‘Single-store approach and 100 per cent growth are something that we are looking at this year’

Retail, a nascent industry in India has not really adopted technology in a big way until recently. This scenario is now slowly but surely changing, with the competition increasing due to the entry of many big and small players entering the foray. An opportunity that has been cashed in by Rakhee Nagpal. Coming from a business background of business solutions, this 29 year old graduate in economics and business finance and holding a masters degree in marketing from London University started Dynamic Vertical Solutions (DVS) in the year 2006 to provide IT solution to businesses. She is quite happy how her organisation has been functioning and feels it was a strategically smart move to start focusing on the retail industry specifically. In a recent tête-à-tête, she shared her views with Sarimul Islam Choudhury of Indiaretailing.com about her dream project.


IndiaRetailing: How does technology help retailers at large?
Rakhee Nagpal: Technology helps retailers run their entire business on a single platform. For instance, a retailer, running a store/chain of stores comprising 5,000 employees, means he has to manage not only a lot of people but also keep track of a whole lot of merchandise at any given point of time. So, if the business is structured on a Microsoft platform or the retailer has access to an IT based solution, managing such a store becomes a whole lot easier. A solution like this would mean that, the CEO, managers, marketers can check transactions instantaneously and other merchandise/stock movements even sitting remotely at a back office. An ERP based solution allows the management to announce instantaneous in store promotions, start a contest, withdraw a faulty product and take other such decisions quickly and remotely. It is the speed which matters here and this comes only with connectivity and proper systems in place.

IR: Can a single store retailer afford to use DVS software?
RN: Absolutely. In fact currently we have over 50 customers across India who are running end-to-end business solutions on our retail applications and few of those customers are single-store companies. The beauty of our solutions is that they are built for retailers who want to grow and is not restricted to retailers who only have a single store. We have special schemes where after providing single store solutions, if they add more stores, we can upgrade them into bigger solutions. Specifically this year our focus is the single store market – the biggest market in India; and taking part in this transition from unorganized to organized retail is a great achievement on our part. We have been working very closely with associations like CII, RAI and NASSCOM on issues concerning the implementation of IT for smaller retailers.

IR: Does a single-store retailer really need an IT infrastructure for his/her business?
RN: As far as I am concerned, whether it is a chain of hundred stores or only one store one still needs to manage it. I think a lot of times a single store has less margins or less profit to play around with. It is even more important for them to have the right information based technology to eliminate errors which may creep in if things are done manually all the time. Technology not only helps to eliminate errors it also helps to plan movement of goods, take pricing decisions etc. I do not find any differentiation between the need for IT as a support for them. I would say IT can never replace manpower; alternately manpower cannot replicate some things made possible by use of IT, but together they can do the best things.

IR: How difficult is it, using DVS technology?
RN: Not at all. Since our solutions are based on the Microsoft platform, grasping the basics is fairly easy for most retailers, since almost everybody is aware and used to working on either MS word or excel. A lot of our clients are quite knowledgeable but lack the specific skills and manpower to implement the technology properly. Hence they prefer to outsource the entire deployment of the IT solution and choose a company like ours. We not only provide the software but take care of the implementation as well. We also always educate our clients about the possibilities and advantages of using our products, because being a development company we are constantly coming up with solutions about which they may not be aware or may not want to deploy at this point in time.