FRESHO by Tata expanding its offline presence – Boost to Safe ePayments

 FRESHO by Tata expanding its offline presence – Boost to Safe ePayments

          In the final quarter of 2021, BigBasket - a Tata Group company announced plans to open physical stores across India.

          It has set a target of 200 physical stores in 2022, and 800 by 2026.

          Read more about its ambitious plans to expand Self Billing Solutions to folks across India here - Tata Group-backed BigBasket forays into offline retail with launch of Fresho store in Bengaluru @ https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/corporate/story/tata-group-backed-bigbasket-forays-into-offline-retail-with-launch-of-fresho-store-in-bengaluru-313251-2021-11-24

          The first physical store by Fresho opened in Bangalore in the last week of November 2021.

          Since then, the expansion is in full swing.     

          The highlight of the stores will be Self-Billing Counters.

          The Self Billing Counters will be driven by Artificial Intelligence to enable the visitors to complete the check out without manual intervention.

          The stores will not be completely unmanned, there will be normal checkout counters, with a security guard.

          The completely unmanned stores are still some years away in India.     

          How Fresh Stores will boost ePayments

Booster 01) Non – Apartment shoppers will drop in at Fresho Stores to try out the available items. Once they come to Self-Billing Counters and opt for self-checkout, the payment will be through e Mode only  

 

Booster 02) As customers get familiar with Self Billing Counters, they will also get familiar with ePayments. As the transactions at Self Billing Counters, so will the ePayments volumes

 

Booster 03) Bangalore is far advanced in terms of ePayments as compared to other Indian cities. As Fresho expands its physical presence outside Bangalore, the Self Billing Counters will encourage customers to try out ePayments.

 

Booster 04) Any checkout via a BNPL App / Card will be completely cashless only. As more and more Fresho customers opt for BNPL checkout, ePayments volumes will go up.

The potential of Fresho Stores can be understood with the Quote at the end of this blog post.

The company’s first store witnessed good footfalls even without the brand name of Big Basket.

Another standard feature of Fresho stores will be the Cold Pressed Juice counters. These juice counters will not be inside the stores, but just outside. This is to attract non-shoppers too and encourage conversation around food.

 

Q: What are unmanned food and grocery stores?

Ans: The concept of unmanned food and grocery stores first came up in 2016.

"Näraffär"- The first supermarket without staff - Year 2016 -  @ https://www.lead-innovation.com/english-blog/unmanned-stores-change-trade

A pure unmanned store has no humans around. The door opening of the store is via a QR Code on the Mobile App. The bill payment is also through the App

Unmanned stores came up in Sweden, as the distances between human settlements are long, and it was not economical for manned stores. Usually, the Fuel Stations had mini grocery stores, as the petrol bunks were normally having service staff. With the automation of the petrol bunks, the mini grocery stores started to be shut down.  

 

Q: Give some examples of unmanned food and grocery stores?

Ans: Naraffar in Sweden

Amazon Go in USA

Tao Café in China

 

Quote

 

According to the email, a copy of which Entrackr has seen, BigBasket co-founder VS Sudhakar informed all company employees that the store in Bengaluru’s Basaveshwar Nagar, has been open to customers since October 25.

 

In the email, Sudhakar said that opening the store is an “extremely key, strategic initiative.” The store is operational from 8 in the morning to 9 in the night. The email also shared several images of the store.

 

However, the company hasn’t yet added any BigBasket or Fresho signage at the store.

 

“Since this is running on a pretty new tech stack with some very interesting features like self-weighing and check out, farmer traceability etc and our first customer walk-in interaction, we wanted to be cautious about opening it out to too many customers too soon,” Sudhakar wrote in the email. “Hence we have not even put up the signage on the Store”.

 

Sudhakar’s email also informed that even without the signage, the store has seen around 100 walkins and around 80 orders each day since opening.

 

UnQuote