“That’s how I came up with the idea of Mumbai’s first online supermarket”, Rashi Choudhary says, unraveling her journey with ‘LocalBanya.com’
“Main supermarket Jaa Rahi hun samaan lene” is a sentence we come across almost every single day because supermarkets are like the part and parcel of every household. Rashi Choudhary’s idea of coming up with an online supermarket was a banger because she knew very well that single-minded focus on delivering the widest selection of products, of the highest quality at the customer’s doorstep, to the relief of every Indian household, was the need of the hour.
Rashi is an MBA from SP Jain Institute of Management Studies in Retail and Services Management. Hailing from a family of entrepreneurs, she started her career at Ernst & Young as a Management Trainee in the advisory department. Later, she moved to Rashi Peripherals, where she was responsible for their marketing and branding along with the distribution of computer parts and accessories. Her next position was with Raymond’s Retail, which laid the foundation for her in retail. At Raymond’s, she worked on Procurement, Data, and Inventory Management. However, the idea of LocalBanya didn’t strike her just randomly, she at first hand, knew the number of struggles people face when they go shopping for groceries in a city as bustling as Mumbai. Finding a parking spot alone was a task in the supermarkets. She knew she had to come up with an idea to bridge the gap.
Initially, when the idea struck her, she was very excited to execute it and bring it to life. However, she knew that leaving her job wasn’t as a conventional idea at that time. After the company came into existence, it gained a wholehearted acceptance from customers. When the idea initially took shape, she spearheaded the company for 6 months. Her role at LocalBanya has evolved over the past 2 years. Her current role at the company deals with anything that has a direct impact on the customer’s experience. She leads operations, logistics, manage customer service, data management, sourcing and pricing of products, quality check, web content, etc. Every process starting from the customer placing the order until the time of delivery (and after-sales service) falls under her purview.
When one asks her “why LocalBanya?”, with an overwhelming grin on her face, she says she has always wanted to become an entrepreneur. As quoted above, she comes from a family of entrepreneurs, and so it’s the mindset she grew up with. She was doing her research, looking for a product to sell or a venture in the online space when she came up with the concept for LocalBanya. It just made sense to her.
Rashi is a woman of high aspirations, and in coordination with that, she is a perfectionist. What keeps her going all the time is her urge to keep the company intact with its promise of an efficient and self-sustainable working model that can be replicated across cities. She is constantly driven by the idea of improving and adding value to the customer experience. Concluding, whenever one would ask her about her “secret mantra” of success, she always says, “Don’t dwell in the past. Learn from your mistakes. Be hungry for the future and charge forward with confidence.”
