Tata Group opens e-Commerce portal for its employees across geographies

Tata Group is now cashing in on its own people and has opened a dedicated e-Commerce portal, mytatastore.com, for its own employees.
Through the portal, it will sell a range of merchandise right from fashion, lifestyle to luggage and office utility.

The mytatastore.com portal is for over five lakh employees, which is nearly 5% of Flipkart's total registered members.

"It's an internal merchandise store for Tata employees across geographies. The thought behind launching it on "tataworld", the group intranet, was to make Tata branded merchandise easily available to our internal stakeholders across Tata companies. It becomes a one-stop store to source such merchandise, both for internal and external stakeholder connect," a Tata Sons spokesperson told Economic Times.

Tata Steel has gone a step ahead and is launching 'Tata Steel e-shoppe' for company employees, vendors, distributors and channel partners.

"There was a huge demand from vendors and distributors who wanted to be associated with the Tata Steel brand," Viresh Oberoi, managing director and chief executive of junction services, a joint venture between Tata Steel and SAIL, told the financial daily.

Mjunction has designed and hosted the online store and will also source products, content and images, provide the payment gateway and dispatch items.

Initially Tata Steel branded merchandise will be sold online like mugs, backpacks, handicrafts, shirts, organisers, T-shirts, books and office utility products.

Mjunction will pitch the Tata Steel e-shoppe model to various other Tata group companies such as Tata Chemicals and Tata Motors, Oberoi said.

A joint report by Boston Consulting Group and Retailers Association of India stated that the E-Commerce market in the country is expected to quadruple to $60-70 billion in the next five years due to increasing internet access through affordable smartphones and efforts by online retailers to develop payment channels.

"Given the humongous employee universe of the Tata Group, this beta test will definitely make them market-ready when they are up against the fierce competition in online space. If there are gaps in the experience with employees related to logistics or consumer acceptance of the online platform, they can be thought through and eventually plugged," Manisha Rao, Delhi-based retail consultant told ET.

Reliance Retail had also spearheaded an online site for food and grocery products for its employees a year ago, before taking it to consumers outside.

(Image: Indiatimes)