Rapid trade leaves the kiranas scrambling. Can Kiko Live fill the gap?

Express commerce is reshaping the grocery game with lightning-fast deliveries, leaving traditional neighborhood kirana stores scrambling to keep up. A survey by Datum Intelligence reveals that over 82% of buyers have shifted at least 25% of their Kirana purchases to Express Trade, while 5% of respondents have completely stopped purchasing from Kirana stores.

This shift has sparked a sense of urgency among kirana owners, who are seeing a decline in overall sales volumes. A separate survey conducted by Kiko Live, a SaaS platform for neighborhood stores, found that kiranas face three main challenges: price competition from express commerce platforms, faster delivery speeds offered by competitors, and delays in product availability.

talking to Business todayAlok Chawla, co-founder of Kiko Live, explained how consumer behavior around grocery shopping has witnessed a major shift over the past two years.

“Earlier, buying groceries meant walking to a store or visiting a mandi. Although there are initiatives to digitize kirana, they have not taken off in a big way. However, with big players and investments entering the market, consumer behavior has changed, and kirana owners feel Now there is an urgent need for digital transformation.

India is home to 13 million kirana stores, generating annual revenues of more than $800 billion. However, they do not have a digital footprint, which makes it difficult for them to compete with organized retail and express commerce platforms.

“The retailer is looking for solutions that can provide a fast, commerce-like experience to its customers,” Chawla added.

Kiko Live aims to bridge the gap for kirana owners who want to adapt to the changing business landscape. At its core, the platform emphasizes the importance of product cataloging to enable online ordering.

The onboarding process begins with a physical visit to the store, where Know Your Customer (KYC) details are collected, and the retailer is guided through completing their GSC registration. Currently, Kiko Live prioritizes retailers that maintain digital inventory through point-of-sale (POS) systems.

“Retailers with digital inventory have a record of the products they sell stored in their POS systems. For example, if a retailer sells 3,000 products, their POS will already have the SKUs listed. This allows us to download File their inventory, match it against our database of over 30,000 SKUs, and get their products up and running instantly.

In contrast, small kirana stores without digital systems require manual verification and cataloging of their inventory, which is a time-consuming process. Chawla pointed out that Kiko Live, as a smaller company, takes a top-down approach, starting with digitally-enabled retailers and eventually moving to smaller retailers.

According to Tracxn, Kiko Live has so far raised around $4 million in multiple seed rounds with revenue of Rs 21.8 lakh and losses growing to over Rs 2 crore.

Kiko Live leverages the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) platform for last-mile delivery, ensuring groceries reach customers within minutes. Since its launch last year, the platform has facilitated over five lakh applications and is currently operational in Delhi/NCR. Plans are afoot to expand into Bengaluru within the next month.

Chawla believes the platform’s focus on digitally-ready kiranas ensures scalability and efficiency, even as it sets its sights on smaller retailers in the future.

Despite the challenges, the survey highlighted optimism among kirana shop owners. 84% of respondents reported that they are already adopting technology and digital solutions to some extent. Many believe that the move to e-commerce and on-the-go platforms will help businesses grow over the next year or two.

However, there are still concerns about the survival of kiranas that fail to adapt to evolving market trends. As brisk trade continues to expand its footprint, the urgency to digitize kirana is greater than ever.