(Online) Battle of The Indian Supermarkets
// April 11th, 2008 // Reviews, Thoughts
The Indian retail industry is booming and lots of snazzy supermarkets have popped up in most cities. A lot of these are either owned or have been acquired by major business houses . There are 7 such stores within the 2 km radius of my house. But since I am planning to move to a different area, I decided to look up their websites and use the store locater to find a store in the new area. But what I soon discovered was that some of these supermarkets don’t even have any official site and the only way to find a store in an area is though local classifieds (Sulekha) , local search engines (Just Dial) , Google maps and Wikimapia. But the information on these sites can be wrong or outdated and not as reliable as an official site.
This got me interested and I decided to do a comparison of the online presence of all the major players in Bangalore (and in India).
Here’s how they fared:
- Reliance Fresh: Its one of the biggest players in the sector but surprisingly neither Fresh nor any other retail formats owned by Reliance (Footprint, Digital, Jewels, Timeout etc.) have any web presence. Just a one page summary of the company’s retail plans exists on RIL’s website. There are, however, many unofficial blogs dedicated to Reliance Retail.
- More: Fabmall, one of the largest supermarket chains in South India, was recently acquired by Aditya Birla Group’s More making it an important player in the market but again, except for a page mentioning the launch of its first store and news articles on the aforementioned acquisition on the group’s website, nothing much can be found online.
- Nilgiris: This South Indian chain recently acquired Daily’s supermarkets belonging to Valdel retail but I could not find company’s official website even though I found Valdel’s website.
- Subhiksha: They do have a website and the link “Store Locators”(locators??) did get my hopes up only to be met with a “Page in Under Construction[sic]” message. I am still hopeful that someday soon, they might have a real page there.
- Fresh@: Interestingly, the owner of this chain, Heritage Foods, has a website with a store locator but unless one knows the parent company and searches for it, there’s no way to find the website. Now that’s some bad search engine optimization (SEO) at work!
- Food Bazaar: They have an info page on Pantaloon’s site and there’s also a common Store Locator for all formats owned by the company. Good!
- Foodworld: They too have a website that seems alright and there is a list of all stores too but unfortunately, it is on the “Contact Us” page which is linked only in the footer.
- Spencer’s: They have a proper website (with the useless flash intro and all) and do have a “our stores” link which works well. Its definitely the most impressive of the lot!
What this proves is that a lot of Indian companies still don’t understand the power of Internet. Sure, most people would go to the nearby supermarkets rather than search for one on the internet but I think an online presence is an important part of brand development. Let’s hope they would realize this soon enough and make amends.
Related posts:
- Fair And Handsome Emami, after milking all the not-so-fair Indian girls who wanted...
- I Love Opera As you might have guessed from the picture, I...
14 Responses to “(Online) Battle of The Indian Supermarkets”
Leave a Reply
My videos. Featured videos.
- LarryTheCableGuy said: I'm 51 actually...beer is vile. It smells only ha...
- Rob said: What ...are you 15 ?? Beer is Great !!...
- Phil G said: Well when I was a kid I used to really dislike the...
- Alex [] said: I thought you digressed? lol...
- Raj said: Gulaal's timing coincided with packing up to come ...
[...] at Rhythmic Dissonance is disappointed to note that none of India’s supermarket chains have a reliable website. Probably one would blame it on Internet penetration but we have seen that even the allegedly [...]
These people just want to expand their business. All they care about is money without any organized manner.
..
They should have official website.
Write a mail to them and ask for money for idea.
Good observations.
I have tried searching for Subhiksha site sometime back and I am sure that its only recently that they made one.
Really bad online presence.
I loved your pictures on Flickr.
India looks very vibrant and colorful
Keep up the good work
Neale
L.A.
Fresh@ website : http://www.freshat.in
Apparently one could shop online there, but doesnt seem to work on Firefox at least.
Great work Raj … awesome research.
Its surprising that these guys dont have proper websites and they plan big to launch themselves in India.
Well what can i say .. being in retail .. i know some of these guys do not even have a Retail Merchandising System … i just hope these guys get their act together soon
Okay, so I know NOTHING of Indian industry. But, I do like the name “reliance fresh”
@Vineet: These big companies are pure evil! Even if I give them idea (though its really a very basic thing), they won’t pay me
@Nikhil: Well, since the pages are already “in under construction”, lets hope for a better experience from them soon.
@Neale: Hey, thanks a lot!
@Reader at DesiP: Whoa, how did you find that website? I tried multitudes of searches but didn’t find it. I don’t believe the Heritage site links to it either.
Most Indian websites just about work on IE so lets not expect too much
@abhinav: I have no idea what Retail Merchandising System is but it shows how all these players want to get a share of the lucrative market without much long term planning.
@Becky: Heh! Its good that you find something of interest
I too remember searching for spencer store near my place and I could easily locate it with no trouble ! However I had bad experience searching for ezone or say staples.
I guess its too expensive for these guys to build and maintain a proper website ! Also looks like I could pickup some of these supermarket domains and sell for a higher rate
Check this link as well
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Supermarkets_of_India
Good analysis.
Hey Raj,
.
Visited your blog after a long time but its refreshing as ever. Why don’t you try writing up a book. I believe you can certainly do better than Chetan Bhagat
Okay, here is a little piece of info, which might not be new but I didnt see it mentioned in your post so I thought perhaps I will share it with you.
Fabmall is India’s largest online store and VERY good at it – http://www.fabmall.com only it got acquired by IndiaPlaza a couple of years ago and is now known as http://www.IndiaPlaza.in . I have been their platinum customer and they had exceptional quality (products, customer support). I am, however, not too cognizant about the Birla groups involvement, perhaps, they took over the retail store chains.
Also about the whole scenario of a web presence, I personally do not like India’s lack of online existence but for now the major players believe that India does not offer good enough online market. Here in the states, online stores are more than popular (we get better deals, wider selection to look at, at our convenience, same 30 day return policy etc.). I wish India boards the online bandwagon soon. Perhaps, I can come back and do it for them
.
Deepak
@Deepak
Fabmall-online store became Indiaplaza.in
Brick and Mortar version-acquired by A Birla. Integration with their more. brand still on.
Venu: Yeah, its not a bad idea but I think it would qualify as cybersquatting.
Prasad Naidu: Thanks!
Deepak: Hey , thanks for visiting. I am aware of Fabmall.com (now Indiaplaza.in) but didn’t mention it since I was focusing on the online presence of the supermarkets and not on online stores. And as Nikhil calrified, Fabmall supermarkets have been acquired by Aditya Birla Group under its brand “More”.
I also hate the fact that even most big Indian companies have horrid online presence. And yup, you should come back and exploit the market
Niligiri website address is http://www.nilgiris1905.com/