Future Group, which has one of the largest chain of retail super-shops in India under Big Bazaar brand, have now launched a unique franchisee based direct selling business model called Big Bazaar Direct as per Business Standard.
Big Bazaar Direct was first launched in Nagpur three weeks back on pilot basis and will be extended across the country in next couple of months.
Here is how the model works – Big Bazaar Direct appoints direct small franchisees, who will be given a tablet called “Big Bazaar Direct tablet”. The tablet will carry over 1000 deals from their Big Bazar retail stores.
These tablets will essentially serve the franchisees as their store front-end. The customer can look up the catalogue of products available on these tablets and place their orders with the franchisee. Once the order is placed on the tablet, customers will receive SMS confirmation upon which they will need to make the payment to franchisees.
Customers are expected to receive their orders within 3-7 days from the date of the order. Franchisee will get paid for every order placed through them, while the logistics of delivery will be taken care by the company. The company plans to bring down the delivery timeline to 24 hours in metro cities, while 48 hours in smaller cities.
Big Bazar Direct is expecting to have over 1 Lakh franchisee tie-ups over next 2 years.
In order to become a Big Bazaar Direct franchisee, they will need to first pay Rs. 1000 as application fees and will need to submit KYC documents for verification. Once the documents are verified and they are selected as a direct franchisee, they will need to make an investment of Rs. 3 Lakh as follows:
- INR 1,00,000/- Non interest bearing refundable security deposit.
- INR 1,00,000/- as initial advance which is to be used for placing order.
- INR 1,00,000/- Set Up charges for Big Bazaar Direct Tablet, initial branding, one year training, launch material etc.
Our Take
We think that success of franchisee model that Big Bazaar Direct is banking on depends on how many franchisees they are able to rope in. If they have even half of expected 1 Lakh franchisee, it should really work out great. However, getting to that number will be quite difficult for Big Bazar given the steep upfront franchisee fee of Rs. 3 Lakh.
For a average person, shelling out that kind of money will be a huge task – they should have made it easier for people to take the franchisee with lesser initial investment.
Not considering the investment factor, we think this model would have definitely appealed to small shopkeepers and individuals who could extend their services by offering Big Bazaar catalogue of products to their existing customers.
We will need to wait and see as to how many people actually join this unique business model proposed by Future Group.
What do you think?