How Digitalization is changing the Direction of Growth for Small Businesses

The world is changing rapidly due to the rising urbanisation and digitalization. With both seeping slowing into all corners of the world, today, people need everything instant and at their home. Looking at the demand, today small-scale businesses have started shifting their paradigm to digitalisation and here’s what they are experiencing so far.

The increasing number of online customers than offline ones is making a lot of start-ups and small businesses to get online. Among which the grocery, fruits and vegetable, fashion and home furnishing sellers are migrating in large amount.

Grocery is a very hyper-local business. Online or offline, Indians spend more than 50% of their monthly income on groceries. If we take the country’s total retail market in India, its grocery retail alone estimates to be over 60%. Analysts predict that it might be anywhere between $400 billion to $600 billion at present with the potential to cross $700 billion by 2022. Though small today i.e $500 million to a little over $1 billion, online grocery stores are holding a huge potential and as per the recent report by CRISIL, the annual growth rate of over 65% can be witnessed between fiscal 2017 and 2020. That means, overall, the grocery-related revenue is expected to almost quadruple to Rs10,000 crores (around $1.5 billion).

Take for example the e-grocery startup – Big-basket, Grofers – a grocery delivery firm and Amazon, who are fuelling the growth of the online grocery market in India surprisingly well. Reason? People are becoming lazy day by day to battle the crowded market and shop their daily requirements when they can get fresh fruits and vegetables and all grocery items sitting at their couch.

For small-scale businesses interested in creating an online grocery store, getting a grocery and vegetable app developed can bring added benefits like regular customers and increased sales which will help stay ahead of the local competitors. How? Because there will be no headache of bargaining, plus your discounts and offers will keep them coming to your app and referring it to others which means more app downloads and revenue generation.

Similarly, another business that has embraced e-commerce is fashion. Even with countless fashion stores flooding the streets, clothing apps like Amazon, Myntra, Jabong, Flipkart, Shopclues are crossing billions in terms of just fashion sales. Here digitalization has played an important role because shopping is tedious and today with an app, customers are able to shop no matter where they are. With features like price comparison, colour options, customization and recommendations, easy returns, free trial offers, discounts, sales, home delivery, shopping has now become a piece of cake.

Moreover, the growth of online apparel market is pegged at USD 100 billion and is expected to double by 2020. And guess what, out of the online shoppers, 50% of them reside in rural areas. You can now predict the craze of fashion app.

The third is online home decor. People are now lacking time to wait for anything which is why they are preferring apps for everything. Online furniture, home furnishing and designing apps like Pepperfry, UrbanLadder, Livspace are some of the startup examples who are today running on the e-commerce platform at a huge success. Can you believe, about 75% of Pepperfry’s 7 million monthly user base comes from its mobile platform? If you are still wondering whether mobile apps can bring so much profit for your business, here’s more for you to step into it with full confidence;

M-Commerce benefits for small-scale businesses

Fewer costs – Budget is the main concern when starting small. With a mobile app, you may not even need a store, a simple warehouse is enough through which you can deliver products to your customers. The rental or management costs of a physical store, won’t be a matter of worry anymore.

Improved customer experience – Customers are the king and if they are pleased means your sales will increase. With a mobile app of your business, you will be saving your customers from struggling in the crowded market, bargaining, wandering shop to shop and a lot of time. There won’t be a customer who won’t love this. And when they start liking your app, they will rate, review and spread the word about your app i.e free marketing for you.

Besides that, faster purchases, repeat orders, user tracking and statistics, customised experience etc., are what you can gain with M-commerce.

Conclusion

Digital transformation is rapidly reforming business models. By switching to m-commerce, small-scale businesses can only benefit in every way as the cost of getting an ecommerce Android and iOS app developed along with its maintenance and update is way less than paying rents or maintaining a physical store and marketing it all alone.