BeWo Technologies, a provider of grocery store automation technologies, has drawn up plans to increase its reach by almost sixfold by entering more cities.
“Currently, we are present in four cities — Chennai, Bengaluru, Mumbai and New Delhi through 1,000 grocers, who are linked with 30 clients [FMCG majors] and sell more than 50 brands,” said R. Sampath, CEO and MD, BeWo. “In 2017-18, we would like to... be present in 10 cities. We will add another 16 cities the following year, covering 25,000 grocers,” he said.
The start-up is incubated by California-based chipmaker Qualcomm and backed by TTK Group chairman T.T. Jagannathan, in his personal capacity.
“We bring grocers and FMCG majors on a single platform, help them to efficiently manage their business and achieve higher sales,” Mr. Sampath said. It also helps Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) majors to keep track of grocer’s daily billing transactions, consumer preferences, last mile marketing activities and promotions. What would take several months to find out through a study, is being done instantly through data collated at retail point,” he said.
BeWo provides an IT-enabled retail point-of-sale (PoS) delivery and support system to grocers. The Android-based PoS comes with built-in printer, barcode scanner, 3G and UPS. With the help of PoS, the grocer can print the bill, maintain inventory, keep a tab on store credit and carry out marketing promotion at the same time.
Only those neighbourhood shops that have billing of ₹10 lakh per month are being considered by BeWo to include in its network, he said.
Mr. Sampath said PoS are currently being manufactured in China. The design and software are by BeWo. They are gearing up to make more to meet the increasing demand.
