Good Times in ‘Store’ for Online Grocery Retail?

As reported in our earlier post- Grocery Shopping is Now Just a Click Away, the Indian grocery market is the sixth largest grocery market and is valued at $360 billion. The market in India has grown at just over 4% from 2013. With a growing population of over 1.2 billion people, demand for groceries in India can only grow from here on. A rapidly growing component of the industry is modern retail, which currently forms 20% of the entire market at $70 billion. Rising disposable incomes of the Indian middle-class and growing populations in major cities are some of the drivers for growth for Modern Retail chains.

Some of the Online Grocery Portals in India

A small yet significant and rapidly expanding part of modern retail is e-grocery which is when customers making purchases on internet portals and receiving deliveries right at their doorsteps. In recent years in India has seen the growth of significant number of  e-grocers, who are selling all various varieties of products.

The online grocery business is still in its nascent stage with the existing stores being only a few years old and operating in limited geographies. Yet they are expected to employ about 20% of all the employees in the online retail sector. Every warehouse/sorting facility requires about 20-40 employees to manage inventory, SKUs, dealers, orders and deliveries.

Credits: Business Standard

Since this segment works with perishable items, there will be a demand for experienced supply chain management professionals, including procurement, inventory management, cold storage management, quality and logistics. Also the stores need to offer as many SKUs as possible in order to come out as a better alternative to the traditional retail stores that generally offer only about 1,000 SKUs. 

More recently, online grocery retailers have broadened their scope and are offering house-hold supplies, home-ware, kitchen-ware, personal care and body care products. This will help them in becoming a one stop solution for all house-hold products.

Groceries sell irrespective of conditions. People can stop going to the cinema or buying new shoes with rising inflation. But a consumer cannot stop buying grocery. People in the cities hardly get any time off from their busy schedules to go all the way to the grocery store to shop for items. These are the very consumers being targeted by the e-grocers. These are the consumers that can now easily shop on their mobile phones and personal computers. Considering the huge size of the potential market, online retail is going to enjoy a great future in India, provided these e-grocers can manage a strong and seamless supply chain ( Fixed delivery schedules, inventory and warehousing).

Read More : Business Standard – Long Way To Go

Cold Chain Quickie #12 – The Search for the Coolest Refrigerator

In the search for the coolest refrigeration technology we chanced upon a high tech cooler, which has 60 quarts of space, an 18-volt ice crushing blender, a removable waterproof Bluetooth speaker, USB input for charging devices, an LED Light for finding items in the dark, a cutting board, gear tie-down equipment, storage for plates, a bottle opener and extra wide rolling tires. Plus its available in orange and even on-demand colours. We found the swiss army knife of coolers!!

We now know what we are carrying on our next camping trip!!

Click on the link to learn more about ‘Coolest’,  High tech cooler will be the coolest thing at your party.

Read On: Mashable –High tech cooler will be the coolest thing at your party 

Cold Chain Quickie #12 – The Search for the Coolest Refrigerator

In the search for the coolest refrigeration technology we chanced upon a high tech cooler, which has 60 quarts of space, an 18-volt ice crushing blender, a removable waterproof Bluetooth speaker, USB input for charging devices, an LED Light for finding items in the dark, a cutting board, gear tie-down equipment, storage for plates, a bottle opener and extra wide rolling tires. Plus its available in orange and even on-demand colours. We found the swiss army knife of coolers!!

We now know what we are carrying on our next camping trip!!

Click on the link to learn more about ‘Coolest’,  High tech cooler will be the coolest thing at your party.

Read On: Mashable –High tech cooler will be the coolest thing at your party 

Completing The Cold Chain at the Collection Point – Innovation In The Dairy Supply Chain

India is the largest producer of milk in the world (Source: Food Navigator – Asia, Quartz), producing about 17% of all the world’s milk each year. The country produced just over 130 million tonnes of milk in the year 2012-13 compared to  63 million tonnes from 20 years ago (1993). Milk yield in India has grown at 4% per annum since the last decade, a rate that is almost double of what other countries have been able to achieve.

The country’s dairy industry is dominated by individual farmers who usually own a few cows or buffaloes and travel each morning to local milk collection centers in order to sell-off their daily produce. They are forced to commute each morning as they lack any refrigeration systems in their own homes and farms. While refrigeration is a vital parts of the milk supply chain, Indian dairy farmers are unable to afford refrigeration due to high input costs.

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The milk collection centers face difficulties concerning refrigeration due to power-cuts and shortages in rural areas. For these reasons, diesel-based generators are used to power the refrigeration systems. But diesel proves both economically and environmentally un-favourable, and milk still cannot be stored for long periods of time without refrigeration. The longer the milk sits without refrigeration the faster the quality of the milk deteriorates. The crucial element in the milk/ dairy supply chain is how quickly can the product temperature of Milk be dropped from +35 Degrees Celsius to 4 Degrees Celsius.

Rapid Milk Chiller – An Innovation on the Milk Supply Chain

Promethean Power Systems, founded by MIT graduate Sorin Grama along with Sam White is a US based company that focuses on innovating products that can impact millions of people positively. Promethean’s Rapid Milk Chiller, is a dome-shaped machine that couples to a thermal energy battery to cool milk from 35°C to 4°C. The rapid milk chiller cools the milk by means of a heat exchange with cold fluid inside the dome. When electrical power is not available, the rapid milk chiller can cool up to 500 liters of milk using only the thermal energy stored in the battery.

Chillers can be installed at village collection centers where farmers can deposit their milk produce. Each chiller can store upto 40 liters of milk that can be kept in the market for as long as two weeks. With this chiller, milk gets a longer shelf life, the quantity of milk sold increases due to less wastage and the villagers benefit from increased incomes. The milk chiller also saves the burden of daily trips to collection centers that the farmers were earlier forced to make.

Only 80,000 tonnes of cold-storage is available in India for the 130 million tonnes of milk that is produced each year. For a country that wastes billions worth of perishables each year, the rapid milk chiller is a giant step in address the missing the link in the Milk Supply Chain via an innovative application of refrigeration and reduced power needs.

Picture: Rapid Milk Chiller (Promethean Power Systems)

References: Promethean Power Systems – Website, MIT Grad Brings Refrigerator To India, BBC – When good milk turns bad, Quartz – India’s 75 million dairy farms now produce more milk than the EU

Completing The Cold Chain at the Collection Point – Innovation In The Dairy Supply Chain

India is the largest producer of milk in the world (Source: Food Navigator – Asia, Quartz), producing about 17% of all the world’s milk each year. The country produced just over 130 million tonnes of milk in the year 2012-13 compared to  63 million tonnes from 20 years ago (1993). Milk yield in India has grown at 4% per annum since the last decade, a rate that is almost double of what other countries have been able to achieve.

The country’s dairy industry is dominated by individual farmers who usually own a few cows or buffaloes and travel each morning to local milk collection centers in order to sell-off their daily produce. They are forced to commute each morning as they lack any refrigeration systems in their own homes and farms. While refrigeration is a vital parts of the milk supply chain, Indian dairy farmers are unable to afford refrigeration due to high input costs.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The milk collection centers face difficulties concerning refrigeration due to power-cuts and shortages in rural areas. For these reasons, diesel-based generators are used to power the refrigeration systems. But diesel proves both economically and environmentally un-favourable, and milk still cannot be stored for long periods of time without refrigeration. The longer the milk sits without refrigeration the faster the quality of the milk deteriorates. The crucial element in the milk/ dairy supply chain is how quickly can the product temperature of Milk be dropped from +35 Degrees Celsius to 4 Degrees Celsius.

Rapid Milk Chiller – An Innovation on the Milk Supply Chain

Promethean Power Systems, founded by MIT graduate Sorin Grama along with Sam White is a US based company that focuses on innovating products that can impact millions of people positively. Promethean’s Rapid Milk Chiller, is a dome-shaped machine that couples to a thermal energy battery to cool milk from 35°C to 4°C. The rapid milk chiller cools the milk by means of a heat exchange with cold fluid inside the dome. When electrical power is not available, the rapid milk chiller can cool up to 500 liters of milk using only the thermal energy stored in the battery.

Chillers can be installed at village collection centers where farmers can deposit their milk produce. Each chiller can store upto 40 liters of milk that can be kept in the market for as long as two weeks. With this chiller, milk gets a longer shelf life, the quantity of milk sold increases due to less wastage and the villagers benefit from increased incomes. The milk chiller also saves the burden of daily trips to collection centers that the farmers were earlier forced to make.

Only 80,000 tonnes of cold-storage is available in India for the 130 million tonnes of milk that is produced each year. For a country that wastes billions worth of perishables each year, the rapid milk chiller is a giant step in address the missing the link in the Milk Supply Chain via an innovative application of refrigeration and reduced power needs.

Picture: Rapid Milk Chiller (Promethean Power Systems)

References: Promethean Power Systems – Website, MIT Grad Brings Refrigerator To India, BBC – When good milk turns bad, Quartz – India’s 75 million dairy farms now produce more milk than the EU