Online entrepreneurs, e-commerce businesses surged during COVID-19
Entrepreneurs moved into e-commerce while online businesses thrived during the COVID-19 lockdown delivering food to homes as people avoided restaurants during that period.
“When the pandemic hit Sri Lanka last year the first thing that came to our minds was the health and safety of customers as customers were aware of it,” said the President Retail Sector John Keels Group, Charitha Subasinghe at a webinar held in Colombo on the topic of “Trends Shaping the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods in Sri Lanka” this week.
He said the working culture in the country changed when people began to work from homes instead of spending time moving around. All this had an impact on their consumption pattern of households. Home cooking took off and people were on the lookout for ingredients that swelled the online market industry during the second lockdown period. “There were more than 10,000 orders for a day for ingredients at that time. As of today we are catering to 3000 orders a day for ingredients. Owing to import control restrictions, the supply chain disruption issues is bound to crop up during this year 2021,” he added.
Answering a question, he requested local manufacturers to manufacture products not available in the market these days to satisfy customer needs, to fill the void. Today on their shelves, about 500-600 products are not available due to import restrictions and local FMCG businesses have not provided them with substitute products.
Factory Manager of Unilever Sri Lanka, Damith Abeyratne said as far as the supply chain is concerned it is prudent to shift to shorter demand cycles owing to the volatility of the market forces. There is a spike for hygiene related products such as sanitizers, hand washers, soap etc. The other related issue was to safeguard employees from the surging virus and to run their operation till a vaccination programme gets underway during the next six-month period. However due to hyperinflation in the commodity market the company will not be in a position to increase costs. “Even e-commerce designing and packaging is different to retail designing and packaging, and we have not mastered the technique, “he said.
Answering a question, he said although China was first affected by the COVID-19 pandemic it was able to operate their FMCG sector by minimising human contact and resorting to digitization of the whole process. Even in Sri Lanka local suppliers can provide low cost digitization and automated solutions to run industries rather than depending on foreign machines. Even the government departments are now moving into digital platforms for e-tendering.
Head of Regulatory & Scientific Affairs, Nestle PLC Chalindra Pathirana speaking on global trends on food and beverage said that as far as the manufacturers are concerned they are trying to capitalize on immunity boosting products with nutrients on available scientific data. Manufacturers all over the world are now changing product development and due to competition from manufacturers, the food regulators both locally and abroad keep a tab on products.
However due to COVID-19 the demand has risen for nourishing food. ”The food regulators have poured more resources on food labelling and advertising on all media platforms to provide transparency to the public at large. The other factor is that 56 per cent of people now like to consume plant based foods with proteins and the demand for such food is expanding exponentially,” he said.