Epigamia makes online debut with EasyEcom

About Epigamia :

A subsidiary of Drums Food  International, Epigamia has  come a long way since its  conception and is now in the  league of premium yogurt  brands. It also happens to be the  first Indian brand to enter the  greek yogurt industry and has  been winning at it ever since.

Other than Yogurt, Epigamia’s  product portfolio includes other  dairy products including snack  packs, artisanal curd, cheese, and  smoothies. The company has  been marketing its products  through thousands of online and  offline retail touchpoints  including Reliance Fresh, Big Bazaar, Big Basket and Amazon,  and other general store traders.

Making a Digital Debut With EasyEcom

When all the offline store operations came to a sudden halt, marketplaces  like Amazon and Big Basket saw a major surge in orders and this affected  a lot of FMCG brands while getting a slot for product listings with the retail  giants. For Epigamia, the wait time to get a slot with Amazon was around  7 days, and then an additional 72 hours for order fulfillment.  

When digitalization became absolutely necessary, Epigamia carefully  inspected the tools and platforms required to make the necessary online  debut. After choosing Shopify as their preferred eCommerce platform,  Epigamia looked for an inventory management software that would  streamline their business involving a product with a definite shelf life.  Rifling through a plethora of options, the brand zeroed down on the  award-winning omnichannel retailing solution provided by EasyEcom as  its eCommerce enabler.  

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Keeping the Brand Reputation Intact on  eCommerce Platform  

Just a few years into the launch, Epigamia expanded its portfolio to  include a variety of products that were sold from several retail  touchpoints. All the operational units worked from the ground and there  was no digital commerce setup. When they finally made a debut in the  world of digital commerce, a lot of challenges on the eCommerce platform  started following. The brand had to overcome these hurdles one by one  while keeping their reputation intact. Some of these eCommerce pain  points that the Epigamia team faced largely included:

• Sudden appearance into the digital commerce world: The Epigamia  customer base wanted the company to set up a website to take orders for a very long time. When it became absolutely necessary to resort to that option, they kick-started their eCommerce journey. However, a mere digital presence was not enough; handling a huge customer demand was still a challenge.
• Shipping the product Pan India: Epigamia moves the inventory that  has an extremely small expiration time limit. Dispatching such inventory within a proper time frame across the country was a daunting task. One that required a lot of operational units and human resources to be dedicated to a schedule. The company needed a system that allowed them to seamlessly operate across locations.
• Managing Multiple Warehouses (depots): To tackle the problem of  shipping all over India in a short time span, Epigamia opened several additional depots. Now, the trouble was to efficiently manage these  depots. And, the biggest challenge was to pick a depot that would be  responsible for dispatching the inventory. There had to be a system to select a depot based on the demand and deliver the products on time in a particular region.
• Handling Large no. of Orders: Although there were multiple depots to  handle the orders, the steady increase in the volume of these orders demanded a larger operational team. And, a lack of a system in place only made the management inefficient.
• Inventory tracking: Keeping track of the inventory is always a challenge,  regardless of the business type. Epigamia used Microsoft Navision to track the inventory and being just an ERP, Microsoft Navision doesn’t connect to eCommerce channels. So, it was hard for the team to report accurate inventory levels. The discrepancies in the inventory levels lead to stock shortages or sometimes an abundance of inventory, ultimately leading to a loss.
• Inventory Forecasting: For products with extremely defined shelf life,  inventory forecasting is not just a fancy activity. Without a proper forecasting and planning system, the company was facing too much too little too soon kind of a situation.
• Tracking payments: Not being able to track payments from different  channels could lead to a substantial loss over time and Epigamia was not unknown to this situation either. The lack of payment tracking and COD reconciliation system was directly affecting Epigamia’s profit margins.
• Manual entries for record-keeping: The invoice generation along with  other crucial entries into ERP were manually done which left room for errors. Sometimes, there were fulfillment delays, low fill ratio, and shipment mismatching.  

EasyEcom implements an eCommerce  growth plan streamlining Epigamia's Entire Supply Chain

Epigamia was dealing with all kinds of challenges that an eCommerce business faces at the time of conceiving and the stages that follow, all at the same time. With no system in place, it was hard to keep up with the demand, ship from the right depot within time, and manage their inventory while also keeping waste to a minimum considering the limited shelf-life of the products. EasyEcom built a plan from scratch to address all the issues that the yogurt brand was facing:

• Order routing and fulfillment from the depots: As mentioned  earlier, the company was managing the business through multiple depots. EasyEcom enabled eCommerce capabilities in these depots by registering them into the system for order routing. We started with implementing order routing based on the demand location. The  order would be automatically assigned to the nearest depot to the location of the customer while placing the request. Hence, making the fulfillment process easier.
• Shipping Automation: Epigamia was hand-delivering orders in the absence of a courier partner. The items were delivered in their own vehicles. Hence, there was a need to handle the workflow for their  vehicles and EasyEcom streamlined it by automating the entire process. This helped Epigamia reduce delivery time and since we also enabled branded tracking pages, their customers could get shipment updates via real-time shipment tracking.
• Automated tax engine integrated with Tally ERP: It provided reconciliation-related automation for accounting that helped them keep easy track of their financing team. Additionally, it saved a lot of time for the team.
• Bulk Order processing: Epigamia has been selling thousands of units per day and such a high volume of orders for the brand required processing the orders in bulk. EasyEcom enabled bulk order processing, taking care of the end-to-end procedure for the brand’s eCommerce store. Further easing the process, the complete invoicing, taxation handling, shipment generation, and order tracking continue to be handled from within the dashboard.
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Testimonial 

“ We've been using EasyEcom as our main automation system. The best part about the system is that it gives a centralized view of the right information which saves us time and was a major solve for us. The operations bit for the Epigamia D2C store has also been streamlined thanks to the clarity provided in the detailed reports, which has ensured that the ground team does not face blockages to their line of work. We commend the support team who are always there to help us out whenever there is a snag. We are now processing thousands of units  on a daily basis without any glitches.”

–Srushti Gupta, Product Manager and D2C, Epigamia

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