Mobile App Strategy to Fight Market Leader – Gyan Fresh and AMUL.
Mobile App – Once Shakespeare have famously wrote – What’s in a mobile app? Well, if you ask anyone, what they can’t live without – most probably the answer is phone. This question is repeated many times. But no one asks the second leading question – what if all the apps on your phone are deleted, then? Think for few seconds – hope, you get the point. It is NOT the phone, but the apps which provide true value to consumers. Remove all apps and the lifeline of smartphone is stripped to the bare minimum feature phone.
Most of us are forced to stay inside home due to lockdown to contain the spread of Corona Covid-19 virus. From the start, only essential items were allowed, and milk is one of the allowed products. While firms struggled with the supply chain in the early stages, they managed to fix the loopholes get passes and people to make sure product reaches to the end consumers. Read how to do digital marketing in the time of corona here.
Amul, as we all know, is the market leader and one of the best advertising brands in India. Amul has made the most of covid induced TV consumption of serials like Ramayana. Amul enjoys a strong brand recall and trust among Indian consumers. Though it has faced challenges from regional players like Sudha, Medha, Nandini, Parag etc., it slowly managed to build a strong name for itself. The quality of the product has always helped in these vehemently fought battles of market share. If you are managing local brand, and Amul enters, you may get sleepless nights. However, there is a very interesting case from Uttar Pradesh– Gyan Fresh, which has managed to sneak into the weakness of Amul.
Before going further, can you guess what is the weakness of Amul? Well, if you have noticed the title of the post, you may guess it correctly. Even I was surprised to notice that Amul does not have a mobile app for consumers. Though it has apps to cater to supply chain side – farmers but not for end users. So, Gyan Fresh a local brand, not very well-known and just about acceptable quality, has the app for end users. App has just over 10,000 downloads. The app has pretty simple interface with 8 to 10 product units such as milk, curd, paneer (cheese), and bread which user can just tap and order. Users can also set whether products should be delivered daily, or on alternate days, or one time only. Users can see the order history and at the month end, everything is calculated which can be paid using cash or digital options. The simple convenience and specially the digital payment – (people are paranoid about touching paper currently in the time of covid) got a huge offline word-of-mouth recommendation. People told their neighbors, tenants, relatives in nearby localities and slowly, Gyan Fresh has successfully managed to hold on its own by exploiting the chink in the armor of Amul. It will be very interesting to follow and see how the next few months hold for Gyan – once the lockdown is over. Whether users stick to new tech convenience or would switch to typical delivery boy mode. Interestingly, such mobile app for ordering milk etc. were already available few years back at Bengaluru. Many suppliers /local shopkeepers used the app to get bulk orders from apartment building – to manage stocks and payments. Some startups made money on such innovative apps to fix daily problems with simple yet innovative solutions. Hopefully, corona forces firms to integrate tech at each step and improve supply chain. The modern supply chain is the one which connects manufactures to end users. I predict many more interesting innovations from local brands to happen soon to survive corona and become elf-reliant in true sense. Digital marketing and digital technologies will play the vital role in reviving businesses and economy.