Udaan’s B2B marketplace is becoming a boon for India’s mom-and-pop kirana stores that struggle to connect with sellers in order to stock their shops.
With all the froth that’s whipped up daily about B2C commerce in India, especially with the recent attention-grabbing machinations of Reliance, you may not be aware that the real action in Indian ecommerce may actually lie elsewhere. That space is the gargantuan B2B world — one where small and large businesses buy and sell to each other. It is the kind of activity that has made China’s Alibaba the behemoth it is today. Enter Udaan, which has sought to empower the way some 12 million mom-and-pop kirana shops — neighbourhood grocery stores — operate. And now more than ever when the pandemic has ravaged rural India, Udaan has shown itself to be the future supply chain marvel that is so desperately needed by the hinterland. Kirana stores are where Indians shop. Selling mainly food and groceries, kirana stores chip in around $650 million of India’s $1 trillion retail market. This large demand for kirana stores is where Udaan has cast its net. Some have said the B2B opportunity is 7.5 times that of the B2C online grocery market. While Amazon, Reliance, and Flipkart continue to draw headlines for their latest schemes to attract Indian grocery and kirana customers, Udaan has quietly, almost overnight, become the largest food player in the country. The secret to Udaan’s success is its unlocking of the problem of stocking kirana stores in rural India. For a new kirana store owner, business can be a nerve-wracking affair, especially so if you’re from the hinterland. Sourcing the right kind of goods at the right price is dependent on belonging to an exclusive club of buyers and sellers that have forged relationships over decades which in turn yield better prices and quality of goods. A new player, however, has no cultivated relationships and therefore little negotiating power.
