Featured in the pic below is a Sales Promoter from Guntur, Mrs. Karimoon who comes to the supermarket at 6am, promotes and sells Levista Instant Coffee powder to the customers who throng the only such supermarket in that area.

She leaves the shop by 10am as the business is shuttered as per local Government orders, thanks to the forced lockdown for 21 days across India due to the ongoing N-Covid 19 crisis. Call this sincerity to her work or need of the hour. But I am proud to work with such a dedicated team, a total of 220 odd people who are part of my portfolio and have been slowly but surely moving this giant mountain of restrictions that’s staring at us, making middle-mile and last-mile delivery almost impossible. My Senior Managers waited for hours at the gates of relevant authorities at Bangalore & Chennai to get manpower passes so our gentlemen can move around freely – to ensure our coffee reaches Retail stores, being an essential commodity. Risking their own lives, the team has lived up to the moment, but we have tons of things to be done over the next few days.

It’s been 3 months since I joined Levista where I oversee the entire Sales & Distribution coupled with Marketing, Branding and of course Strategy. Levista Instant Coffee Powder and Filter Coffee Powder share valuable shelf space with the likes of Internationally acclaimed names such as Bru, Nescafe & Sunrise while also brushing shoulders with local biggies such as Narasus, Tata Coffee, Cothas, etc.,  and several other hitherto unknown and no-name (freshly ground) Coffee powder names which are a perennial purchase for a number of households across cities. The brand currently sells across Tamil Nadu, Pondy, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh & Telengana through General Trade Retail stores, most popularly known as Kirana Stores / Mom & Pop Stores which measure anywhere between 100 sft to 4,000 sft (the new age supermarkets which ape the size, business models and in many cases even surpass the efficiency of Organized retail chains).

On the Modern Trade front, Levista is present across India at select stores through Reliance Retail, More Retail, Spencers Retail Stores, Metro Cash & Carry, and online at Amazon, Flipkart, Big Basket among others. Over time, we intend to grow our focus on all formats.

I have always batted for the David Vs. Goliath theory, that Goliath would finally win. And Goliath for me was always, the Kirana shops. The 12 million odd Mom & Pop stores that dot the lanes, by-lanes, streets and high streets of the country together form the indomitable Goliath. With skeletal staff and minimalistic sophistication of their business (and that’s why they’re called unorganized or semi-organized), the Kiranas set about their day to day business with ease, a practice that they have acquired from their previous generation or by themselves. If they survive a bare 3 years into this business, they are here for the long term. Year 1 is acclimatization & trials, Year 2 - Familiarity with Brands, Year 3 – Profitability & sustenance; from here on, there’s no stopping them.

Modern Retailers with all their might have faced the severest challenges in their entire lifetimes during this lockdown, something that was unprecedented in our lifetimes. Although most of them have world class processes, large DCs and a seasoned SCM, add to it some of the best minds in the country to run the show, the lockdown has come as a terrible shock with absolutely no means to operate daily business with a crippling logistics & distribution network. At Levista, we were not able to open our warehouses for the past two weeks due to non-availability of passes for our personnel to operate. Although there was a demand from modern retailers, we couldn’t supply to them. And us, being a very, very small FMCG company.

Kiranas, on the other hand have seen brisk business of essentials and have even managed to pick up the stocks themselves from the nearby Distributors. While I have always argued that both the Organised & the unorganized shall co-exist in India, we have seen it first hand now during this ongoing crisis why & how they both can co-exist indeed.

On top of all this, the hype of "E-Commerce killing traditional Retail" has been well negated, with the first casualty being the Top E-Commerce companies who were neither able to get their staff to deliver the stocks, nor were they able to respond to customer's urgent requirements. At this time, it was the humble neighbourhood corner shops which have come to the rescue of Customers and the Number One reason for this is Convenience. Kiranas will always be the first- and go-to retail touch point in India, no matter how big the Organised Retailers grow. At the moment, around 10% of the USD 650 Bn Retail Market is Organised.

We have a very long way to go. Here's saluting the spirit of Entrepreneurship of small traders who are going out of the way to ensure customers are well serviced.