Description
The government’s demonitisation move has come as both an opportunity and challenge for India’s food and grocery market. As an opportunity, both online and offline players stand a chance to pull in more customers into their fold. The challenge lies in preparing the operations to veer away from being heaviliy cash dependent to the cashless mode.
With cash transactions out of favour, alternative forms of payment are seeing a surge in demand. It is critical for companies at this juncture to address all the concerns if they want to exploit this opportunity to their advantage. They must seek solutions for introducing more of cashless and digital transactions.
By proactively encouraging cashless transactions, food companies, wholesalers, dealers and retailers can hope to bring down their own cost of operations. For instance, online retailers can leverage this opportunity to cut down their costs by embracing card technology that enables their executives to accept payment from customers swiping their card at the time of delivery.
In the days ahead, digital transaction systems, e-wallets and apps, online transactions using e-banking, use of plastic money, etc. are all expected to see substantial increases in demand. Therefore, the Food & Grocery industry must work to strengthen such systems and put in place all the infrastructures required. As more retailers adopt alternative/digital payment solutions, the market ecosystem will become more transparent and structured going forward.
