-and-clicks version. It is inherently cashing upon the primary aspect which has also majorly been a hurdle for the Indian customers to save on line – the ‘Trust’ element.

On O2Onow, a consumer has an choice to browse the available offers on her close by keep and either pay on line or discover the physical buy enjoy herself. The small stores, however, are enticed with the vision to growth their attain in their neighbourhood community in addition to the possibilities of increasing their income and dominance within the community market.

Although save locators as a way of adding convenience to the quick-paced urban life-style are nothing new. There are big players within the ring already; names like JustDial, Indiamart, Nowfloats, Paytm Mall, and so forth. Might strike familiarity with us. Despite the presence of the eminent groups, O2Onow has retained the pitch and is playing shot after shot.

Digitising Kirana Stores The O2Onow Way

An concept can trade the world. Or so it is stated. But with O2Onow, it modified the manner kirana stores are used and perceived in Hyderabad.

The concept to broaden a digital platform to go looking neighborhood stores struck Manoj when he become searching for a few nearby shops and their offers on-line however he could not discover any. Since he could not find a web way to realize approximately the offers that had been available within the neighborhood shops, he idea of digitising the idea as a enterprise through giving kirana stores an online presence at a low fee.

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Of all of the reasons why O2Onow came into lifestyles, some of the crucial ones are to cope with for both purchasers and the sellers at the lines of confined capital and know-how; non-availability of suitable era at low price for supplier merchandising; useless and excessive costs of advertising and constraints on modernisation of growth, problems in customer retention and customer engagement, amongst others.

After surveying nearly two hundred stores, the founders were given a truthful idea about the troubles and based totally on that, the prototype become built. In the method, they received a right knowledge of the concerns raised with the aid of the stores and the manufacturers.

The queer acronym-like call got here after a great deal questioning as Manoj claims, “From consumer attitude, O2Onow approach ‘O2O’ i.E. On line-to-offline for a customer to view products on-line in close by stores or for this reason, they view shops everywhere and purchase offline and ‘now’ i.E. Actual-time as clients are capable of instantly view the shop genuinely.”

Interestingly, he provides, “From the seller attitude, O2Onow means ‘O2O’ i.E. Offline-to-on line for a seller to return on line in a few hours to start selling the goods and to promote their shops. ‘Now’, in this example, manner dealers can be right away on-boarded the use of our modern platform.”

The startup had a modest starting solely aimed toward the best cause they wanted to have an effect on. Started with a non-public funding of $25K, the startup went directly to acquire a Seed investment of $25K from a consortium of angel buyers.

O2Onow is focussed on the subsequent:

Online enablement via mobile and net presence

Store promotions thru ads

Etailing via transport within four Km radius in far flung places and atmosphere via stores or sellers to attain out to manufacturers, financiers, insurers in a simplified way

The Shades Of Grey With A Silver Lining

O2Onow is actively concentrated on to digitise small and medium stores, that is on the epicentre of its challenge.

Some of the key capabilities which have attracted customers includes the platform’s unique search features which diversify the searches based totally on place, local shops, category, multi-category, close by offerings, searches with the aid of manufacturers, shop and offerings ad, offers and deals of the day from local stores, coupons from local shops and authorities institutions and emergency services.

This variety of gives has been developed through O2Onow in view of the demanding situations one has to go through to find out local shops around the locality.

Despite the gives and the achievements, the startup nevertheless has myriad demanding situations to triumph over.

The essential challenges are not in terms of simply elevating funding but, as Manoj elaborates, “Going with the aid of our 3P (People, Process, Platform) method, we are going through essential demanding situations in hiring human beings and tuning the platform performance. We have a decent manner that's manual and we're looking forward to automating it in the near future.”

Although the shades of grey persist, there are silver linings too. O2Onow become selected as the local startup by using the Department of Industry and Commerce, Govt. Of Telangana to provide low-cost answers for MSMEs. It changed into also decided on by means of the ‘Scale Minds’ accelerator for its contribution in selling local businesses.

The list doesn’t quit right here. O2Onow changed into also selected by AP innovation Centre after it showcased its business idea on BIGShift (Bigshift-Vizag).

In this hard adventure as an entrepreneur and in attempting to deliver O2Onow to the carrier of his clients and consumers, Manoj says, “Every failure turned into our gaining knowledge of for improvisation. We had few achievements and those had been the success memories. So a long way, we maintain enhancing and could take us an extended way to meet our mission in the digitisation of business.”

The adventure goes on with much optimism and notwithstanding competition, Manoj is hopeful of fighting for the difficult home run.

Manoj states, “None of them is natural O2O because the aforementioned companies are product orientated and not keep orientated. We are the ONLY multi-category and primary store on-line platform for MSMEs.”

O2Onow is now aiming to grow its revenue with the aid of at the least two hundred% within the light of latest approach that the group has evolved and adopted.

While there aren't any predominant competition in the space of B2B on-line-to-online and on line-to-offline small and medium commercial enterprise allowing platforms, except the Indore-based totally startup ShopKirana, O2Onow faces competition from foremost software program giants like SAP, Oracle and other order management and retail CRM/ERP software program that maintain sway over the brands.

The FMCG majors, then again, are searching for to reduce down on the turnaround time with the aid of providing capsules to the cellular income group, who go to kirana stores to take the orders, so that they could feed it to the agency’s systems in real-time.

O2Onow is striving to broaden better services to attach more small and medium scale companies even within the light of many players within the B2C space like Bigbasket, Zopper, Jiffstore which are already gift connecting the kirana shops to the end-clients.

Kirana Store Model: Enticing The World To Explore Further Opportunities In Retail

In 2015, during a presentation, Boston Consulting Group’s Senior Partner and Director Abheek Singhi had said that the kirana shop version works nicely in a complicated marketplace like India, in which small layout shops can effortlessly penetrate the duration and the breadth of the huge usa.

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Then in 2017, a first-rate prediction turned into made through none other than Adi Godrej, the Chairman of Godrej Group. In an interview with Quartz, Adi had said, “Kirana stores and now not ecommerce, will gasoline FMCG growth in India.”

Also, in overdue 2017, retail massive Future Group’s founder and CEO Kishore Biyani had announced to launch Retail 3.0 enterprise model in India quickly. “It is a model referred to as Tathaastu. This will help you get something you want,” said Biyani. Biyani is aiming to create a retail chain in an effort to make its presence in every state of India and to achieve this, he has stated that it is crucial to have a retail keep inside the parameter of every  kilometers.

With an anticipated 12 Mn kirana stores currently gift in the country, translating to ten stores in keeping with 10,000 households, this range is simplest going to develop to serve the increasing quantity of families in India.

No marvel this is a big opportunity for a startup like O2Onow! As part of the roadmap, O2Onow has new product services with which it could clearly give a boost to itself in the marketplace. In a town (Hyderabad) that supports startups favourably as obvious from the presence of platforms which includes the T-Hub that helps various startups by supplying mentorship and get right of entry to to VCs, the road ahead is without a doubt enlivening for the marketers.



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