People Have Reduced Buying Frenzy: Spencer's Retail's Shashwat Goenka

Spencer’s Retail, part of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, is the only retail chain in the country that has kept 90 per cent of its stores operational the national lockdown to contain the coronavirus. Shashwat Goenka, sector head for FMCG & Retail at the group, in an exclusive interview with Avishek Rakshit discusses how his company continues its business

With the lockdown in place, what is the situation with Spencer’s Retail and Nature’s Basket?

Both Spencer’s Retail and Nature’s Basket are operational and we are the only retailer in the country that has 90 per cent of its stores up and running at this time. We have 160 stores for Spencer’s and another about 34 stores for Nature’s Basket totaling almost about 200 stores.

At the moment, people are buying a lot more of staples, grocery items, cleaning products, sanitisers, masks and others. As a result, the private label at Spencer’s--Smart Choice--has picked up very well.

There was a lot of panic buying which happened on the eve and during the lockdown. What is the situation now?

In the first 3-4 days of the lockdown, people would come and buy enough grocery, which would last them two-three weeks, as they weren’t sure what will happen next, but now the government has given people reason enough for not resorting to panic purchase.

Now we are seeing that people have reduced the buying frenzy and purchasing week-on-week. It is because people now know that there is a continuous supply chain of essential items which is always available.

How do you see panic buying boosting your revenue?

The store is a combination of essential as well as non-essential items. We have key non-essentials like homeware, electronic items, clothing and others which we have put off from the store and not allowing consumers to purchase those. So, these items, which technically are higher margin categories, aren’t selling right now

Do you think the momentum in these categories can be maintained in the near term?

As consumers aren’t able to spend on non-essential items, their purchasing pattern is more skewed towards essential items now. As things ease out, people will start buying items which hitherto they weren’t able to purchase like non-essential stuff so there would be a spike in sales of the non-essential item

Across the industry we are seeing delivery tie-ups of essential items with aggregators. Has Spencer’s and Nature’s Basket done the same?

We have done almost 9-10 different tie-ups for delivery of essential items including Uber, Flipkart, Rapido and many others. We were the first company to reach out to these delivery and service companies proactively and these were all done within the first 2-3 days of the lockdown

Do you intend to take this model forward even after lockdown is lifted?

At times of Covid-19 spread these tie-ups are definitely here to stay. The idea is to work together now but one needs to revisit these once the situation normalizes and then we can take a call.

On the technical front, what initiatives have you taken?

We are launching a new chat-bot which will be ready to go online in the next 3-4 days. It basically is a URL which will ask about the delivery pin code and once it is entered, it will show a list of available stores and a list of items which can be delivered. Once the consumer finalizes it, the chat-bot then shows the delivery person and the available time-slots for delivery. It will be a big game changer.

Across sectors, planned capex is getting postponed. Are you also doing the same?

We had planned about 3-4 new stores in Kolkata, Gurgaon, Hyderabad during the latter half of the first quarter. Now there will be some defermen

Now that grocery and essential items are in demand, would you now focus more on this front rather than apparel which has been your key focus area

Once the situation normalsies the primary focus will come back to apparels.