LoveLocal enables over 7,500 local retailers to sell during pandemic

LoveLocal is a hyperlocal ecommerce platform that is empowering local daily essentials retailers to provide the neighbourhood shopping experience of the future. The platform enables local retailers to provide free, on-time delivery to their customers. LoveLocal is present in 35 cities to over 1000 pin codes, with a 96 per cent fulfilment rate across the board

The Indian retail market, which consists of the unorganized sector, including conventional family-run neighbourhood shops, and organized retail, such as brick-and-mortar large retailers and online shopping sites, is the third-largest in Asia and fourth-largest in the world. The sector is expected to cross $1.75 trillion (approximately Rs 126 lakh crore) by 2026.

The grocery sector accounts for half of India's retail consumption, and kirana stores -conventional mom-and- pop stores, account for about 90 per cent of the grocery retail market. The fast paced growth, is set to be driven by several factors, as pointed out by a report by Zinnov's Digital Engineering in Retail study. As per the study, India is fast-becoming a retail test-bed, thanks to a large base of existing e-commerce users (110 million), presence of retail global centres of excellence (GCoEs) (25+), a large number of start-ups focusing on retail tech (465+), and also significant digital talent (1/8th of the world's digital talent is expected to be based in India by 2030).

While no-contact deliveries and cashless payments are two of the most popular and widely used tech tools by offline retail, currently, there are a vast range of tech-enabled tools that leverage AI, ML and other features, to make conventional retail safe and smart for the modern consumer. The Indian organized and unorganized retailers across grocery, furniture, and apparel, witnessed an increase in multi-channel shopping as lockdown prompted consumers to turn to non-ecommerce platforms like WhatsApp ordering to takeaways, and curbside pickups.

LoveLocal, one of India's leading hyperlocal e-commerce platforms, has enabled over 7,500 local retailers in Mumbai to continue selling online during the pandemic's second wave induced lockdowns. These retailers primarily belong to the daily essential category, ranging from groceries, medicine, fruits and vegetables, bakeries to local meat and fish shops. During this time, LoveLocal also helped the retailers by sending e-commerce certificates to stores & their staff, enabling them to continue home delivery for online orders without hindrance if questioned by the authorities.

The areas in Mumbai that received the highest number of enquiries to sell online were Kandivali, Dombivali, Kalyan, Malad, and Virar. The platform also saw an increase in the customer base by over 45000 during the second wave. LoveLocal is currently the only platform that offers a complete shop digitization solution for retailers that is completely free with no on-boarding fees, margins or commission. The platform includes a user-friendly consumer app, complete customer service support, frictionless storefront creation, cataloguing, digital payments, logistics, and more.

Local retailers came to the forefront during the pandemic by catering to customers' daily essential needs, as organised retail and large ecommerce platforms were unable to meet the surge consumer demands. Over time, consumers became conscious of the need for contactless service, to minimize the risk of infection, resulting in a 60 per cent increase in search for 'home delivery' and 'how to pay online'. For the first time, rural internet users in India surpassed the urban internet users by 10 per cent in 2020, at 227 million, indicating that the entire country is moving online. Retailers, too, adapted to the shift in consumer buying behaviour.

Akanksha Hazari, Founder and CEO, adds, "It is awe-inspiring to see how informed and prompt the local retailers are to embrace the digital transformation. During the second wave, we received over 40,000 inquiries from the local retailers in Mumbai alone to sell online. Our customers were also better prepared for the second wave, as the average order value on the platform increased from Rs 400 to Rs.700 at the onset of the pandemic. The revenue of our popular local retailers reached Rs 8 lakh per month on our platform.