Spencer’s clicks online biz, acquires Meragrocer

Meragrocer.com has been in operations from the end of 2014, and is an online grocery business which delivers grocery items to consumers in Gurgaon and Delhi.

Initiating its online retail foray, Spencer’s Retail Limited – the wholly-owned subsidiary of RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group flagship, CESC, has acquired 100% stake in Omnipresent Retail India, which runs operations of Meragrocer.com—an online grocery marketplace. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Post acquisition, Omnipresent will become a Spencer’s subsidiary.

Shashwat Goenka, sector head, Spencer’s Retail, said: “Meragrocer is a perfect match because it will give us an accelerated learning curve in the ecommerce industry, and fits in perfectly with our larger ecommerce strategy for Spencer’s.”

Meragrocer.com has been in operations from the end of 2014, and is an online grocery business which delivers grocery items to consumers in Gurgaon and Delhi. Currently, customers can order online or through a mobile-app or through IVR, and pay either online through an e-wallet, or cash-on-delivery.

Customers can also choose their delivery slots on Meragrocer.com. It is a scalable model, and will allow Spencer’s to expand quickly into the ecommerce space. Spencer’s currently has presence in 35 Indian cities. Recently it opened at Belur (Howrah) its 122nd store. At present Spencer’s attract 3.7 million footfalls every month. In West Bengal, Spencer’s run ten hyper-stores, of which seven are located in Kolkata, one in Siliguri and one in Durgapur.

152 years ago, Spencer’s made its appearance in Madras, now Chennai, with an outlet at Mount Road. It is on record that John William Spencer arrived in Madras in 1862 and by January next year began his business, which in due course spread across the Indian subcontinent.

At one time, Spencer’s footprint stretched from Peshwar to Kochi and from Karachi to Chittagong spanning the length and width of the then Indian subcontinent. Spencer’s became an Indian company in 1960 and its Goenka connection began in 1989 when Sanjiv Goenka was elected chairman of the company.

The company’s retail business was revitalised in 1995. Later, Spencer’s became a subsidiary of CESC. At the beginning of FY’15 the total trading area was more than 1.1 million sq ft Total annual sales is around Rs 1700 crore.

Spencer’s has the aggressive growth plan with the opening of a number of hypermarkets this year, adding about 2.75,000 sq.ft of trading area.