Franchisee Model – The Future

My name is Amit Mahajan and I am working as General Manager – Channel development with Connect India E-Commerce services P Ltd. I did my engineering in Bangalore in 1999 and have been a sales and networking person by choice. I joined Connect India in April 2015 having little or negligible knowledge on the logistics. Almost all of the last mile delivery organisations were operating on a fixed cost model of hiring the delivery boys on a fixed salaries and getting the shipments delivered through them. India is a huge country with 725 districts and over 19000 Postal pin codes. With this fixed cost and limited business opportunities, no one was willing to get to the rural parts of the country and the business was restricted to Metros, Tier 1 and Tier 2 locations. 70% of the Indian populations stays in rural/ Tier 3 or below while 70% of commerce happens in metros/ Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities.
We wanted to change the obsolete methods so we started to create a parallel model for the last mile deliveries. The same was possible only if we remove the fixed component of hiring the delivery boys so we came with a unique idea of making existing small business/ shop keepers as our centres. These entrepreneurs, who had an existing business joined our network and started to work with/for us on a variable business model. The model worked really well and I am happy and proud to share that we have a strong network of over 10000 CONNECT INDIA CENTRES across 12 states and are even covering the rural parts of the country which many of the big players are not even present in. .

Sustainability of the model:
1. Zero or negligible fixed cost.
2. Large spread with a presence across all the locations.
3. Money – the biggest motivator for the entrepreneur ensures 24/7 availability except in case of exigencies.

Started with Last mile delivery, we intended to provide multiple revenue streams to our entrepreneurs so as to keep them motivated and charged and generate an alternate source of revenue for them. With the availability of such a strong network, we started to approach the assisted shopping/ affiliate marketing companies who identified the strength of our model and agreed to join hands with us. We have entrepreneurs who are consistently making an earning of over 50000/- INR per month with us through various services they are offering to their walk in customers. We at a Connect India Centre sell Online medicines, sell general Insurance products through our certified store owners, value added services like electricity bills, mobile recharges, sell educational produces. In addition, our stores do affiliate marketing for big E- Commerce companies and generate revenues for themselves. The icing on the cake for the model is that we are very soon launching the ATM services at our Connect India Centres (CIC).
Our network is open for new partnerships and our CICs are willing to sell more products and sustain their livelihoods. It is very satisfying as a network head that we have been able to provide livelihood to so many entrepreneurs most of whom were barely able to manage the basic necessities.