My Story
I've set myself on a tough journey.
Six years ago I had quit a job I loved so much – where I had the most amazing boss and every day I felt I had achieved something new in my life, be it a successful project, payday or simply a compliment from my Managing Director.
I was earning well, I was stress free and most importantly I was financially very independent. If I wanted a car, I bought it the next day. If I wanted a holiday, my company sponsored it. Life was too good.
Six years later I ask myself if I made the right decision. Inspired by many, I left my well paid job to set on a dream to run my own business. I’ve spent these six years learning and making life changing decisions. I started by taking over an existing, supposedly well-established Indian Grocery Store in Melbourne and realised the hard way that the fluffy figures of the business were not true. The profit margins in the industry I had stepped into were very..erm.. “grim”.
Will I Ever Get Back the Same Lifestyle That I Had?
Being a top ranked graduate from RMIT University and a very ambitious person, it became very hard for me to accept failure. I didnt see myself simply owning a grocery store and standing at the counter making ends meet.
I started reworking the same retail shop concept and decided I will try to take it to the next level. This was conveniently jussssst before Corona came into our lives. With Corona, the orders starting storming through despite our website being a work in progress. The overwhelming response was pressurizing while we worked on uploading thousands of products, syncing inventory, working on an efficient picking/packing processes and most importantly giving the customer the products they were after. The price hikes and shortages in products didn’t help make life easy.
A Full Year Has Passed – Where Do We Stand?
Despite having the cutest two year old toddler in my life, I’ve not taken a single day off (literally) in the last 365 days. Along with my amazing team, we’ve travelled far and we know the journey has just started. The actual challenge is now, when corona is over and our customers are surrounded by at least three to five grocery stores in their neighbourhood.
Why Tales of India?
The idea is to maintain genuine prices while bringing convenience. To reduce operating costs, the Indian Grocery retail shop I once owned in a shopping centre was moved to a Warehouse. This allowed us to cover delivery expenses without raising prices.
We continue to vigorously work on our site and are currently tackling the following:
- Enhanced shopping experience: Did you want “Toor dhall”, “tur dal” or “Split pigeon peas”? They are the same thing! We continue to work on the system intelligence to make it easy for you to get what you want.
- Delivery Slots: We’ve worked days and nights to literally build a tool that will allow you to choose you delivery date and time. We are currently testing this tool and expect this to launch in a week. We feel you as a customer should have control over when you want your order delivered. Our challenge will be to get the groceries to you on time, the day YOU want it.
- Communication: It is important that we look after you in all aspects. We want to excite you with new varieties, new sales, new trends – you name it. We aim to communicate to you more often. Your engagement is very important to help us understand the content you like or dislike. Our job will be to tailor and deliver to you content that keeps you interested.
Talk To Us
We need your support in this new journey we have set in for. Give us feedback – be it product quality, website performance, communications, customer service. We can only go far if you are there with us in every step.
Leave us a comment on this blog or send us a whatsapp message on 03 8382 2900 . Your opinion matters most to us.
