The retail market in India is among the top 5 in the world. But despite having a large set of consumers it is not successful in the e-commerce market, especially in the grocery sector. Even today in a technologically advanced era, Indian consumers are still dependant on the local Kirana stores. It is believed that the Kirana store is not able to adapt and develop because of a lack of understanding of their consumer’s minds, improper infrastructure, mismanagement of day-to-day operations, and old techniques use for inventory management. Realizing these problems, Anup Kumar took an opportunity to find solutions to help the Kirana store and founded Kirana King.
How was Kirana King Born?
Anup Kumar Khandelwal, a resident of Jaipur, Rajasthan went to Dubai in 1998 to expand his family business of agricultural commodities. While staying in the middle east, Anup worked under different companies to understand the working of the grocery business in India and abroad. It was in 2016 when he returned to India and saw a change in the Indian retail market but still could not find any changes when it came to Kirana stores. In 2017, when he started the grocery business, he came across a question about how to sustain in a market in a country like India where the situations are always changing leading to challenging circumstances. And this question of his lead to the establishment of Kirana King. His motive was not just to make a profit but he even wanted his start-up to be the largest offline grocery retail by focusing on digitalization, centralization, and standardization. He aims to give a new identity and look to the Indian Kirana shops.
The Kirana King team started with field research of the local grocery market initially in Jaipur and the nearby places but gradually moved to PAN India for a better understanding. It is then when they came to a conclusion that the problem lies with the unorganized system of handling business and not demand. After careful consideration of issues in the infrastructure of the supply chain, they created a unique ecosystem that involves consumers, suppliers, and retailers empowering the retail ecosystem of grocery as a whole.
How Does Kirana King Help the Small Kirana Stores?
As it very clear that the Kiran King wants the local Kirana shop to reach a point where they have the capability to compete with the brick-and-mortar supermarkets that deal with grocery. They help them to expand the online grocery businesses as well.
They help the Kirana owners to do so by streamlining their selling system entirely, managing the supply of the goods, and having an infrastructure that is both appealing as well as sustainable. They even have a centralized system that ensures that each store meets the expectation of their customers when it comes to on-time delivery, excellent packaging, and variable inventory.
How is Kirana King Beneficial for the Consumers?
There are still a large number of consumers in India who are traditional. They even today buy groceries in bulk from the local Kirana store. Modern-day consumers care a lot about hygiene, have various choices when it comes to food, and do not have sufficient time because of which they can’t store huge quantities of groceries.
Kirana King helps the consumers by converting their nearest grocery shop to a pleasing small supermarket that provides their customers with an appealing shopping experience. They even ensure that the supermarket is well equipped as per the consumer’s grocery demand. The everyday Kirana store items like groceries of a particular brand, kitchen supplies used on a day-to-day basis, Italian spices, etc are all available under one roof, i.e. in the Kirana King store.
The Franchise Program by Kirana King
Kirana King trusts in implementing its dynamism and vision by not only recognizing the upcoming challenges but also providing critical support to the Kirana store owners whenever they feel there is a knowledge gap. Keeping the motive to help small Kirana stores, Kirana king has come up with a franchise program. This program by the company focuses on various components that are involved in setting up, organizing as well as running a Kirana store. They allow the small grocery store owners to continue being a stand-alone entrepreneur but at the same time getting benefits from partnering with a retail chain with a wider scope, keeping their identity intact. Not only do they cover marketing guidelines that would help the partners to attract more customers and keep the existing ones but they conduct medic and press coverage as well as offline and online PR activities continuously to ensure the store’s good visibility. They even organize seminars and provides presentations to their channel partners to provide knowledge about the different ways in which they can give competition to their competitors as well as serve their regular customers better.
The Business Plan of Kirana King
In the first year of its business, Kirana King converted around 30 Kirana stores in Jaipur to a small supermarket. As of now, the number has increased to 200 and by the end of the year, they are planning to transform 500 stores. Before starting to transform any Kirana store, the team makes sure to study store size, demography, and location. The development team evaluates owners and even gathers data such as the stores’ upkeep and the stock wallets of the FMCG that are shared among further feasibility checks.
Kirana King does not run on a franchise model but it thrives to help retailers on retaining their store without giving up ownership or spending upfront. All they have to do is manage the stores and earn profits. Each store they convert is on average 500 square foot and it takes under a lakh to transform.
Like other grocery store business plans even Kirana King has a “Click and Collect” model that enables the consumers to order groceries at their comfort and get them delivered or collect it from a nearby Kirana King store.
The Key Objectives of Kirana King
The mission and vision of this start-ups in Jaipur are very clear. But there are some key objectives of Kirana King that includes:
- It desires to strengthen the Kirana ecosystem that has been in existence for centuries.
- It wants to help the grocery retailers to sustain and grow but at the same time providing their retail outlets with a solid visibility
- It focuses to establish a well-knitted ecosystem for the grocery retail shops by including the consumers, suppliers, and the Kirana stores.
- One of the objectives is to align the research department to merchandising and marketing department on strengthening the companies vision continuously.
- In the end, its key objective is also to help its customer live a better and healthy life.
The Kirana King’s Business model as of now is successful and if they continue to provide such outstanding performance there is no doubt that it would be soon famous all over India and be known as the OLA for the grocery retailers in India.
