Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
GS1 India announces the launch of its new DataKart service, a repository of retailed products, which has been developed based on Industry and consumer needs; for a single source of trusted, reliable and accurate information on products sold through retail stores and through online shopping portals.
The launch event was held on 17th Nov at ITC Maratha, Mumbai. The event saw a strong participation of 55 key retailers, brand owners and SME suppliers, over forty of whom had actively participated in the DataKart pilot, over 8 months now. These included Reliance Retail, Big Bazaar, Walmart India, HyperCity Retail, BigBasket, P&G, Nestle, HUL, Mondelez, ITC, MTR Foods, Colgate, J&J, Marico, Kraft Heinz, Reckitt Benckiser, GSK, amongst others. Several participants shared their experiences and expectations from DataKart, which is expected to revolutionise product data exchange between brand owners, retailers/e-tailers and consumers.
The participants also endorsed and signed their joint commitment to product data quality and excellence at the event.
The Retail sector would greatly benefit through better fill rates, on-shelf product availability, lesser mismatches between purchase orders and supplies receipts, faster product listings, new product introductions, better visual merchandising on retail shelves and consequent higher sales. These have been the major challenges for this sector, which DataKart would address.
DataKart would facilitate seamless mapping of harmonised system code of any product with its EAN/UPC barcode that appears on the consumer products; enabling manufacturers and trading partners to correctly correlate products, as per GST requirements, that will be introduced on 1st April 2017.
Consumers would gain from higher product availability on shelves and access to more detailed, up-to-date and reliable information on products prior to purchase, through an easily downloadable mobile app.
E-tailers offer millions of products on their portals, many of which could be from unauthorised/non-genuine sellers. They would now be able to segregate them and limit their exposure/liability to fake products. DataKart would provide high quality product images and trusted product information, made available directly by brand owners/manufacturers. This would reduce current dependence of e-tailers on crowd-sourced information on products, which tends to be highly unreliable and even malicious at times.
Consumers can thus shop with confidence and trust, whether buying products online or at retail stores, armed with a lot more information on products to make better purchase decisions.
DataKart is designed as a scalable web-based service that can accommodate any additional product attributes, which may need to be incorporated for the growing compliance requirements and consumer demands. This could include requirement for communicating product recalls to consumers instantly across the country, which DataKart’s mobile app would facilitate.
GS1 India is a standards organisation set up by Apex trade bodies, Chambers of Commerce, BIS, Min. of Commerce and Industry and is affiliated to GS1 Global, Brussels, which operates across 112 countries.
GS1 India: Revolutionising Product Data Exchange in the Retail Sector
