Yango Tech at Retail Leadership Summit: Insights and Observations

Introduction

Yango Tech team recently participated in the Retail Leadership Summit, held on February 28-29, 2024, in Mumbai, India.

This summit served as a platform for industry leaders to converge, exchange insights, and address the evolving landscape of retail. Recognizing its importance, Yango Tech became a Gold Sponsor of this event, organized by the Retailers Association of India (RAI).

During two days of many insightful conversations, one of the highlights of the event was the roundtable discussion powered by Yango Tech, ‘Digital Transformation in Grocery Retail: Growth Strategies and Success Stories’ which delved into pertinent issues facing the retail sector.

Roundtable Powered by Yango Tech

The roundtable, facilitated by Yango Tech's Chief Operating Officer, Evgeny Chernikov, brought together a diverse panel of industry experts:

Anay Agarwal, Head of Strategy - Grocery Business, Reliance Retail
Arun Shetty, Head of Operations - StarQuik - A Tata Enterprise
Faizan Mohamed, Director - Sylcom Group
Laxmichand Gada, Chairman & Managing Director - Society Stores
Sachin Agarwal, COO - Nature's Basket Ltd
Sandeep Murakonda, Executive Director - Vijetha Supermarkets

Key Takeaways

Personalization
How much of a role does personalization play in customer retention and influencing consumer behavior?

Mr Anay Agarwal from Reliance Retail shared that they use a plethora of tools for implementing personalisation including loyalty programs specific to cohorts of similar purchase behaviour. As a result, they have seen a significant 33% increase in the wallet size of customer purchases.

Evgeny Chernikov, COO of Yango Tech shared an interesting example of implementing retail tech in other countries where the price can be customized based on customer’s affordability and purchase pattern - ‘Project Robinhood’.

Sachin Agarwal from Nature’s Basket remarked about how they use personalized WhatsApp-based connections with their customers to drive stickiness with their customers.

Laxmi Chand from Society Stores shared the importance of region-based SKU procurement as a key to personalization. For example, their stores in Chembur hold more South
Indian groceries than the ones in Vile Parle.

Data Analysis & Profitability

Arun Shetty from Tata StarQuick shared that backend management and deriving insights from data analysis plays a crucial role in personalization and also profitability.

One of the prevalent pain points in the grocery business is inventory mismatching as it requires manual human intervention. Most times the GRN system is not updated properly specially for fresh products. Due to this, it’s hard to overcome the challenge of frequent out-of-stock scenarios in the fresh foods category.

In India's grocery omnichannel, online purchases are turned more towards essentials and offline purchases have larger basket sizes. Customer Attrition can be quite online if not managed well.

It is critical to keep the UX for the Picker app simple and intuitive so that the real-time operations by the pickers will managed as smoothly as possible with very limited technology adoption time.

Choosing the right ERP System is a challenge and it is dependent on the team’s capability and also the flexibility of the ERP software itself. Mr Faisal from Sylcon shared that they changed 3 ERPs in the last few years.

Human Touch is the key differentiator that smaller retail players look to harp upon - Mr Faisal from Sylcon and Sandeep Murakonda from Vijetha Supermarkets shared this evaluation.

Understanding the latest consumer trends is possible only with proper data analysis. For example, vegan food is a category that is growing 150% now even though such a trend didn’t exist a few years ago.

Anay said that for Reliance Retail, reading data is not just good to have, it is imperative for an organization like theirs with more than 4000 stores. Finally, the accurate assortment is dependent on the 3Cs - Catchment, Community, and Competition.

Yango Tech is grateful for all attendees and a generous public that held their undivided attention for the session.

Conclusion

Yango Tech's participation in the Retail Leadership Summit underscores its commitment to driving innovation and positive change within the retail industry. By fostering collaboration and facilitating meaningful discussions, Yango Tech aims to empower retailers to navigate challenges and capitalize on emerging opportunities. Excitingly expecting new opportunities to meet, Yango Tech continues to develop e-commerce technology further!