Reasoning bets big on Indian retail mart

Reasoning Global eApplications, a Hyderabad-based multi-channel solutions provider for the retailing industry, is planning to power about 20,000 retailers by the middle of the next financial year by MartJack, a solution that helps organised retailers or single store owners to optimise growth.

“Today, we have 2,000 stores powered by MartJack across 300 retailers, including Videocon, Gitanjali Group and Nest Retail. Our current plan is to move from 300 to 5,000 retainers by the end of the current financial year. Primarily, we are targeting India as a whole as growth is happening here, and our idea is grow across all the Tier-I and Tier-II cities,” Anubhav Kushwaha, vice-president (business strategy and alliances) of Reasoning, told Business Standard.

Offered as a software-as-a-service for the retail sector, MartJack helps marketers to reach out to an increasing segment of potential and serious buyers from the web and mobile, resulting in increased footfalls and increased sales.

Stating that online retailing as a segment was currently pegged at $500 million in India and growing at more than 30 per cent year-on-year over the last five years, Kushwaha said “This trend is likely to remain the same for at least three to four years, with the key drivers being increasing penetration of the Internet and mobile, besides flexibility in adoption and security of payment services.”

Reasoning, which went to the market with MartJack about six months ago, had so far infused $3 million (approximately ' 14 crore) into the company, raised through a closed group of non-resident Indians from West Asia.

“At present, our revenues are close to Rs 20 lakh per month, and we expect this to reach Rs 1 crore per month by March 2011 on the back our of our expanding retailer network,” Kushwaha said, adding the company was currently working on creating online market places (like eBay or Rediff) on a slightly smaller platform targeting media and product companies who were interested in doing ecommerce with their current consumer base.