Headquartered in Hyderabad, QWIPO is a tech-based B2B marketplace for groceries and FMCG products. The platform has taken up the challenge of fixing India's inefficient retail supply chain by shortening the distribution channel, optimizing logistics, and reducing wastage through predictive analytics. QWIPO is using technology to empower retailers by defragmenting and standardizing wholesale distribution. Further, it simplifies business for wholesalers through customer discovery, secure payments, and super-efficient logistics. The company has seen increasing confidence amongst retailers across Hyderabad, Vijayawada, and surrounding semi-urban areas and is turning into a bustling marketplace with prime wholesale vendors across the region. Having successfully tested the technology, process, and logistics, QWIPO is now set to expand operations into five metropolitan markets by the end of 2022. In an exclusive interview with FoodTechBiz, Siva Morisetti, founder of QWIPO, explains how the platform built for India is using the latest innovations in technology and is resolving problems that have long plagued traditional Indian retail supply chain.

FTB - Tell us about QWIPO and its business model

Siva Morisetti - QWIPO is a multi-vendor supplier platform for online Groceries, Staples, and FMCG categories serving millions of customers in southern India. The company provides the business retailers with prompt services ensuring timely delivery and essentials at optimum prices. QWIPO sales team is empowered with insightful data to help the customers with near-zero lag and earliest convenience. The business advisors regularly stay in touch with the retailers from onboarding to supporting daily transactions. This eCommerce platform serves customers with time slots until late at night.

FTB - Please share your observations on the changing buying patterns.

Siva Morisetti - There has been a tremendous change in buying and selling after the advent of Pandemic. Previously Retailers were eager enough to commute to local markets to purchase the staples, groceries, and FMCG essentials for their inventory; this ate away a lot of their personal and professional time as well. In this traditional route of business, the prime aspect to focus on the growth of their business and thus the customers were amiss.

However, post the pandemic, we have seen a considerable increase in the awareness of modern-day shop shopkeepers who shifted gears to purchase from b2b platforms that are convenient and accessible to them. We could help onboard many such business retailers eager to explore options such as ours, which is like a one-stop destination for all their business needs.

FTB - In your opinion, what are the major issues with the Indian retail supply chain, and how can we overcome those?

Siva Morisetti - There have been many issues in the Indian supply chain, but the following are the three major ones along with their proposed solutions:

● Procurement: Transparent procurement does not exist. It is extremely difficult to trust the supplier; prices are not seen transparently (varies from enquiry to enquiry and influence of the buyer). A digital platform that onboards vetted suppliers/vendors would help retailers conduct transactions with the vendors with peace of mind.

● Logistics: Currently, intra-city procurement, truck utilization is not optimal almost all the time. If the truck utilization is not 90% of the capacity, the logistics cost will get baked into the product's price. With aggregated optimized logistics, aggregating orders from multiple retailers, the utilizations can be vastly improved.

● Digital Payments & Fintech Lenders: Currently, businesses conduct transactions with cash, resulting in many challenges - time delays, commissions, loss of trail at times, etc. Also, they reach small lenders near him for exorbitant interest rates for capital needs. Digital payments & large fintech lenders (supplying capital directly on the platform) help him with these challenges.

FTB - Do you feel that technological interventions/advancements can help solve the Indian retail supply chain issues?

Siva Morisetti - Yes. India being the fastest in technology adoption, many grassroots level problems like sourcing channels, quicker last-mile delivery, inter & intrastate efficient, optimized logistics channels, point to point nearest procurement channel, convenient digital payments, price transparency, lending from fintech partners, etc are being solved using intensive technology.

FTB - How QWIPO platform aims to solve the problems of sourcing and logistics for businesses?

Siva Morisetti - Sourcing and logistics are the backbones of the retail sector, QWIPO solves both of these problems for the business retailers and the prime vendors, wholesalers, distributors by creating a decentralized marketplace platform that enables retailers to procure from a vetted supplier on the platform who is very near to him. QWIPO handles the complete logistics.

The marketplace helps the prime vendors, wholesalers, distributors a single-stop solution for all their sales, logistics, operations, and customer service needs. In contrast, for the end retailer, we provide them with single-click procurement, logistics, competitive pricing, a wider SKU selection catalog & multiple vendors on the platform.

FTB - How do you ensure quality and supply efficiency through your platform?

Siva Morisetti - We have a dedicated quality assurance team who are trained to track the quality of the supplies efficiently. The products will be loaded in the delivery truck only if they pass the series of quality tests. Even after this if the customer is dissatisfied with the product, then he can return the product with an option to get a refund.

We ensured that customers get what they are promised. Their core business lies in timely procurement and so what we promise on the platform has to be committed. Hence, we gave utmost importance to the operations team who honors the commitment of delivery to our customers.

FTB - How QWIPO is helping Kirana stores and local retailers cope with demand from consumers post COVID?

Siva Morisetti - Procurement has been a major road blocker for the retailers during the covid seasons due to the broken supply chain, a retailer couldn't go to the wholesale market for his daily business needs, but with the QWIPO marketplace, the wholesale market has come to his fingertips, all the wholesale vendors from whom he used to purchase by going to the market are now available at a single click along with a hassle-free doorstep delivery logistics.

FTB - Tell us about your future plans

Siva Morisetti – In the coming years, we are planning for:

QWIPO Capital - To lend capital to the customers through fintech platforms onboarded on our QWIPO platform.

Self-Onboarding Platform for Trucks - We currently manage our fleet through partnerships. We plan to build an application for individual onboarding drivers and new fleet owners as we grow. With this application, new drivers will create profiles and apply to drive with us.

Other Product Categories - The platform built has been agnostic to the product. Currently, we operate in groceries, staples, and FMCG categories. We plan to expand to other product categories such as electronics.