Delivering grocery to Puneites' doorstep, Rationhut.com

It’s truly an evolving online world. After books, stationery, air tickets – the next category picking up interest is selling grocery online. Where one class of consumers prefer strolling the aisles, touching and feeling products on shelf, the other one would rather switch on his computer, browse the aisles in the virtual world and pick up his ration. Owing to the hectic work life and distances, the second class of consumers is emerging as potential online shoppers who prefer convenience over physical effort on weekends, home delivered goods.

Weekend traffic jams, long billing queues, poor customer service at supermarkets, faulty credit card machines and many more such issues, inspired this husband – wife duo, Ashish and Shruti (who refused to give us their full names or share their photos, very odd we thought) to launch Pune's largest pure play online supermarket called Rationhut.com. The website houses around 350 brands and more than 4000 products spanning across categories like personal care, home care, baby care, beverages, etc. “We try to house brands which are popular as well as brands which we observe to be picking up pace in the local market. Our sole intention is to make available whatever any customer could need and demand,” says Ashish. Unlike any other online super markets in Pune, Rationhut doesn’t believe in the concept of ordering by phone.

Bootstrapped by the founders, the business delivers orders across all parts of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, except a few areas on the outskirts. There are no delivery charges for orders exceeding Rs 500. To match the busy schedules of its target segment, these deliveries are done in two time slots 7 am - 12 pm and 6 pm - 11 pm. However, customers do have a choice to request for another convenient time for delivery, pay cash on arrival or pay online. As a practice the venture calls the customer before delivering the products in his chosen time slot and confirms the address. Just in case the delivery is missed or the customer is not present, the delivery can be received by a duly authorized person at the same address or building. Rs.50 is charged for every order returned and redelivered.

“Rationhut has now become a trustworthy brand in a year’s time. We mean quality though we sell at prices lower than the MRP. Customers can see a visible monetary benefit when they shop for groceries online with us, of course along with other valuable savings like time and cost of travelling to a physical store. Currently we are averaging to about 20 orders a day at an average size of Rs 900 per order,” says Shruti. She says they are looking at 20 times growth of their current size keeping in mind the changing trends of conventional grocery shopping.

They have been marketing their site by way of offering discounts on Groupon and Times deal, doing radio advertising, newspaper inserts and have a special focus on digital marketing and SEO. While they currently purchase stocks from distributors, they intend to purchase directly from companies in future to eliminate mid-margins and thereby pass that benefit to customers.

Website: rationhut