Delhi starts a gadget shop which remains open

A new concept to attract customers – an electronics retailer in Delhi believes there would be late-night shoppers for gadgets. This is the country’s first 24×7 electronics store, HOT, or House of Technology. “We don’t have electronics stores that cater to late-night shoppers. The idea is to cater to this latent demand and at any time throughout the week,” says Vipul Jain, CEO of Unique Infoways that will open a 24×7 outlet at Delhi’s Nehru Place metro station on Thursday.

HOT is the single largest electronics retail outlet in the country covering 40,000sq.ft.. The store will have 350 employees, working in shifts to attend to customers walking in for a smartphone or a printer cartridge or just a pen drive, every day at any time of the day.

But the IT manufacturers are not very convinced about this new concept. According to them, while 24×7 format works well for food and medicines, electronics is not driven by impulse purchase. “People do lot of research before buying cameras or phones,” says Rothin Bhattacharya, head, marketing & strategy, HCL Infosystems. “So you may get a customer who has run out of a printer cartridge or is looking for products like memory cards or CDs, but not big ticket items, though the idea is good for late shoppers,” he says about HOT.

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