How to Start Vegetable Business In India: Follow this ten-step guide

Table of Contents:

2. How Can Investing In Vegetable Shop Give Profits?

3. Steps To Start Your Online Vegetable Business Plan

1. Vegetable Shop Business Plan

The lockdown phase has been a crazy time for us all. Not only did we have to arm wrestle with the pandemic, but also the financial crunches. With people losing their 9-5 jobs and most offline businesses shutting down, people preferred shifting their business online. During the initial days of lockdown, people faced a lot of difficulties going out and buying their daily groceries, especially fruits and vegetables. During that phase, how many times have you wished your regular vegetable shop had an online outlet?

This was the time when countries like India saw an influx of emerging groups of online grocery traders. This upsurge of online utility stores points towards a bright future of vegetable vending online. Let us see how one can set up a successful vegetable store online in India.

2. How Can Investing In Vegetable Shop Give Profits?

Digitisation has taken over every offline store or business. These days, people have no time or patience to shop for their necessities, even fruits and vegetables from offline stores.

All they need is to open their favourite grocery app and, with few taps, get their order placed. This is the only reason why you need to invest in the vegetable business. And thanks to the lockdown phase, that has given a new boost to the on-demand vegetable delivery business.

The high demand from the public has led various stakeholders to directly invest in the online vegetable store business and try out their luck in the market full of competition. For example, one of the most popular online grocery stores, Bigbasket, as of the year 2019, holds a market value of around 100.7 billion Indian rupees and is considered one of the best and most used on-demand grocery apps.

3. Steps To Start Your Online Vegetable Business Plan

Check out some of the quickest and easiest steps you need to follow before you finally initiate your online vegetable Store.

1. Look for your target audience

This is the very first step that you need to check out before you plan to start an online vegetable shop. The point of consideration here is to "Whom" are you going to deliver the items. Check out if your neighbourhood or your surrounding locations have access to easy vegetable delivery at home. Look for ways to be better than your competitors and make your target audience buy from your app or online store.

2. Get in touch with dealers and brands

The next thing you need to do is to approach the vegetable store partners or suppliers. You should always choose the best vegetables that your target audience generally prefer buying. It would be great to select all the fruits and vegetables for your online vegetable shop so that your customers don't have to go elsewhere if they feel like buying some exotic fruits and vegetables.

3. Choose your delivery area or location

Think about the word "Where".

Where are you going to set up your delivery area or location? You need to decide in which the geographical location of your vegetable business could be established. Also, you should keep in mind that your store should be within reach of your warehouse. This will make your purchasing and delivery process much easier.

4. Maintain a proper warehouse

For delivering the essential fruits and vegetables to your customers, you need to maintain a proper warehouse or a cold storage room. Your warehouse should be clean, hygienic, and pest-free. Remember, you are into selling perishable items like fruits and vegetables, and your priority is to serve fresh groceries to your customers. If you fail to deliver fresh items, then your customers might stop buying from your online vegetable store and provide negative reviews.

5. Plan and design your app

Once you are done with your warehouse selection and deciding your target audience, start with designing and planning your website. Before you get into hiring an app development team, you must do your research. Talk with your app development team and share your ideas with them to design the most attractive, highly navigable, and reliable online vegetable store. Ask them to make the features responsive and suitable for both mobile and desktop screens.

6. Chalk out your budget

As you have already planned your online vegetable business initiation, now it's time to think about the expenses that you need to cover. Form a budget or an estimate for your online vegetable store so that you are well prepared to go ahead with it. Prepare your budget according to the expenses that you would be covering.

This includes business registration fees, online vegetable store development charges, salaries of your employees, the expense of the grocery items, warehouse rent, energy bills, and other miscellaneous charges. By keeping all these factors in mind, you can chalk out your vegetable business's entire cost estimation online.

7. Choose your payment modes

With digital payment being the trend, choose the best payment methods for your customers. If you are offering an array of payment modes to them, they will be even happier to purchase from your online vegetable store every time they are in need. Keep in mind that your payment method should be hassle-free and does not make your customers go through various verification processes.

Keep an option of various e-wallets, credit cards, debit cards, net banking, and cash on delivery. In this way, you allow your customers to choose the payment mode they are most comfortable with. Also, for integrating this in your app, you need to tie up with various online payment platforms and banks.

8. Launch your online vegetable store

Now when you finally have the budget and have met all the ends, you are good to go with your online vegetable store development process. Once the app development team gets done with the app, go for testing it before launching it into the app stores. In case there is any problem with your app or website, then get it notified to the app development team immediately.

9. Go for app promotions

Start with making excellent promotions of your app once it is launched in the app store. Apart from offline advertisements, it would help if you also went for the online ad. Start with social media first. It's not just the millennials who are hooked into social media, but people of all age groups are now actively engaged with various social media platforms.

Therefore, you need to make your ad campaigns appealing and enticing so that the users are prompted to purchase your app. Also, introduce the concept of offers, referral codes, cashback, and discounts to lure people in getting your app downloaded from the App Store and make a purchase.

10. Bonus tip - Aggregator business model

This is an optional plan for those whose budget is a bit tight. The aggregator business model is a networking model where the aggregator company collects the data about a particular service provider. After that, both the parties go for signing contracts.

Once the deal is done, the service provider sells its products under the aggregator firm's brand name. For example, since the lockdown declaration, you have seen how the online food delivery brands like Swiggy and Zomato follow the aggregator business model, where they have allowed the enlistment of various small local grocery businesses under them.

Vegetable Shop Business Plan

Starting Vegetable Shop

The demand for staple food items, like fruits and vegetables, will never cease or recede. All you need to do is get the best products for your customers and earn their goodwill to earn more revenue. For ensuring success, you should also make sure that you are always updated with the changing trends and demands of the market. You have to go by what the entire world desires, and if you fail to do so, then you will be lagging. Get a professional team of app developers hired and start with your online vegetable store today!

Also read:

1) 101 Guide to Finding a Perfect Location for a Vegetable Store
2) How To Become A Vegetable Wholesaler/Reseller?
3) How To Start An Organic Products Store?
4) How to open a plant nursery in India? Here's your A-to-Z guide

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FAQs On Vegetable Business Plan

Q. How do I start my own vegetable business?

Ans- Steps to initiate your online vegetable business in India

Look for your target audience
Get in touch with dealers and brands
Choose your delivery area or location
Maintain a proper warehouse
Plan and design your app
Chalk out your budget
Choose your payment modes
Launch your online vegetable store

Q. Is vegetable business profitable in India?

Ans- Yes, the vegetable business is profitable in India. On average retailers are selling vegetables more than 48.8% of wholesale prices in the market.

Q. How do I start a fruit and vegetable shop?

Ans- You can start a fruit and vegetable shop by following these steps:

Plan your Vegetable Shop Business Plan
Form your Vegetable Business Plan into a Legal Entity
Open a Business Bank Account & Get a Credit Card
Set up Accounting for your Vegetable Shop Business Plan
Register your Vegetable Shop Business Plan for Taxes

Q. Is selling vegetables a good business?

Ans- Selling vegetables at the retail level can decrease the risk of rotten vegetables and loss of money. There are two ways to get a significant profit margin. The first one you can buy vegetables from wholesalers or the second one you can grow your vegetables and fruits.

Q. How can I sell my vegetables in India?

Ans- There are two ways to sell online: B2B (Business To Business and B2C (Business To Consumer). In B2B, you can sell vegetables online in bulk to big companies, food chains, retail stores, institutional shoppers and giant distributors who further market them to vendors. You can sell them to local traders as well.