Offline mobile retailers ring louder than e-comm in small-town India

OFFLINE MOBILE RETAILERS, who have been overshadowed in smartphone sales in tier-1 cities by e-commerce players in the ongoing festive season, have tuned their focus to small towns to boost sales.

- ANEES HUSSAIN

Retailers like Poorvika, BigC and Sangeetha Mobiles are now matching or even beating e-commerce players on speed and coverage in tier-2 and tier-3 markets. Using their 400-600 stores as fulfilment centers and deploying dark stores in partnership with warehousing players in underserved markets, these chains now deliver smartphones in 15-20 minutes across 700+ PIN codes, dwarfing the tier-1 city coverage of Amazon and Flipkart's quick-delivery and surpassing quick-commerce players who struggle with the inventory complexity of mid-range smartphones.

The strategic push is aimed squarely at the festive season's most valuable prize: smartphones, which has traditionally accounted for the lion’s share of online festive season sales in terms of gross merchandise value (GMV). This year hasn’t been much different. In just the first week of festive season sales, smartphones accounted for 42% of e-comm GMV, according to data by Datum Intelligence.

WHAT SETS TRADITIONAL retailers apart isn't just speed, it's the quality of delivery.

Online platforms largely treat smartphone orders as any other apart from a dedicated OTP mechanism to prevent theft.