Optimizing ethnic grocery supply chains

Grocera is an online Indian grocery delivery platform that delivers on the same day.

With countless grocery delivery services already present in the market, why are we coming up with another one. This might be the first question that comes to your mind and it is the right question that needs to be answered.

There are 8 billion people on this planet. Each having their own choice of food, the products they like to buy and the brands they want to support. With so many variables at play, we can establish that not one grocery service can serve all.

Although most services in Europe do a decent job in fulfilling groceries for customers in very short amount of times e.g Gorillas, Getir and others focusing on helping the masses get their products quickly, but a major chunk of people still remain underserved. These are the so called migrants of a country.

Migrants are individuals who leave their countries (the country where they were born and brought up) to live and work in a new country. The reasons for moving could be many but one thing that stays with the individual is their culture and food. To be able to cook food from their origin country, they need access to special ethnic groceries which they can find in small retail markets opened by the migrants for the migrants. Since the number of migrants in a foreign society are comparatively low, the market is not established well enough causing no one major player to exist. With the rapid increase in globalisation and more people fleeing to different countries for better work opportunities and lifestyle, the knowledge gap about cultures and food is getting smaller.

Looking at the following charts from destatis.de, the overall foreign population in Germany is on an upwards trend with more than 350,000 people arriving in the country for employment purposes only.

This indicates a major need for better systems and supply chains to keep up with the demands of the growing population while driving down costs for the end customer.

Although the current supply chain is somehow functioning, you can clearly see the impact of inefficient systems by talking to the customers who can't find the products they need in their nearby shop or in an online store causing them to either wait, or go for alternative food options (unwillingly distancing them from their culture or origin). But what exactly causes such problems you may ask and how we can solve them.

We have realized the problem is mostly focused in one area.

1. Lack of vision and non willingness to change for the current store owners.

But these problems are very much solvable. And this is why we have launched Grocera.

At Grocera our aim is build a platform for customers to give them access to ethnic groceries. We focus on optimizing on 3 areas.

1. Maximum availability of existing SKUs.
2. Timely stocking of in demand SKUs.
3. Better prices for value.

Maximum availability of existing SKUs

A major problem in the current supply chain for Indian groceries is variable delivery times where the suppliers themselves are unsure about the dates the product can reach the retailer. To tackle such problems we have built systems that are smart enough to maintain and measure supplier performances with respect to their delivery times, delivering expired products and more. This helps the system to stay aware of how to maximize availability of products for its customers.

Timely stocking of in demand SKUs

A major question that needs to be answered is what the customer wants and when ?. The best person to answer this question is the customer herself. This is the reason Grocera is built around the customer needs. We ask the customers to tell us what they need be it a product or even a feature and we focus on fulfilling those demands. Therefore we allow customers to easily communicate with us via our support or request what they need via the provided features on our website.

Better prices for value

As a delivery platform we want to ensure better customer experience and faster response times be it on delivery times or support. This is the reason Grocera focuses on providing its customers with same day delivery compared to the existing competitors in the market focusing on 3-4 days delivery times. Grocera wants to serve the customers who are more value focused. This will also help the platform grow and provide better customer services. Overtime we want to optimize further operations within the supply chain to bring down costs for the overall customers but this will be a long journey which we all have to pass together.

Conclusion

Overall, with Grocera, the aim is to serve all the ethnic communities in a society to give them better and more sustainable service to get access to their ethnic groceries. Starting from Indian Groceries in Germany we will eventually expand vertically (in different cities starting from Munich) and horizontally (different ethnicities). Overall the growth of the platform is directly bounded by the needs and demand of the customers allowing the platform to gather information and aligns itself accordingly.