In Conversation with Habib, Head, Machine Delivery

Vendekin Technologies is reshaping the unattended retail industry with its smart vending machine software. Taking its contribution one step ahead is its new Machine Delivery department. This In Conversation series explores this new wing of Vendekin with Habib Rajbar, Head of Machine Delivery.

Previously heading the R&D Electronic department at Vendekin, Habib and his team of 6 were responsible for designing, developing and testing smart vending machine management and softwares to suit the best needs of businesses and vending machine operators. With the same motivation, Habib now takes over as the head of the newest branch at Vendekin, the Machine Delivery department, as shared in excerpts from our conversation below.

What exactly is Machine Delivery in smart vending technology?

As the name goes, the Machine Delivery department ensures that the smart vending machines are 'delivered' to the customer as per their requirements, customisations and in the perfect condition. And to execute this to perfection, we identify the various requirements, abilities, capacities and limits of different types of vending machines, and help the customers in strategising more specific, more efficient, and more holistic smart touchless vending solutions for their products.

Our goal is that of transforming the Indian vending landscape by converting traditional vending machines into smart and automated vending machines alongside providing smart vending machine management software like vNetra and solutions like the Retrobox. This will enable existing and upcoming businesses to look at Vendekin as their one stop destination to identify and acquire unmanned vending machines customised as per their product requirements, and powered by Vendekin's smart, touchless and cashless vending solutions.

What gave rise to the creation of this department?

Heading the Research and Development wing at Vendekin for around 6 years made it clear how many of our clients had some very specific requirements to vend their products and even faced minor hiccups in their everyday operations because of some or the other technical difficulties with the machine they acquired directly from other manufacturers.

Though Vendekin’s vending machine management software ran efficiently, improper machines can sometimes cause unwanted hiccups. On several occasions the team has to brainstorm effective solutions even with limited information about the vending machines brought in by the client.

With all this in mind, we felt a need to widen the understanding of smart and touchless vending machines.

Which departments does Machine Delivery work with at Vendekin?

Currently Machine Delivery collaborates with the Research and Development department, the Operations team and the Consumer Success wing at Vendekin. From researching to sourcing the machine and from defining its requirements to testing, every task is carried out by Machine Delivery to help these departments.

Since the Machine Delivery department is fairly new it does not directly interact or deal with clients yet. All the client-communication is currently taken care of by the Consumer Success at Vendekin.

Continue reading

Why Choose a Micro-Market over a Pantry for Your Office

Are the coffee runs in your office taking longer than usual and eating into your team’s productive work hours?

Is finding and refilling tea bags, sugar, coffee and snacks on the pantry shelves a constant nightmare for your team?

Then it is time your office floor or complex got itself a micro market powered by the smart vending solutions from Vendekin Technologies, known for creating the best vending machine software in India and worldwide. Here’s how a micro market can help your office.

What Is a Micro market?

A micro market is a closely condensed convenience store consisting of 2 or more vending machines selling various products through unmanned, unattended retail. It utilises automated self-checkout technology, often combined with cashless methods of payment.

But, can a micro market benefit your workplace? Here are five benefits of incorporating a micro-market into your office space.

Transform Your Break Room

Upgrading to a micro-market powered by the best vending machine software from India upgrades your break room. Instead of a room with beat-up coffee machines and shelves of expired snacks, a break room with smart vending machines with neat rows filled with snacks, beverages and even office supplies makes for a much more modern and convenient break room. It creates an overall improved office experience and subliminally communicates to the office staff that they are valued and their needs matter. Instead of each one going off on their own, often you will find teams gathered around these new-age vending machines or micromarkets during breaks, which overall helps build relationships and morale.

What does this mean for the company? Higher employee morale usually means an overall happier place to work. Additionally, adding a micro-market may also give your business’ reputation a boost as a workplace. Company perks, such as better break rooms and snacks, are highly valued and can even become a talking point helping draw and retain talent.

Greater Office Productivity

Another reason why using a micro-market makes sense for today’s businesses is that it is an easy way to boost your workplace productivity.

Office staff leaving the office for long lunches and coffee breaks can cost a company useful work hours. A micro-market powered by the touchless, cashless vending machine technology from India, can save your team a lot of time. Snacking and even lunch options are available, allowing your staff to easily shop for satiating and nutritious food without stepping out of the office. All in all, having an engaging break room in your office can help your staff save time and stay focused during the day.

More Convenient than Old-school Vending

Micro-markets via smart vending, have done away with hassles of traditional vending machine technology in India or worldwide. It is uncommon now to see users standing around a vending machine fumbling for coins and notes. Vending machine dispensation technology too has upscaled, and it is unusual to see products get jammed in now.

Continue reading

Smart Vending For A Sustainable Planet - Can Vending Machines Help Reduce Carbon Footprint?

Global decarbonisation is an uphill battle, a fact that was underlined and discussed by major economies from around the world as they made commitments during the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26) in 2021. And industries, including retail, will have to play an important role in building a lasting solution for a sustainable planet.

Smart Vending Technology can be one the harbingers of this change in the retail industry, with smart unmanned retail helping the FMCG sector reduce their carbon footprint while becoming more accessible to end users.

Read on to learn how.

Reduce food wastage with vNetra

Studies have shown that if food waste was a country, it would be the third-highest emitter of greenhouse gases on the list of countries with high carbon footprints. With smart solutions for vending products, especially food items, businesses can play a crucial role in sustainability.

vNetra, Vendekin's Google Cloud powered, GDPR compliant, AI/ML driven back office vending management software, is a step forward in smart vending technology by digitising the supply chain or backend vending operations. Through the vNetra software, inventory of all active machines can be tracked on a single platform. This means knowing in advance, which machines have perishable goods close to their sell-by date. Knowing in advance can help plan the sales of these items with a shorter shelf-life. At the same time, on restocking rounds only items with a sell-by date need to be refilled. This helps reduce product wastage.

Reduce fuel emissions with digital inventory management

Having a centralised system to track the inventory of all vending machines, retailers or vending machine operators can be aware of their exact inventory at all times. No matter where the vending machines are or where the vending operators are.

Machines have to be restocked based on product inventory and expiration date. The frequency of refilling vending machines depends on the frequency of consumption by consumers and the perishable nature of the products. If certain machines require frequent refilling trips, restocking them can be optimised by planning more refills in a single restocking trip, to ensure less fuel is burned and fewer emissions released into the environment.

vNetra provides a centralised inventory management feature to operators and businesses, which helps them effectively save time and money by taking appropriate decisions in regards to restocking.

Saving on energy usage

Departmental stores, supermarkets, showrooms and restaurants require a lot of energy, in the form of air conditioning, refrigeration, lighting, maintenance etc, to run their operations. Each of these devices could be run for an upward of 10 hours each day on average.

Continue reading

In Conversation: Apoorv Nene on Customer Success at Vendekin

In this month’s edition of our In conversation… series, we got chatting with someone whose team works hard and smart to ensure Vendekin’s customers – new and existing vending operators (NVOs & EVOs) and brands – achieve business success as they become a part of the instant commerce revolution with smart vending provided by Vendekin’s best in industry cashless vending solutions in India. Vendekin Technologies is known for spearheading VCommerce or vending commerce and unattended retail through a patented touchless and cashless technology complemented by a comprehensive analytics and aggregation portal vNetra.

In this riveting conversation, Apoorv Nene, head of Customer Success at Vendekin Technologies shares his experiences of leading the department and the most common and unusual challenges his teams tackle in providing a delightful experience with smart vending machine solutions to entrepreneurs in India.

Leading Customer Success at Vendekin

Apoorv is an Industrial Engineer from the University of Illinois Chicago and an executive alumnus of IIM Kozhikode. Armed with the experience spent working with American Axle & Manufacturing as a quality & industrial engineer and ZOLLER India & South East Asia as a technical sales manager in the United States and India respectively, Apoorv joined Vendekin Technologies in June 2021, just as the country was coming out of the pandemic-induced lockdowns and getting used to the contactless approach to daily life.

What exactly does Customer Success mean at Vendekin?

According to Apoorv, it’s simple. When a customer feels valued, feels that his/her decision to venture into this industry with Vendekin has begun showing results that are visible and tangible, that there is Customer Success.

Apoorv and his team of 15, which also includes a part of the operations team, work with two kinds of people every day. One, the ‘Customers’ consisting of vending machine operators, entrepreneurs and brands. This can range from experienced players to new entrants, both to whom Vendekin provides vending machine solutions in the form of smart vending machines, intelligent RetroBox and the SaaS software powering them. The second type of folks his team interacts with are the ‘Consumers’, those making transactions and purchases using Vendekin-powered smart vending machines. These consumers reach out to Vendekin using the in-app messenger with suggestions, complaints, or questions. Apoorv’s team steps in here by providing solutions directly or bringing the operator into the loop to ensure the issue is resolved in the shortest possible time. This way it’s a double win for the end-consumer as there is always another level of redressal of their complaints and concerns.

How does the Customer Success team help brands and new entrepreneurs?

The customer success teams are by the customer’s side right from the time they are on-boarded with Vendekin. The teams work in tandem with the marketing team in educating the customer about how to extract maximum benefit out of their smart vending machines by making optimum usage of the analytics platform - vNetra. These smart vending machine solutions provided include technical troubleshooting, marketing assistance, promotional strategy planning, and customisations of the vending machines and the software as per the client’s business requirements. The operations team in particular plays a vital role in ensuring that installation and commissioning of vending machines is carried out with utmost diligence. A thorough software and machine operation training is provided to the customers to ensure a good consumer experience.

Continue reading