AGS Horizon - Retail Connect 2.0

AGS Transact Technologies Limited (AGSTTL) provides innovative and customized payment solutions to its customers. We continue to be pioneers in payment solutions by delivering secure, innovative products that engage a customer across the product value chain in a cost-effective manner.

To further strengthen this, we launched a visionary project Horizon to fuel digital transformation. Horizon is an initiative to reimagine the future of how people and businesses exchange value. Innovation and change are the two levers that project Horizon relies on to create solutions for the future. Connect, Accelerator, Hackathon and Immersion are the four pillars of Horizon

The first episode of AGS Horizon’s Retail Connect Virtual Summit was successfully conducted on 26th June 2020. The second episode of Retail Connect virtual summit revolved around the idea of building a new horizon for retail in the #NewNormal.

There has been a sudden surge in consumer demand for e-services could be due to the implementation of social distancing norms and lockdown measures. These new norms are finding increasing acceptance amongst consumers and adoption by traditional businesses. Segments such as on-demand delivery services related to fresh produce, online education, and social engagement platforms from gaming to OTT platforms, online collaborative tools, e-pharmacies, online consultations are a few areas that may have found their turning point to a highway.

On 11th September the Retail Connect Virtual Summit in its second episode saw an overwhelming response from delegates all across the country. From the very start, the webinar focused on the idea of The Next Digital Horizon: Building Capabilities for a new world.

Divided into 2 broader segments the event also had varied interactive quizzes and polls in between to engage the participants. Here are the key pointers from the speakers of the event, which summaries the discussion that took place at the webinar.

First Session: Exploring the vast horizon and possibilities of e-services and e-commerce

Siju Narayan, Chief Experience Officer, RexEmptor Consult introduced the session by exploring the e-commerce possibilities of retail and emphasized on the business situation at present and hinted at a positive retail atmosphere during the festive season. He went on to moderate the session and here’s what the panelists had to say about e-commerce environment and business in general.

“We have been witnessing the growth of digital commerce, since the start of the lockdown. With people staying more at home their consumption has increased and that has resulted into a hike in their basket size. Consumers are more conscious about what they want to purchase and food items to essentials are certainly ruling their choices right now. Moreover, consumers who were not too keen on shopping online has now shifted their preferences and are confident about shopping online,” Piyush Kumar Chowhan, Group Chief Information Officer, LuLu Group International.

“Initially just like everyone else, we were also in a shock and needed some time to grasp the pandemic and its effect. However, we realized very early into the lockdown that our robust supply chain and manufacturing processes was ready to serve our customers. That’s when we started the production of face masks. We were able to ship our first order of masks on 31st March and from then on orders have not really stopped for us. Courtesy our e-commerce presence we have been able to cater to our customers comfortably,” Soumya Kant, Founding Member, Clovia.com mentioned.

“Customers are staying home and this helped them take a closer look at every nook and corner of their homes. This has definitely allowed them a chance to focus on furniture buying. They are progressively purchasing furniture that not only help them beautify their spaces but are also up on the utilitarian side. We are fascinated by the furniture purchase trend picking up and the we have successfully registered our pre-COVID sales numbers and are now set to reach our y-o-y growth numbers,” Hussaine Kesury, CCO, Pepperfry highlighted.

“With the onset of the pandemic, essentials became the need of the hour. Consumption capacity increased and the consumers began to increase their purchase scope. Grofers has registered good numbers, the brand has been in business all along the last few months,” Jacob Singh, Independent Consulting CTO.

Second Session: How is e-commerce redefining the ways of doing business?

How are brands responding to this sudden surge of consumer demands online, what are the technologies they have used to refine commerce? How are brands and retailers enabling digital payments to cater to the altering customer behaviour in the #NewNormal? These were the points of discussion for the second session of the day and from the start the speakers rested their thoughts around this broader subject.

Sheetal Choksi, Co-founder and Director, Word Hatter was the moderator for this session and given her industry expertise she straightaway dived into the discussion to get views from the esteemed panelists on the concept of e-commerce and how it is helping businesses navigate in the present scenario.

Shanth Kumar, Head of Digital – NAOS highlighted, “The trend for make-up and grooming picked up tremendously during the lockdown. We were quite apprehensive about the business losing momentum, but surprisingly even though going out was not an option, women went on to splurge on grooming products. This kind of pumped the industry and Bioderma sales too went up.”

Punit Chahar, Head of Digital, Koovs.com was quick to draw our attention to the e-commerce space wherein his brand features. “Even though initially fulfilling orders was a concern as most of our warehouses were shut and then the logistics was a headache and many pincodes were featuring within the red zone. However, COVID expanded the retail horizon and this is going to benefit all of us in the long term too. Also, the shift from offline to online is not a category driven adoption, rather it is a lifestyle driven adoption. That is why I can surely say that the trend is here to stay”.

Ranjan Sharma, CIO, Bestseller India agrees that this trend is not going to go away, he says “With time the shopping experiences will normalize, but the online footfalls of customers are not going to reduce. Earlier for our brand we have witnessed 85% traffic offline and 25% was online shoppers. Even though we feature within the lifestyle category, we have been successfully able to register 3 to 5 times more online traffic until now. A brand’s conversation today has diversified and they are speaking to the customer in a lot of other ways using varied tools. This hints at a new trend of shopping up in the #NewNormal.”

Rithish Saralya, VP Engineering, RedBus elaborates, “Safety has now taken the centrestage of everything we do. The consumers want to depend on brands that assure safety. Brands, which go on to stay agile in this environment will be able to trace the micro consumer behaviour changes and will be able to react accordingly. This is the time to keep the footing strong and survive.”

Soumen Das, Deputy General Manager, Marketing & VM, Skechers India brought our attention to how payments have evolved over the last few months. He says, “Wallets have picked up in the last few months and we are strategizing our omnichannel presence to cater to the new inflow of customers. Even though our e-commerce traffic was getting a boost, but we need to build our product team and delivery team to go robust on our omnichannel entity.”

At the end of the discussions, there was an open forum where the audiences as well as the panelists were asked to put forward their questions. Some very enthralling and exciting questions were discussed among the attendees and the panelists. This led to a successful closure of the second edition of AGS Horizon’s Retail Connect Virtual Summit where we certainly believe everyone well understood the evolving strategies for a new world

 “For an organization it may well be #NewNormal, but for a consumer it is #NowNormal.”