By Tanya Agarwal
The CEO of Future Group, Kishore Biyani has started taking inspiration from Alibaba as he plans to allure customers with various forms of entertainment. This will primarily include online games and social media ventures like live shows. Reportedly, this is being done as a part of the Big Bazaar Sabse Saste 5 Din sale. The retailer has invited customers and gamers to play the online game during its event. These players would have a chance to win shopping vouchers worth up to $156.7 Million (INR 1000 Cr).
The game will feature various deals that in the form of value/points. For each game, there will be a pre-determined score that a player must reach to win rewards. The users will be able to redeem these vouchers from the rewards section of the game from January 23, 2018. Biyani is targeting total sales of $156.7 million (INR 1000 Cr) from this 5-day long mega discount event that begins on 26 January 2018.
Inspiration from Jack Mas Alibaba
According to a recent report, Biyani sought inspiration from the Chinese e-commerce giant for the marketing campaign. “The idea is to blend online shopping with offline stores or O2O. This already accounts for 10% of our sales, said Biyani in a media statement.
It was reported that Biyani was part of the star-studded ‘Single’s Day‘ event that Alibaba hosted. The event was organised in Shanghai and the guest list included several celebrities like actress Nicole Kidman and singer Pharrell Williams among many other local celebrities. Following the event, Alibaba saw its sales hit a new record level at $25.3 billion.
Futures future
Future Group is planning to open Big Bazaar pop-up stores in about 50 cities and localities. These will ease the billing process with pre-book pass ahead of future events in areas that Big Bazaar stores currently dont reach. Online, the Future Group hopes to reach over three crore Indian consumers through its Facebook Live session. Furthermore, they plan to offer exclusive offers and coupons on an hourly basis to boost walk-in sales. On 2 November 2017, Biyani launched the retail 3.0 model called ‘Tathaastu’ in a Nasscom Product Conclave event in Bengaluru. The model plans to blend technology totally with the traditional brick and mortar business model. Using this, the Future Group plans to become Asias largest integrated consumer retailer by 2047 with an expected revenue of $1 Trillion.
Before the current plans were announced, Kishore Biyani was known for buzzing the media corridors. He stated that the virally expanding online retail sector in India can be threatened with the traditional physical retail models. This is because the former has suffered from a low market share at with a relatively higher cost of business. He also added that physical and digital are not separate, as eventually they must be layered together. Surprisingly, Biyani stated then that he would not invest or operate in an e-commerce space for at least the next two years.
Amidst the growing influence of online marketplaces, it is to be noted that Alibaba has been trying to increase its influence in the Indian e-commerce market with its investeePaytms e-commerce division, Paytm Mall. Also, in the highly competitive landscape of the e-commerce market of India, Ratan Tatas attempts to merge offline and online sale campaigning methods have been considered a smart move. However, the Indian e-commerce market is price sensitive and lacks the digital penetration levels witnessed in the Chinese e-commerce markets, which have contributed significantly to Alibabas fortunes. In the long term, it will be interesting to see what will roll out for Kishore Biyani during the five-day Republic week sale event.
Biyani wants a similar model in India. “While we have launched the Republic day sale more than a decade ago, we have taken inspirations such as bringing celebs for live gaming show on Facebook and opening pop-up stores from Alibaba. The idea is to blend online shopping with offline stores, or O2O, which already accounts for 10% of our sales,” said Biyani, adding that he is targeting sales of over Rs 1,000 crore from the five-day mega discount event during the Republic Day week.
Why the Republic Day?
Starting as a day-long sale on the 26 January in 2006, Big Bazaars connection with the Republic day has become a serious revenue generator, generating roughly five to seven per cent of its annual sales. In its first year itself, the crowd frenzy escalated so much that the company was forced to call the police for managing the situation.
All the top e-commerce companies like Amazon India and Flipkart will be offering deep discounts in the first online sales event of the year starting this Monday. However, according to Devangshu Dutta, CEO of Third Eyesight, Big Bazaar has an edge”When a company talks only about discounts, people will just look for deals. But when the discount is combined with excitement and entertainment, it contributes to the sale event. This (Big-bazaar event) will lift it above just a discount mechanism.
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