"90% of India’s $700 bn food in grocery markets is dominated by kiranas"

Metro Cash & Carry India has championed the cause of kirana modernisation and digitalisation in India. Their efforts have led to a spike in kirana sales by up to 50 per cent. In this episode of Mrigashira, Charu Raizada was in conversation with Reshma Nandy, General Manager, Corporate Communications, Metro Cash & Carry India, to know more about how Metro Cash & Carry India has been an enabler in making the ‘Kiranas’ self-reliant and what it takes to communicate for a B2B retail brand.

Listen to the podcast here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/028R1pSBOD7AOqDCBqDJQk

PR professionals often find it challenging to come up with ideas when it comes to building a B2B brand. What is your secret of crafting compelling stories?

Historically, we have been a very conventional German brand, with a conservative communication approach. But over the last couple of years, we have been experimenting with different storytelling and messaging platforms. One tool that we have been using quite often is news jacking. Being a Global B2B brand, we have lot of limitations with giving out country specific information with respect to numbers. So, we have been using topical trends, the economic and political developments to garner interest; to give insights on market trends, customer preference, customer behaviour, and their buying patterns, from an industry standpoint.

We’ve been using different platforms and different tools to communicate our brand story effectively to stakeholders. A case in point I would like to highlight – our internal communication started much earlier in February, when there was very little information about COVID, as the European markets and our German headquarters were already grappling with the crisis. When the lockdown actually started, there was a lot of disruption that we faced. There was disruption of supply chain, transportation, all the essential items were hit, employees could not come to work. And while everyone was sitting at home safely, hundreds of employees on the shop floor were manning operations. They were the frontline warriors who were diligently ensuring that the customers especially, you know, the traders and kiranas, did not run out of their stock supplies. Our store employees have been very courageous to rise up to the challenge. In few of the cases, there have been female employees who have been managing operations of the entire floor. As the largest wholesale, on one hand, we had the task of ensuring adequate supply potential, as well as ensuring stringent safety standards and norms for our customers and employees at our stores. So, we had to roll out a complete integrated communication campaign which focused on health, wellness and safety of all our stakeholders.

Metro Cash & Carry India has championed the cause of kirana modernisation and digitisation. What has been your approach?

In India, there are total 12 million kiranas and 90% of India’s $700 billion food in the grocery market is dominated by these kiranas. After agriculture, kiranas are the second largest employment generators and the lockdown actually got the limelight back on these traditional corner shops. Neither the e-retailers nor the modern trade could match up to the competency of kiranas to do the last mile delivery to the customers, especially during the lockdown. They understand and know the pulse and pain of the customers.

We at Metro have been vocal about empowering the kiranas with technological solutions and for the past couple of years, we have been running our Smart Kirana program, which is typically aimed at modernising and digitalising their operations to help them become more competitive, and profitable. We realised that if we arm them with technology and basic data analytics, they can function more efficiently. We have helped them to remodel their conventional traditional closed format to a more modern open format approach. The end purpose is actually to help them grow their top line, their bottom lines and improve cash flows. Kiranas who have partnered with us have actually witnessed 40-50 per cent jump in their sales.

We are bringing about a transformational change in their lives, we communicate their stories – how they have seen value in our program, increasing footfall, income. We launched an e-commerce app and during the pandemic these conventional kiranas were actually shopping using the app. In fact, the app has delivered a 34 per cent increase of sales and been downloaded by over one-and-a-half lakh kirana owners.

We have focused on people’s story and our strategy has been to find those stories that connect, and communicate those stories to our external audiences as well as internal audiences, because people need to know those transformation stories.

What are your tips for PR professionals?

Everyone today is a crisis communicator, the pandemic has actually pricked our normal life and 2020 has actually changed how we look at crisis communication and you know, response mechanism. Communicators today need to have much more compelling narratives; they need to do much sharper storytelling to connect with their stakeholders. And the pandemic has really reiterated the importance of people and relationships in our lives.

*Edited for length and clarity

(Mirgashira is a podcast for Indian PR and Communication professionals anchored by RadhaRadhakrishnan and Charu Raizada. To listen to all episodes visit https://www.digitales.co.in/industry-insights/mrigashira-podcast/)