Rise In Kirana Shop Sales Drives FMCG Industry To Grow At Its Quickest Pace In 18 Months: Study

Grocery (kirana) stores have grown by 15 per cent as compared to a year back as their average orders have shot up by a third from the Covid-19 pandemic-induced nationwide lockdown in 2020. This shows that local grocers have gained from the falling supermarket sales leading the Indian consumer market to accelerate at its quickest in 18 months.

Bizom, a sales automation firm transacting with 7.5 million retail stores, revealed that kiranas attract a 36.1 per cent larger average order size now.

Moreover, every distributor salesman is covering more outlets and this marks a significant progress from last year when the lockdown coupled with reverse migration and liquidity concerns played a part in the number of kirana stores falling by almost 25 per cent. However, most of the store shutdowns were short-lived as individuals returned back to work as the lockdown restrictions were loosened by October.

Akshay D’Souza, Chief Marketing Officer of Mobisy Technologies that owns Bizom, detailed about this latest trend whilst speaking to Economic Times. D’Souza mentioned that FMCG salesmen have strengthened in remote order taking methods over the course of the last year.

Technology has enabled them to cover more number of kiranas. This has overall assisted the entire FMCG industry to progress positively towards self-ordering and thus creating a further productive mechanism for distribution purposes.

In fact, the growth of 6 per cent in FMCG sales in the December-ending quarter is attributed to the overall intent and aggression to connect with retailers directly through their own distribution. Hence, the count of distributors grew by 42 per cent year-on-year to 12,192 in January 2021.