‘Boss’ to Empower the Bosses of MSME Retailers

Technology is fast getting accepted and adopted among small retailers, merchants and MSMEs. The adoption of retail POS systems has increased among MSME retailers to streamline sales and inventory management processes.

Advanced features like real-time inventory tracking, sales analytics, and integration with other business tools, enhancing operational efficiency are some great value creators for MSME retailers and retail brands. To discuss this transition, we at SMEStreet had the good fortune of meeting Mr. Vishal Maru, Executive Vice President, Worldline, who has entered into the domain of retail tech especially focusing on the MSMEs. 

Here are the edited excerpts of the interaction between Mr Faiz Askari of SMEStreet and Mr Vishal Maru of Worldline:  

Faiz Askari: Since MSMEs are one of the important entities for Worldline, how do you see the MSME scenario evolving, especially when we have digital payments becoming an integrated reality?

Vishal Maru: We find the MSME segment really exciting because of the sheer size of the market. The MSME sector comprises nearly 63 million businesses, we cater to almost about 7.5 million of these businesses through the POS terminals. I see a huge opportunity in this segment. Secondly, the most important and attractive part which we see is that the growth in MSME is far more than what we see on the enterprise side. This is because MSMEs are just not In-Store, they are also moving now towards the online transaction side. I think Worldline is well placed as a business to cater to both In-Store and Online payment requirements for this sector. It presents us with a huge opportunity to create an Omni-Channel environment for the MSMEs. Thirdly, our focus for MSMEs is to cater to businesses in Tier II, III, or IV cities and beyond which allows partnering with them to provide with unique solutions and features and expose them to digitization that will help them grow their business and profits.

Faiz Askari: What exactly Worldline is focusing on in, say, among the MSME empowerment subject?

Vishal Maru: Let me take you to a year back when we started to approach this pragmatically in terms of understanding what are the real requirements of MSMEs. We did an extensive market mapping to understand the MSME's needs and wants. What we realised is that one of the biggest problems is that there is no single ecosystem which can help them grow their business and profits. 

A micro-entrepreneur would have five or six vendors for different requirements of his. Hence, it was important to get everything under one umbrella which can help them to just latch onto a platform easily which helps them grow their business and increase profits.

We have seen a lot of enterprising young tech-savvy business owners who just took over the business started by their father or grandfather. They are open to technology to run their business and create programs like loyalty, inventory management etc. Another thing which doesn't really come out on the face of it is that there is a huge issue managing compliance for MSMEs. They really find it tough to manage the compliance whether it has to do with the regulations or statutory compliances or to do with data protection. We have realized that they have huge problem in terms of understanding the compliances. We decided to include compliance management as an important feature on our platform to resolve the issue. There is also access to credit for MSMEs in India.

After analyzing all the key problems, we introduced BOSS – Business Ka One Stop Shop, a smart business solution available for Android PoS that goes beyond the world of payments and enables MSMEs to manage business like a BOSS. When you actually look at this whole offering, the Android PoS terminal is a complete package in itself. It gives you all that what you need to grow your profits and manage your business. We were clear as an organization we want to give them an application which can actually help them grow their business and profit. 

Faiz Askari: Do you see there is a priority list for getting organized, and then becoming profitable? Or do you see that it's still a challenge, small entrepreneurs or small business owners, they still want to have more profitability first, and then get into the organized way and implement some of the more tech savvy solutions?

Vishal Maru: What we have seen that there's an urge to become more organized, tech savvy and progressive. Now, the question is, how do you actually make them become more progressive?

There is a government push whether it is Digital India or all the new mandates which are coming in from the regulator. What we are doing as Worldline is trying to empower MSMEs with digitization with a powerful single application that can organize their business and also give them tools to make it profitable. Government and regulators are doing an excellent job in creating digital infrastructure and the responsibility of creating options lies on the people like us. Clearly there is an urge, and I think we need the dynamics to work in tandem to make sure that they get what they want.

Also Read: SMEStreet's Exclusive Interview with the Head of PayPal India

Faiz Askari: So Worldline is primarily working on making the day-to-day operations of business owners easy and more transparent?

Vishal Maru: The way I would like to put it is there are only two things you want to do for these people, which are a large segment of MSMEs that we want to help them grow their businesses and their profits. To grow their business requires much seamlessness, and better propositions, whether it has to do with procurement or, inventory management, compliance management or insurance, so we also offer insurance to our merchants, anything which saves them cost, something that we have packaged as a part of making them more effective on the cost side. We offer Five Lakhs rupees of insurance. That's the shop insurance, for floods, fire or any natural calamity.

Faiz Askari: Is there any other plan concerning the procurement sector also? The business owner or the shop owner, also find it very useful if the tech can take care of the procurement process.

Vishal Maru: This is a very important proposition which we are offering with BOSS. A merchant can just simply click on the feature available for procurement on our application and start comparing prices and buying from multiple wholesalers within their area.  We are also going to go live soon with ONDC soon. We are looking to cover the entire end-to-end value chain of procurement, and inventory management and also back it up with what is the most important thing which is the access to credit. 

Faiz Askari: When did Worldline start BOSS and how is the footprint so far?

Vishal Maru: The whole pilot program was done for about a year and launched our direct acquiring business with our smart application BOSS in October 2023. We are receiving some phenomenal responses from the market both from offline and online channels.

Faiz Askari: 2024 must be an action-packed year that you must be visualizing. So, what are the numbers that you are expecting?

Vishal Maru: From the direct acquiring business, we are looking at little more than 10% of our overall revenue by 2025.

Faiz Askari: In terms of outlets or businesses, what would be the reach that you are visualizing?

Vishal Maru: In terms of the geographical distribution, we are looking at Tier II, III and IV cities primarily. When you talk about segments, right now we started with a few focused segments like Quick Service Restaurant (QSR), Grocery store/Supermarkets, and Pharmacy, which will keep expanding because what we really want to do is to bring a very customized solution.

Faiz Askari: Please explain your paid subscription and its layered offering.

Vishal Maru: Our pricing is transparent and upfront. The merchant knows the features they are getting with Android PoS terminal. The merchants are very receptive to our subscription models like 6, 12 and 24 months. They are finding value in our entire product proposition.