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Building an EV community hub, click by brick

By N Jayalakshmi | March 02, 2023

As the EV segment grows in the country with evolving new dynamics, it promises to deliver newer retail experiences and opportunities in the brick and mortar space. In this exclusive interaction, Samarth Kholkar, CEO and CO-Founder of multibrand EV platform BLive, tells Retail4Growth how the company is building its offline stores as community spaces for the whole EV eco-system and expanding its footprint. 

Samarth Kholkar, CEO, BLive"Discovery to commerce,” says Samarth Kholkar, CEO and CO-Founder, BLive, summing up the brand’s online-offline journey. BLive, which is positioned as a single point multibrand EV platform, recently opened its 19th store in Jalgaon and is aiming to increase its footprint to 25 stores by end of March and 100  experiential stores by the end of the year. 

BLive’s retail expansion plans are, in a way, a reflection of how the entire EV segment as a whole is evolving in the country and, in the process, offering newer opportunities in the offline retail space. 

The India Electric Vehicle (EV) Market is projected to register a CAGR of 23.76% for the period 2016 - 2028, according to Mordor Intelligence. And as per data on the government’s Vahan website, about 1,003,000 EVs have been registered with regional transport offices till December 31, 2022. The numbers reportedly show a more than threefold increase from 332,000 units sold in 2021. 

BLive itself was launched as India‘s first multibrand online marketplace for EVs in 2019 by Samarth Kholkar and Sandeep Mukherjeewho moved out of their respective corporate jobs to “start something in the sustainability space for positive impact”, as Samart says. 

Click to brick the whole way 

The initial challenge for the duo was creating awareness regarding EV, as it was still early days then. So they launched what they call ‘EV tourism’ tours to give people an idea of what it was all about. The next step was enabling access. “We started with electric cycles, added scooters and got good traction. We had customers across 50 cities in India purely through online connect,” says Samarth, recalling the early days.

BLive store front

Post Pandemic when the market bounced back and people began moving out, Samarth and Sandeep realized the need for physical touchpoints. And thus launched BLive’s 1st store in Hyderabad in November 2021. Since then there has been no looking back. “Over a year we opened almost 15 stores. But we went at it slowly, building our franchisee model and having a strong omnichannel strategy in place. So it was essentially a click-to-brick model,” says Samarth. 

But being a new category, there was a constant process of evolving with regard to different aspects of the product and its business eco-system, and the need for awareness was still strong among customers, as Samarth shares. 

Store as EV community hub 

This meant the stores had to serve as single point hubs for customers, helping them navigate through the whole EV purchase journey. Samarth elaborates on this, “Our entire proposition is built around three key aspects - awareness, access and affordability. While awareness can be created online, access and affordability are enabled through our physical stores, through different models of ownership and purchase.  In the process, we bring in new business avenues as well. Our idea is to make our stores EV hubs, catering to the entire eco-system, and not just serving as a retail point. This means we will also sell charging assistance, roadside assistance, insurance, finance etc. The entire platform should be able to offer something to everyone in the EV eco-system.”

Retail operations and store design 

Offline retail is thus very critical in the whole scheme of things for BLive. “Physical retail is very important for the automobile category as a whole, and especially for EV, which is actually more of a tech product than an automobile product. And it’s important to have an unbiased expert or advocate who can recommend and guide buyers on the right product. And that is where we are positioned.” 

The stores essentially help reiterate brand positioning and BLive is keenly focused on tier 2-3 markets for its store presence. As Samarth says, ”The ‘Bharath’ story (tier-2-3 towns) is a very critical part of our expansion plans, because the pride of ownership is much higher in those markets compared to a Metro. So we are focused on building community-driven, vernacular content in our stores.”

BLive store inside look with EV scooters and Bicycle on display

The company has a retail operations team that takes care of the store planning and launch. Speaking about the store design, Samarth says, “We focus on giving the store a contemporary touch and feel and creating an elevated buying experience for the customers, with elements like a Selfie wall that depicts wings of electricity while creating a distinct mental positioning for the customer - of being charged up and ready to fly.” 

Designed by the company’s in-house team, the stores adorn a standard brand identity and design template, with a good mix of bright as well as darker shades, and grey being the core colour to enhance the impact of lighting and other shades in the store space. The stores, spread across an average area of 1000 to 1500 sq feet, also feature a  video wall, specially designed billing counters and a clear display of all the vehicles. With a tagline of “Fun over Fuel” and the signage highlighting the brand’s online identity, the stores convey a youthful, vibrant and interactive space, as Samarth informs.

One of the challenges in running multiple stores is finding the right people to run them, as Samarth points out. The company has on-boarded Deloitte as a partner to help with the validation, due diligence and other back-end processes. It also has a Business Manager for every 10 stores, who helps with the running, choosing the location, etc. 

Since store staff are integral to the whole store experience, the company also has a tech enabled weekly staff training programme focusing on grooming, communication, merchandise presentation, and even accounting. 

Well, it certainly looks like BLive is leaving no stone unturned in creating one-stop hubs for the entire EV eco-system.  

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