- The replacement of traditional fossil fuel commercial vehicles with EVs is part of the business remodeling exercise.
- The Company is in conversation with Piaggio, Tata Motors, Mahindra, and Greaves for procuring the vehicles
The B2B Commerce player Peel Works is in advanced conversations with four manufacturers to procure 100 EVs for its distribution business. The firm was operating in 25 cities earlier and recently remodelled its business to scale rapidly with sustainable economics. The replacement of traditional fossil fuel commercial vehicles with EVs is part of the business remodelling exercise.
The Company is in conversation with Piaggio, Tata Motors, Mahindra, and Greaves for procuring the vehicles. Commenting on this, the Company’s Co-Founder and Supply Chain Head, Lt. Col. Pushkar Raj (Retd.), said, “The grocery market is an ocean of opportunities. However, the economics needed to sit right from the first shipment to serve the market. In our experience, sweating assets to extract the most of every rupee is key to success here. EV fits very well into that thinking – low operating cost, low maintenance, and a steady alternate deployment model making it a straightforward decision.”
The Company intends to bring this fleet ahead of the festive season to serve the traditional stores well and enable them to compete with newer shopping channels. The Company promises a comprehensive shopping list of 8 hours delivery time of around 4,000 items.
India is witnessing a revolution on the fulfilment side. Young companies are making sustainable bets as they scale. They are inclined to put social impact at par with business metrics to build lasting businesses. In times to come, we will see more rapid adoption of EV tech. “We would like to leave a cleaner planet for the next generation, and we would take all actions at our disposal to do that as we build a responsible and successful business”, said Shraddha Kukreja, CMO at Peel Works.
Before remodelling its distribution technology and method, Peel Works logged INR 1,800 Cr of annualized sales on its marketplace platform. The Company has broken even and is looking to restart scaling its commerce business. “We expect to get to the earlier benchmark by the end of the financial year,” the Company said.
In its new avatar, the company has forged distribution contracts with more than 40 consumer goods companies already. For the rest, the company has robust local cash and carries the network. Speaking on these alliances Samir Ladak, Head alliances, said that we will forge direct contracts where it makes business sense for the retailers, consumer goods companies, and us. Our target is to take iconic brands to more stores. Our purpose is to not compete on price with suppliers already reaching their products to their stores. That’s a lose-lose value proposition.
B2B commerce companies essentially aggregate brands, and that allows smaller brands to get a chance to build and expand their footprint at affordable costs. This aggregation also offers efficient warehouse, sales, and delivery infrastructure usage. All this leads to a higher delivery frequency which helps the retailers reduce the inventory and improve their assistance.
