B2B marketplace udaan woos kirana store owners in first digital ad

A quick chat with the brand’s marketing head Suvid Bajaj about the campaign and the challenges he faced during the COVID-induced lockdown.

Business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce platform udaan has unveiled its first digital video campaign focused on the kirana shop owners (Food-FMCG category). The campaign highlights the ease of doing business for these owners using the udaan app.

This campaign is part of a plan undertaken by udaan to expand its footprint in the Food-FMCG category across the country, while revolutionising the way the kirana shop owners currently source their daily stocks.

Conceptualised by McCann Worldgroup Bangalore, the film features Bollywood actor Pankaj Tripathi as the owner of Gupta kirana store, a user and strong advocate of udaan. His neighbour, also a store owner operating in the same category, is intrigued by the fact that Gupta gets new stock delivered every day, and goes to meet him. Gupta then educates the unaware kirana store owner about udaan’s offerings both at the product and service level, and gives him the confidence to buy stock for his shop from udaan.

The film aims to change the way kirana stores have been doing business by leveraging technology and, thereby, opening the doors to more profits.

Speaking about the ad, Suvid Bajaj, marketing head, udaan, tells afaqs! that the primary objective of the campaign is to drive awareness about the udaan platform among grocery and kirana shop owners across all its Food/FMCG markets.

“We had to very clearly communicate our core proposition, while at the same time also address their key concerns about online platforms. In addition, we had to instil confidence among our target customers (kirana store owners) that they would be making the right choice for their business by partnering with udaan.”

Founded in 2016, udaan has operations across categories, including lifestyle, electronics, home and kitchen, staples, fruits and vegetables, FMCG, pharma, toys and general merchandise. Headquartered in Bengaluru, the platform has a network of over three million retailers in 900 cities and 20,000 sellers across the country.

Bajaj says that the core TG for the campaign is grocery and kirana retailers.

He added that the brand is witnessing renewed growth momentum across all its categories since the country has started to unlock. “The (COVID) pandemic has made the late adopters realise the benefits of e-commerce, and start considering technological platforms such as udaan as an integral part of their business.”

When we asked him about the challenges he, as a marketer, faced during the nationwide COVID-induced lockdown, Bajaj mentions that the need to communicate, reassure and stay in touch with our business partners increased manifold during the pandemic. “As a business partner, it was our job to address their concerns and keep all our channels of communication open during this time.”

The digital campaign #kholomunafekashutter is currently live on udaan’s digital handles.