Smarkt is a hi-tech supermarket franchise that aims to deliver modern shopping experiences in local supermarkets with the latest technology. They aim to bridge the gap between technology and India’s retail sector. They offer franchise-owned franchise-operated and franchise-owned company-operated models to existing retail markets that aim to help these stores get updated with the latest tech (self-checkouts), interiors, and more. Smarkt’s goal is to be the leader in the phygital era of the retail market.

While the e-commerce sector is booming with retail giants like Amazon, Walmart, Reliance all entering into play, the local retail markets of India will be left to dust if they do not adapt to the changes. Smarkt enters here and bridges the ever-growing gap and allows the local markets to compete with the larger-than-life corporates. 

India’s Retail segment is vast and only ever-growing. With over 14 million outlets available in the country, Smarkt has a lot of growth potential. The forecasts for India’s retail market are huge, with India’s grocery retail accounting in 2020 for US$ 608 billion, with projections of reaching US$ 1.3 trillion by 2024. With normalcy returning in the future and sales bouncing back to pre covid numbers, the anticipated growth is immense, and consumer spending will be significantly higher. 

For the local retail markets to tap into this growth, they need to adapt to the latest trends and technologies, especially with the emerging online players and giants like Reliance and Amazon. Therefore, they need to avail themselves of the services of businesses like Smarkt as doing it alone would be too costly, and they would not be able to get the required products quickly. In addition, maintenance would be very tough. Thus, Smarkt has a huge market to tap into and acquire. 

Smarkt provides the latest technology for retailers to compete with large tech firms. They offer an in-house intelligent POS system that aids in quick bill generation and helps the owner keep track of inventory and sales.

Smarkt offers branding and marketing solutions for retailers, both online and offline. Through their extensive research and experience, they formulate the entire marketing plan for retailers. Marketing is a crucial success factor for businesses, especially in the online world.

Customer support is critical to staying in business. Unfortunately, a significant percentage of the retailers are not aware of how to optimize their support channels to maximize their value and impact on consumers. Smarkt helps provide up-to-date customer systems through helplines and chat support systems.

To compete with big brands like Amazon, bringing the store onto an online platform is vital to ease and convenience. Smarkt helps retailers make a mobile application that integrates all store and sales features, giving the retailer the edge needed to stay on top of India’s technological advancement.

Lastly, Smarkt offers interior degradation for stores using LED walls and sound systems and marketing boards. Most importantly, they offer a self-checkout system, which could be a game-changer for any retail store, as it would put them on the same level as large-scale supermarkets worldwide.

Customers, in essence, love convenience; local retailers provide that with the proximity and the reliability with the store. However, Amazon, Jio Mart, and more have disrupted this space by providing their services entirely online. Even the offline stores are highly technologically upgraded to provide a pleasant and easy experience to customers. Smarkt comes into play to help the local retailers compete with the large-scale competitors by providing similar, if not better, experiences to their customers.

The core team of Smarkt is all NIT Calicut and Surathkal graduates, with work experience in different fields, from sales/business roles to technical roles in companies like Salesforce. The Co-founder, Sairam, already had experience running a startup in his college years, an experience that he can leverage well. Their CTO worked in Salesforce. His experience there would aid in developing their products, as there are many synergies between the technologies used in Salesforce and Smarkt’s products. Their talent network is also immense as they have already reached out to the NITs to hire interns to build their product. 

By leveraging their different experiences, education, and network, the team for Smarkt is solid and talented and can run a successful startup, both on an individual and collective level. Being young entrepreneurs too (recent graduates), their ability to adapt to change is very high, and openness to new things, cultures, pivoting will be a crucial factor in the success of a startup. 

In this model, the retail owner pays ten lakhs as a franchise fee. All the store running expenses, from in-store staff salary to the rent, will be taken care of by Smarkt. In return, Smarkt will get 5% of sales monthly. 

In essence, Smarkt will be running the store completely through its brand under the oversight of the store owner.

In this model, the retail owner pays ten lakhs as a franchise fee and will take care of all the running costs. Smarkt will enhance the interiors and install the software and technology, and in return, will charge 2.5% of sales as a franchise management fee.

In essence, the store owner will be running the store by themselves using the brand value and technology of Smarkt.

Smarkt offering these two methods help them reach out to most of their potential market, as it covers both types of owners, the ones who would want to run the shop themselves and the ones who would prefer letting Smarkt run it in return for a percentage of sales. The model is also very feasible given the benefits, as the cost to the customer is not astronomical, and the owners are given a flexible choice of what type of franchise they want to choose.

The phygital sector in the retailer market is a relatively new concept that has only been recently coined. However, given the pandemic and how drastically it has changed the way people shop, phygital is the new big trend.

Currently, one of the major players in the phygital market is Capillary. They provide a variety of solutions like smartstore, which helps monitor store activities on dashboards. They help stores build loyalty and promotion programs and also provide customer support services.

Other more indirect competitors include the likes of Bikayi and Dukaan, who are mainly focused on the digital aspect of the stores only. These platforms help stores build themselves online in an effortless manner and provide various digital solutions from inventory management to marketing boards.

However, the retail sector is one of the largest sectors in India, with more than enough space for more companies to enter and disrupt the space.

Large media outlets such as Forbes and Times of India claim that the phygital world is the retail sector’s future. Increasingly, we are seeing stores becoming online; therefore, in all ways, it seems that the era of Phygital will take over the Indian market soon. Given the team that is building Smarkt, I feel that it wouldn’t be long before we hear more about them.