ShopX acqui-hires GabbarDeals

Bengaluru based ShopX, a business to business e-commerce platform for small traders, has acqui-hired GabbarDeals, an omnichannel mobile phone retail brand.

The acquisition gives ShopX the assets, including stores and brand partnerships, of GabbarDeals, allowing it to expand its organized retail operations beyond Tier 1 cities in India. It will launch ShopX Edge, a chain of technology-powered mobile and electronic stores in Maharashtra, where GabbarDeals has a strong offline presence.

GabbarDeals sold phones of different brands online and offline as well. It had stores in Pune and Jalgaon with digitally enhanced features. The company claims to have achieved gross merchandise value (GMV) of Rs 1,000 crore across five years for its mobiles and electronics products.

Run by 10i Commerce Services Pvt. Ltd, ShopX was founded in 2014 by Sharma and Apoorva Jois, who had earlier founded Go Untucked, a startup in the fashion apparel segment. The B2B venture helps local kirana stores and small retailers conduct transactions on a single platform. ShopX primarily operates in three categories, food and groceries, digital and electronic services.

The company has more than 50,000 retailers on its network and currently is present in 300 towns and cities across India. It has three streams of revenue—a small, one-time fee whenever a retailer signs up, a transactional margin on sales from consumer brands on their network and revenues from marketing and brand building activities.

Tata Group to acquire GrocerMax

The Tata Group is buying out the management team and technology infrastructure of Gurgaon based GrocerMax to enter the online grocery business as consumers increasingly place orders for their supplies over the internet.

The new team will help set up the online platform for Trent Hypermarket, an equal joint venture between Tata and British retailer Tesco that will rival Amazon and Bigbasket in the nascent yet rapidly growing segment. GrocerMax will shut down its business in Gurgaon because the Tata group's grocery business is not present in North India. The Tata Group runs three formats under the Star Banner – Dailies, Market and Hyper and has around 42 stores.

For Tesco, the world’s third largest retailer has nearly 6,800 stores globally, its online business earns roughly 3 Billion in sales and is one of the rare such ventures that’s profitable. But the opportunity offered by the $500 Billion retail market is attractive for any player, foreign or local. Food and grocery account for almost 50% of the overall retail basket in India, although general merchandise, personal and home products fill up a bulk of the retailer’s profit pool.

Experts feel omnichannel retail offers consumers more ways to shop and interact with a retailer. GrocerMax is a hybrid platform for grocery that keeps only 10% inventory, sourcing the rest from supermarkets and provisional stores in real time. The online grocery space in India, which has seen a minor shakeout over the past year, has attracted more players as well. While LocalBanya and PepperTap suspended operations, Grofers shut in multiple cities.