<span class="htext1"> Trailblazers:</span> Big Bazaar

Big Bazaar is seven years old. A look at how it modernised the ‘bhaaji-bartan’ market

In 2002, the consuming class of India was just coming alive. Credit card usage was on the rise, while modern trade was restricted to department stores aping the westernised shelf system and the occasional supermarket with self-service facilities. Consumption was waiting to take off, but there was no real opportunity for it to happen in a big way. Future Group’s hypermarket Big Bazaar launched under those retail conditions that year.

Big Bazaar spotted an opportunity in aspirational consumers wanting to consume more. In a lot of ways it shook people to buy things they needed to, but weren’t doing so because of inertia. For instance, bath towels or steel utensils are not changed in households very often. And Big Bazaar, with price points that one thought would never exist, plus range and quality, lured people in numbers to go for a change. Triggering this kind of consumptions was Big Bazaar’s sole aim.

“India is an underpenetrated country in many categories,” remarks Sadashiv Nayak, president, Food Bazaar and Big Bazaar. “Big Bazaar wasn’t just about convenience or an easy shopping environment; it was about making shopping a core part of building consumption.” The market-feel was retained by Big Bazaar, and not done away with, despite a modern shopping environment. The brand didn’t shy away from people ‘touching and feeling’ products before they bought them. Further, the retail chain educated its consumers on health foods, the usage of trolleys and even basic things like how to read its signages or how to best make use of its offers.

At the time of its launch, the neighbourhood grocer was sweating over whether he would be put out of business with the new giant replacing the need for a smaller shop. That didn’t quite happen. As Nayak puts it, Big Bazaar carried along vendors, shop-in-shops, farmers, and other partners, in its bid to create a retail revolution. By coming up with private brands, say for potato chips or fashion jewellery, it gave local chips manufacturers or fashion jewellery makers an opportunity to produce and to have their offering placed alongside national brands. “We never saw grocers as competition, but as partners in our drive to up consumption,” says Nayak. “Currently, modern trade is just five per cent of the economy, so what competition are we referring to?” he adds.

Big Bazaar created a ripple effect on the economy, increasing consumption as a whole as small vendors soon started stocking some of the things that Big Bazaar did. A clear demarcation was formed: for day to day needs, the vendor ruled roost, while for weekly or monthly bulk shopping it was Big Bazaar all the way.

Ad campaigns too, stressed on the affordability factor to bring in the masses, while also subtly highlighting the range of products and new categories it stocked. As 60 per cent of the country’s consumption is in food and related products, says Nayak, Big Bazaar had to make itself the recruiting category in this regard for modern trade.

Seven years down the line, the challenge remains the same: how to get people to upgrade from old products to the new. Nayak quotes Nielsen data when he says that Big Bazaar’s share in the modern trade environment today is around 35 per cent. With 120 outlets selling over 1,60,000 products at affordable prices across categories, Big Bazaar is indeed an example of the massification of modern trade.