Karthik Venkateswaran, co-founder and CEO, Jumbotail
We serve thousands of kirana stores and make it convenient for them to procure a wide selection of staples and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), reliably delivered to storefronts using our in-house supply chain and logistics. We have become the most trusted and the largest procurement partner for our customers—commanding 10x more wallet share than other distributors, traders, and organized players. Through many of our formal customer connect programmes, we started getting repeated requests to add more stock keeping units (SKUs) so that they can procure all their products from us. Entrepreneurs who planned to set up new kirana stores wanted us to bootstrap their entire product selection from the start.
Several retailers wanted us to provide technology, point of sale and inventory management systems to run their stores in modern ways. They sought our help to get more traffic to their stores, boost revenues, and connect with consumers online. Our click moment was when we realized that our retailers look at us not just as a procurement platform, but rather as a trusted partner who can help their businesses remain competitive in this increasingly tech-driven world. That’s how we came up with our J24 stores programme, through which we help transform kirana shops into modern convenience stores.
We do this with the help of our proprietary Goldeneye retail operating system that includes a point of sale which is fully integrated with our marketplace and supply chain, artificial intelligence-driven merchandising, digital marketing, retail store branding, and omni-channel integration to serve online orders. The J24 stores programme is democratic and is open to any retailer who wants to transform their store to a modern convenience store. We have received terrific response from our retailer base. The programme will modernize the kirana stores at scale and become a trusted consumer brand that will cement the role of mom-and-pop entrepreneurs and small businesses as the fundamental economic engine of our country.
