Near.Store was launched only in January 2020, they enable a small shop to create its individual online identity and start accepting orders in two simple steps. Currently, they have onboarded 82 shops in Mumbai and the shops will be able to start accepting orders within a week.
Some stores in Mumbai/Thane are Eden General Stores, thane; Cash And Carry Supermarket, Kandivali; Metro mart, Malad; Manish Stores, Dadar. Last few days the 82 shops have experienced a 300% growth in sales, and most of them have been through phone orders. We hope to convert those to online orders soon.
Brief note is given below, if you are doing an industry story on Kirana store, please do let me know if you would like to speak to Ashish Kumar, Founder, near.store.
Highlights:
- Raised $300,000 from Sauce Venture Partner
- Has onboarded 82 shops till date
- Aims to reach 500 shops in 6 months
- Only technology-led firm that provides a front-end solution to kirana stores
Near.store is a plug and play system that enables e-commerce for shops in 2 simple steps, says its 82 partner shops in Mumbai have experienced over 300% surge in demand. With maximum orders being taken on a phone.
By 1st week of April, with the near.store platform, the stores will also be able to accept online orders and payments.
How does near.store work?
Near.store operates through a simple device that helps generate a unique online identity of a shop within minutes. The device is plugged into the scanner machine of a shop. Every time a shop owner scans a product for billing, the product gets added to the individual shop’s catalog.
Typically, the first step of creating a digital catalogue is to upload pictures of every product and establishing an e-commerce payment system.
Near.store takes care of both aspects. A shop once logged in with near.store only needs to scan the products. Near.store has a library of over 2 lakh product pictures takes about 2-3 weeks to scan 80% of its SKUs.
Near.store started operation in January 2020, and has onboarded 82 shops in Mumbai. It also has a few pilots running in Bangalore. Most shops were onboarded in February 2020 and are in the process of populating their products. We expect to enable e-commerce for them asap.
About the founders and team
They have a team of 14 people, including the three founders. The founding members – Ramakrishnan A, Diwakar Mitr, and Ashish Kumar have valuable experience across various industries. Ashish has been an investment banker and has closely studied consumer sectors and also has experience as an entrepreneur, Ramakrishnan A, former Mindtree techie, and Diwakar Mitr a former investment banker brings in the experience of technology and business management.
