Focused on building business organically: Rashi Choudhary, Co-founder & COO, LocalBanya.com

In an interaction with Indian Retailer, Rashi Choudhary, Co-founder & COO, LocalBanya.com, shares scope and challenges of the online business.

What was the rationale for you to start your retail venture online?

We decided to start LocalBanya based on our personal experiences with grocery shopping. After many trips to a supermarket and dealing with traffic, long queues and heavy shopping bags, we felt there was a better way to deal with this process. E-Commerce has really taken off in India and your typical consumer is very comfortable transacting online. It was only natural that shopping for groceries and household items would eventually start moving online. We felt that we each had the necessary skill sets to compliment each other and began building LocalBanya.com.

Do you feel online is giving you fast and good returns than it would have been from physical stores? If yes, what are the other reasons for starting online?

 The entire purpose to building a business like LocalBanya is to provide families with the convenience of shopping online and avoid the headaches associated with regular trips to a crowded supermarket. We feel that first and foremost LocalBanya adds value to people’s lives. We feel privileged to service people and benefit their lives in some small way. Being a start-up we are focused on building this business organically and learn as we go along. Great returns will come as we are able to add scale to our operations and service more customers all over India. We do not have high overheads that come along with having physical stores but there are other challenges that have to be met. Right now, we focus on acquiring new customers and keeping existing customers happy with our service.

So far what has been the response from your eCommerce venture?

 The response from the beginning has been great. We initially gained good traction from word of mouth and built from there. Over the last few months, we have started to advertise in print and radio and the feedback we have got has been very positive. This is reflected in the rise of customer registrations and order growth we are seeing month on month. We have also launched a mobile app, which is now starting to pick up traction as well. All in all, our LocalBanya brand has been very well received and we look forward to taking it to multiple metros very soon.

In a typical day what is your traffic plus conversion ratio?

We have seen very healthy growth rates in page views and other key metrics like time spent on site etc. Our conversion rates are above average for this industry

Do you get more traffic during week-days than weekends?

We find that traffic tends to spike on days we have print ads in general. Over a typical month, traffic tends to be heavier at the beginning as customers are looking to place larger orders to stock up for the month.

How you are tying up with Google and Facebook? How does the mechanism work with them?

We run a SEM program on google. It is a very essential part of any business to be advertising with google. It is extremely cost effective and has to be part of any marketing mix. We promote our business on Facebook as well and run ads from time to time. An active presence on social media lets us interact with our customers and get a sense of what people are saying about us.