Future Group turns to e-tailers for shoppers

The group says its hypermarket chain Big Bazaar has tied up with Snapdeal

After complaining for long at e-commerce entities for selling below cost price, Kishore Biyani's Future Group is increasingly getting entrenched in the online play, through tie-ups with prominent players such as Paytm and Snapdeal.

Earlier, it had partnered Amazon, too. The idea is to reach more shoppers. On Friday, the group said its hypermarket chain, Big Bazaar, had tied up with online marketplace Snapdeal. With this, Big Bazaar's five-day ‘Maha Bachat’ sale, from Saturday to Wednesday, would be available on Snapdeal.

Snapdeal is also holding a discounted ‘Wish for India sale’ separately on its site.

Future Group recently tied up with payments and commerce platform Paytm, on which Big Bazaar became an anchor store. This allows Paytm users to make online purchases at Big Bazaar.

“The partnership between Snapdeal, and Big Bazaar leverages the massive reach of Snapdeal and the wide assortment that Big Bazaar offers through its hypermarkets,” Big Bazaar said.

Asked why Big Bazaar chose to go with Snapdeal when it had a tie-up with Paytm, Rajan Malhotra, president, retail strategy & convergence, Future Group, said: “The Paytm association is a long-term one; the Snapdeal tie-up was only for Maha Bachat. Besides, the talks with Snapdeal were work-in-progress, which fructified now.”

Future also had an exclusive tie-up with marketplace giant Amazon for marketing its fashion brands and products, which ended a while ago, Biyani said recently.

“We are not against e-commerce firms. We are only against heavy subsidising of products to gain market share. It is a great medium to reach a new set of customers and new geographies,” Malhotra said.

Asked if Future was tying up with many e-commerce entities as its omni-channel strategy was not progressing as expected, Malhotra said this wasn't so.

"Many aspects of our omni-channel strategy are operational and some are yet to be operational," he said, adding: "How we execute the plan is internal to the group."

According to sources in the group, the omni-channel strategy started with its electronics chain, Ezone, where the offline and online operations are integrated. The group has created a separate team to implement the plan.

Future also acquired online portal Fabfurnish earlier this year and relaunched it. It has plans to integrate the operations of its home products chain, Home Town, with Fabfurnish.