Automation Can Kickstart Growth for Floundering FMCG Brands

Automation, digitisation and advanced analytics are changing the business landscape in India. While most business sectors are already on the maturity curve in the adoption of digitisation and automation tech, CPG and FMCG in India are the Johnny-come-lately sectors. Part of the reason has been the disbelief that technology can work in highly fragmented and traditional trade dominated markets like India.

 

Unsurprisingly, change has already come to India’s retail ecosystem. FMCG startups are using innovative business processes and newfangled retail intelligence platforms to make a dent in the market share of FMCG leaders. For instance, young companies like iD Fresh, are organised like technology companies and are leveraging analytics to ensure freshness of their products, reduce returns and carve a brand identity that's the envy of market leaders.

 

More and more FMCG brands realise that the only way around the new competition is to bring more visibility to their channels and product performance. They increasingly depend on retail intelligence platforms to aggregate and analyse data on consumer trends, behaviour, insights, preferences, and market trends.

 

Bizom, a leading retail intelligence platform and flagship product of Mobisy Technologies, quotes the example of its customer - a chocolate confectionery brand which is one of the largest chocolate manufacturers in the world. Lalit Bhise, CEO and Founder of Mobisy Technologies, said, “The confectionery brand wanted to increase the depth of distribution in India by selling more in each store rather than be present everywhere. They wanted to identify the right channels and outlets for their products. With Bizom’s retail intelligence platform, the brand was able to gain access to data on their current outlets - where they were selling, what they were selling, and how much they were selling.”

 

Indian companies like Parle Agro are using technology to drive high levels of efficiency in their sales team to drive greater reach and availability. Similarly, companies like Jyothy Laboratories use advanced analytics to expedite the movement of stocks from the warehouse to the consumer. By doing so, the company has reduced stock in trade and improved profitability.

 

The use of tech in these consumer companies has moved beyond digitisation into areas of creating a significant competitive advantage. Take the example of Bausch & Lomb, a leading global eye health products brand, which has over 20,000 Stock Keeping Units (SKUs). They have used tech to reduce the delivery time for lenses by almost 80%, thereby gaining a significant advantage and retailer preference for their brand.

 

Also, a leading global ice cream brand has reduced stock-outs by using fixed cameras and image recognition technology to understand stock levels. The brand is also using prediction models to determine refill periods for their ice-cream fridges.

 

The key to all such successes is not to be overawed with the complexity of technology. Organisations should be able to define clearly end outcomes and then make technology work for them.

 

Many CPG and FMCG organisations are striving to ensure that they gain market-share through technology in these days of lower consumption. It becomes the ammunition to win big when consumption picks up. It’s what separates the professionals from the amateurs.

 

Mobisy Technologies

Mobisy Technologies was founded in 2008 by Lalit Bhise, an early inventor of hybrid mobile programming. He also has patents pending in visual merchandising using image recognition. He is an expert on the Indian FMCG industry having worked closely with market leaders to advise and then actually solve their sales and distribution problems. His motto is to disrupt the retail industry using technology in a manner that helps the entire retail ecosystem move ahead digitally.

 

Mobisy uses the mantra of Algorithmic Jugaad whereby it places a very high value on entrepreneurship to drive greater success among customers.

 

Today, Mobisy is one of the fastest growing tech brands in India. The accolades speak for themselves:

• Ranked 3rd fastest growing technology company in India at Deloitte Technology Fast 50, 2017

• Ranked 43 in Financial Times’ 1000 High-Growth Companies Asia-Pacific list for 2018

• Highly rated by customers (4.6/5) on Gartner peer insights

• Top 3 in the Accenture Consumer Tech awards

 

About Bizom

Bizom, a Mobile first, SaaS-based suite of automation solutions, is the retail intelligence platform for brands and their retailers.

 

We are leaders in providing insights and intelligence to CPG brands in India and emerging markets and are now making inroads into markets in Europe and other developed markets. We help brands achieve smart distribution by improving their manpower efficiency, channel performance and product performance.

 

We achieve this by helping businesses first digitise their entire sales and supply chain and later help the move from a push-based distribution to a pull-based distribution using solutions that facilitate assisted and inspired selling.

 

Its customers include international brands such as Reckitt-Benckiser, Hershey’s, Nivea, Mars as well as top Indian brands such as Parle Agro, Jyothy Laboratories Limited, JK Helene-Curtis, Parag Milk Foods, among a fast-growing list of over 350 brands.