Organized Retailers Association emerges as unified voice of large Mobile Retailing chains from South India
Chennai , 27th April 2022: Organized Retailers Association (ORA), a forum that represents all leading mobile retail chains in South India, held its maiden meeting at Hyderabad. The ORA is a body created by mobile retail ing chains and works for the fraternity addressing their needs and requirements, training, engaging, and deve loping their skills to keep pace with the changing times and technology. The first meeting of this newly formed organisation representing mobile retailing chains from South India was primarily focused on deliberations around the growth of the mobile industry and next action steps towards achieving it.
The advent of cash-rich e commerce companies has created a monopolistic and discriminatory environment in trade, making it a necessity for the mobile retail industry to have a body that could raise the concerns at various levels for smooth running and survival of the business. This is what lead to the formation of Organized Retailers Association (ORA), which is presided by Mr. T S Sridhar, who has over three decades of experience working in Sales & Distribution teams of various organizations including big corporates like Nokia and Gillette.
Speaking on the successful completion of the event, Mr. T S Sridh ar, president of ORA said, “The monopolistic bu siness practices of on line sales platforms are unethical and jeopardising the future of over 1.5 lakh brick and mortar sm artphone retailers across the country. We have formed Organized Retailers Association (ORA) to protect the inte rests of large mobile retailing chains in South India. In todays meeting, we have discussed key issues including possible solutions for current problems such as unavailability of certain models for offline sales (ex clusive online models), price parity bet ween online and offline sales, bank subvention charges etc. It was also decided to make an appeal to the government requesting to bring mobile phones in the essential category and lower the current applicable GST pricing”
“All retailers have expressed their interest to stand united and not fall a prey to the differential trade practices of bran ds. Also ORA & AIMRA will give representation to the Central Ministries of Finance & industry to address issues related to the industry . ORA will continue to support the efforts of All India Mobile Retailers Association (AIMRA) to counter the online sales pattern of OPPO” added Mr. T S Sridhar, president of ORA
As part of the initiative to provide transparent communication, ORA will collaborate with all brands and AIMR A for support on festival offers for mainline customers(offline ).
ORA has been recognised by all brands as a platform to resolve challenges and concerns of the organised trade .
All India Mobile Retailers’ Association is currently pursuing its efforts against Chinese smartphone maker Oppo for indulging in “unfair trade practice by restricting a product” to online platforms and “not honouring its comm itment of proper distribution support” to physical outlets, especially for its recent model K10 in the mainline ma rket.
