Shopping centres transform into smart, Omnichannel platforms in the new normal

The Inorbit ChatBot is an additional service that the mall is providing to customers across all five geographies in which the mall is present. It is a voice-to-text assistant which will have information related to brands, services, deals, offers and relevant FAQs about Inorbit. The Bot will also be a platform for interactive sessions like quizzes where winners will be gratified with vouchers or gifts. The Chat Bot is live but in testing phase currently. It aims to provide quick, updated information through an interactive session anytime, anywhere about Inorbit.
Inorbit Malls continues to invest in technology and other areas to bring solutions that help simplify the lives of all its stakeholders. As a brand, they believe in creating and offering new experiences to their consumers for creating a recall value for the brand and ensuring repeat visits from their patrons.
“To encourage shopping, Inorbit along with their retail partners are ensuring products are made available to customers via WhatsApp, email and even video calls; allowing customers to place orders sitting at home and having the product delivered at their doorstep. The malls have invited lifestyle bloggers to promote retailer products and offers running at the mall,” explains Rajneesh Mahajan, CEO, Inorbit Malls.
Inorbit Malls in Malad and Vashi have introduced various convenience driven services that will provide consumers with a pleasant shopping experience, if they wish to shop from home or avoid the premises for some more time. Both malls in Mumbai have started a video calling facility where consumers can make selection through a video call and get their shopping products home delivered. Customers can also avail of curb side pick-up – i.e. simply drive through the mall to collect their pre-paid shopping bags. These new services of home delivery, catalogue sharing on WhatsApp video call all aim to make shopping safe, convenient and fun in the COVID age. All retailers well over 100 brands – within its premises offer these personalised services to customers.
Besides this, Inorbit is ensuring that the body temperature of every visitor and all mall staff is checked everytime they enter the mall, social distancing norms within the premises are maintained, a minimum touch policy is followed and that no touch sanitizing stations are installed at regular distances.
With COVID-19 still forcing consumers to stay indoors in the relative safety of their homes, Inorbit Mall, Whitefield came up with a novel idea to take the shopping centre to the shoppers. In association with brands like Celio*, Skechers, Metro, US Polo,
Flying Machine etc., Inorbit Whitefield is arranging shopping stalls in clubhouses of Bengaluru townships so society residents can visit and shop – happy shopping experience with utmost safety at the customers’ doorstep.
“This is truly a delightful one of a kind initiative taken up by Inorbit Mall, Whitefield for allowing our residents to benefit immensely from shopping stores at their doorstep during the current pandemic times. I am sure such a shopping experience – set up with so much ease and with all precautionary measures – will mutually benefit the mall authorities and the society residents and will be appreciated by all. Looking forward to collaborating with Inorbit Mall for more similar endeavours that benefit our residents,” says Jagvir Singh Rawat, Food & Beverage Manager, Palm Meadows Club, Adarsh Palm Meadows Society, Whitefield.

DLF Malls ‘Lukout’ app is a one stop solution that offers real time traffic, express check-in with safe pass, curbside pick -up and contactless dining. For a safest and most convenient way to shop at DLF Malls, the app offers exclusive features for visiting DLF Malls. The application also includes other updates such as latest products, unique deals and offers along with its own social network for millions of consumers.
The new ‘Shop Safe’ feature on the ‘DLF Malls Lukout app’, uses advanced algorithms, data from multiple sensors to calculate real-time mall traffic and safety updates. It informs them on the permissible number versus actual no of people (at any given point of time) in the mall as per social distancing norm, which can help consumers to make an informed decision on time to visit the mall. The app also lets shoppers to express check-in through Safe Pass or their Aarogya Setu QR code.
With this launch, DLF Shopping Malls has transformed its digital in-app experience with a safe shopping feature which will provide customers real time safety updates, footfall updates in the mall. Thereby, helping customers to plan their mall visits by prebooking their time slot while sitting at home.
The app has also introduced one of its kind, a new feature ‘The Lukout Closet’, a digital wardrobe for fashion lovers. A complete immersive visual experience, it curates the looks as per season’s latest trends. And with an exclusive DLF Malls Shop Assist service, it connects consumers with the brand’s store manager directly. Not just that, now shoppers can enjoy live video calling and virtual store navigation with DLF Malls Shop Assist with this app.
The dining experience has also been upgraded with an all inclusive feature of Contactless Dining introduced across the restaurants and food courts housed in DLF Malls that allows consumer to book a table, check out digital menu, pre-order as well as with an option of direct payment.
Speaking about the app, Pushpa Bector, Executive Director, DLF Retail, says, “In line with our commitment of providing a safe and pleasurable shopping experience for our consumers, we are delighted to introduce our revamped app ‘DLF Malls Lukout’. With features like ‘Shop Safe’ and ‘Lukout Closet’ our aim is to help and guide our customers so that they can maintain social distancing and shop with new energy and confi dence. The app will further assist them in prebooking and pre-planning their visit and encourage contactless shopping and dining experiences in our malls. With this, we want to provide the safest and most convenient shopping experience for not just our customers who are visiting the malls, but also for those who are at home and want to shop at our properties.”
DLF Malls has unveiled a new brand film to showcase the new features of the ‘DLF Malls Lukout app’ and has also introduced a new logo. The app is available on both Google Play Store and Apple Store for customers to download.
Customers looking for takeaways can simply pre-order the dishes, grab the items from the counter and check out by making contactless payments through their smartphones. Thus, making the entire in-mall experience seamless and contact-free, as much as possible.
Restaurants within the DLF Shopping Malls portfolio will be integrated with AI-powered video solutions from ‘Staqu’ which will render specialised analytics on restaurant operations and bring the live feed to the diners helping them monitor safety parameters in the kitchen. A live stream of the kitchen proceedings will also be available to the end customer on the Dineout app and assure them of hygiene compliance and sanitization standards. This will help reinforce consumer confidence, thereby increasing quality footfalls to the restaurants.

LuLu Mall, Kochi has its own Li-Fi – similar to Wi-Fi but using signals through mall lights. The lights of the mall pass signals to customer’s mobile phones which in turn inform retailers about their exact presence in the shopping mall. Retailers then prompt customers with alluring offers.
Aside from this, the mall provides advanced technological services like geo-fencing, beacon technology and ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) where they identify the customers from the moment they enter the mall. The technology helps in recognising number plates of cars and keeping track of visitors. This leads to a database of the loyal customers who visit the mall on a regular basis. As the mall further interacts with them, these loyal consumers get real time information, updates and offers.
As soon as the lockdown was announced in March, it was quickly learnt that hypermarket and supermarket will be the only formats that would be operational. That prompted malls to develop measures to let consumers order online. LuLu Mall developed an app for making ordering and delivering easy for the consumers.
“By the third day of lockdown, we had developed an app, so that ordering became easy. We started with 100 deliveries a day and it picked up to 4,500 deliveries, with our staff becoming drivers and delivery agents for the orders. We signed up with aggregators and all the norms (sanitizers, temperature checking and masks) were in place to make things convenient for the consumers. We had put enough restrictions for people coming to the mall for takeaways for their benefit and safety. Not more than two persons were allowed in the car and we tried to arrange and cover every possible angle and it worked out well,” says Shibu Philips, Business Head, LuLu Shopping Mall.
The lockdown period was also educational for LuLu Shopping Mall. The mall’s Live Loyalty Platform, which had more than 2 lakh members, saw a steady rise in the number of loyal consumers.
“The platform was operational 24*7, and customers could always call to place an order. As the app was the center point of attraction, we realised that there was a hefty increase in the number of loyal customers. For the food court, we have tied up with an operator who can ensure that the customers can order their food without going to the counter. Consumers can do this by scanning a code and the order details are delivered on their WhatsApp number. They can pay their bill in the same way,” Philips added.
In the food court, the mall has introduced contactless dining where customers simply need to scan a QR code, order and pay and collect their food contact free. LuLu Hypermarket has been providing express delivery for everything from grocery to and electronics to even elaborate festive food.
“Our loyal customers have been provided with a hotline number where they can speak to our customer executive and get access to any service or product in the mall on priority basis or clear any query related to the mall. Several retailers are ensuring their products are accessible online and the mall is treated as the collection point,” added Philips.

As part of the ‘new normal’, Select CITYWALK has introduced a suite of services to ensure comfort and convenience to consumers by offering a seamless retail experience. These services offer hassle-free access to products and a process with minimal human interaction. The new services portfolio offers concierge services for all queries, contactless ordering and home delivery services, personal shopper service, curb side pickup and on the anvil is the introduction of the online shopping guide. The concierge services digitally offer immediate answers to consumer queries to have greater engagement and nurture relationships. The shopping centre promotes this through its WhatsApp application platform, directing consumers through a series of click to WhatsApp ads across their social media. Consumers can easily enquire about mall safety procedures, timings, delivery etc., with a chatbot to respond to frequently asked questions and a connection with individual stores for brand related queries at the same time.
The mall has also introduced direct delivery service through WhatsApp ordering. Consumers can order their product through various payment options and get it delivered to their home.
Through the personal shopper service, which is apt for the current scenario, keen customers are being encouraged to pre-book shopping slots on the website and enjoy hassle-free shopping experience. They can book a shopping session with a stylist who actually helps them find the right product. This service has already garnered great popularity and witnessed its first record sale of over Rs 1 lakh from its first shopper and many more successful sessions thereafter. Customers can either pay directly to the store through various payment options or pay cash on delivery.
Designed with safety in mind, the shopping centre has also set up a curb side pickup desk at the rear entrance keeping in mind minimal interaction and troublefree experience to get the order picked. The orders can be placed through the concierge and will be ready for contactless curb side pickup at a specific time.

Infiniti Malls developed an Omnichannel platform for their mall very early on in the game. They initially started with a facility of ‘Click-and-Collect’ where the customers were able to block the product online for 24-hours, go to the store within those 24-hours, pay and immediately pick up the product and leave. The mall soon upgraded this service to paying online and having products home delivered. Infiniti has now developed a loyalty app where customers can win points and prizes in the app while shopping at the mall.
“We have introduced an app/ QR Code solution through which customers can pre-book a visit to the mall and also place orders at the food court which is contactless and easy to use. Besides regular protocols we are trying to bring in different entertainment for our guests like drive in theatre in our parking lot, musical evening through our digital screens in food court and in the atrium, etc.,” says Mukesh Kumar, CEO, Infiniti Mall.

Ambience Malls have been advising shoppers to use the ‘Ambience Mall App’ for a seamless and safe shopping experience. New updates on the app allows the users to book parking slots, access contactless parking, keep track of real-time foot traffic in the mall, order food and receive notifications on health and safety measures taken in the mall; along with other features like access to the mall directory, in-door navigation, Loyalty Program etc. Keeping the COVID-19 situation in mind, in-mall digital mall directories are temporarily disabled along with the discontinuation of wheelchair, pram and valet
Services.

Pacifi c Group has introduced Shop from Home, Free Home Delivery, Back to Shopping Offers, WhatsApp Video Shopping, and Exclusive Block and Shop services to give customers a sense of safety and exclusivity during the Unlock phase which ranks the mall in the category of being Omnichannel.
“Block and Shop allows the customer to pre-book a slot for themselves and shop exclusively in that store. Mall authorities have made retailers and other management personnel aware of keeping a check on guidelines being followed,” explains Abhishek Bansal, Executive Director, Pacific Group.
Along with the fine and secure retail experience, encouraging cashless payment methods at all stores and food court counters, parking, plexiglass screens at checkout/payment terminals to avoid direct contact between customers and staff are extra precautions.
“We are using ‘experiential’ retail in the mall premises and making the customers ‘want to’ visit the nearby mall at every opportunity they get. And by providing fine dining restaurants, cafes, theme-based entertainment centres, etc in the mall brings ‘mall loyalty’ that in turn translates into success. We develop malls with an idea to provide a get together place for the family and friends, which cannot be achieved through the Internet. Malls will sustain as long as there is a need to socialise and shop. In this business, there is a constant need to keep up with the audience and cater to their needs. Going Phygital is one such endeavour where we want to retain every customer — the ones interested in physical shopping and the ones who enjoy being digital,” Bansal adds.

Creaticity, Pune recently launched the first-of-its-kind online platform www.creaticityonline.com, the first organized furniture
mall to go completely online. The mall had been fully focused on adopting technology and moving towards omnichannel retailing since the last two years. The mall introduced techno-malling initiatives such as interactive touch kiosks, beacon-based solutions and a knowledge-based mobile app for engaging better with customers.
“To match the evolving needs of consumers, we have embarked on a journey that is largely Phygital – Physical and Digital, with Creaticity online that we are launching soon. The platform will have an option to buy national and global brands online while there is a strong connection to give a physical touch and feel through virtual experiences and also a large campus to off er actual touch and feel in a completely sanitized environment. Customers can now combine the best of physical benefits such as the touch/ feel experience of products and seeking expert advice from the salespeople along with digital benefits of comfort, convenience, ease of buying and payments to name a few,” says Mahesh M, CEO, Creaticity.
The e-commerce initiative takes Creativity one step closer to its customers in offering them a seamless shopping experience, which is the fruit of integrating technology with the physical mall.
The platform will host 4,000 products, 20 product categories and 40 brands to begin with. The brands/ sellers on this portal are a combination of many brands housed inside Creaticity and several reputed national and regional brands in the furniture and home décor space. This e-commerce portal, which is the first of its kind in India by a physical mall in the home & décor category, is the need of the hour and has several distinctive features:
– Customers can visually have a physical walk through in our
mall and individual stores
– Options such as zooming into a particular product for checking out the finer details for visualisation purposes
– Live chat and video calls by appointment add depth to knowledge sharing and personal touch
“The entire process of visiting the stores virtually, to evaluating products, finalising the order and safe packaged delivery of the products will be taken care of in alliance with the sellers. In other words, it would be a start to end solution from easy browsing to virtually visiting physical stores, to video consultation with sales teams for advice on products to placing orders. Simultaneously, customers also have the choice of visiting Creaticity, arguably India’s first and finest home destination in a completely sanitized environment, to touch and feel products and interact personally with the retailers and make an informed choice to make their homes an abode of comfort, aesthetics and functionality,” Mahesh M explains.

To help their customers avoid queues and chaos in their malls and provide convenient, Nexus Malls has partnered with DotPe, a Gurugram-based O2O commerce and fi ntech platform. The platform is currently offering its digital ordering solutions fully integrated with a payment gateway to 30 food vendors across the food courts of three major Nexus malls – Ahmedabad One, The Mall of Amritsar and Elante, Chandigarh – and is planning to get more brands onboard.
A technology startup, DotPe provides neo digital transformation and commerce solutions to restaurants and F&B brands. By offering its QR code and WhatsApp based SCANORDER-PAY solution, direct communication and digital ordering management technology to them, it can assist food courts to ensure streamlined business operations while following the social distancing norms and make customers feel safe through
minimal human touch while ordering and settling the bill. Malls will have a common QR code across various floors of the mall whereas the floor managers and operations team will be guiding the customers on how to use it.
Guests can scan the QR code placed on the tables from their own mobile phones and view the menu of all the restaurants through their phone browsers just like an e-commerce catalogue. They can order from the catalogue while remaining seated at the food court or walking through the mall corridors while shopping and also make the payment through the phone using any medium including UPI. The order-related communication will further happen over the guests’ WhatsApp number. Once the orders are ready, guests can simply pick their orders from the counters of the food vendor and either dine in there or take away.

Nashik City Centre Mall recently launched a mall app recently during the unlocking phase. Visitors can download the app from Google Play Store and can book a visiting slot in the mall to do the shopping. One can either scan the QR code or enter the booking code at the entrance and enter the mall without any hassle. They can further book slots in the retail store as well through the app. The app also plays a key role in maintaining the social distancing in the mall.
“The app generates a heatmap for every area and the logical extension of this that there will be red or green sides of the process. For example, if there are already three or four shoppers in a store or space, and the fifth one is trying to enter, the app will notify ‘red’ so that he/she cannot enter and has to wait till the light turns green. As we book tickets for cinemas, we can also book a visit to the mall. It will also help us in regulating and showing customers the alternate calendar available for the
visiting slot. The same app can be extended for contactless payment, parking and so on. The idea is to provide a digital interface along with the physical interface to the consumers. Everyone can use it, including the staff , retailers, security, housekeeping and customers,” says Shrirang Sarda, CEO & Managing Partner, Sarda Group.

Phoenix Mills and Dineout have taken the customer experience a notch higher by introducing contactless dining experience to customers at restaurants, cafés, and food courts in Phoenix Mills properties, including High Street Phoenix and Phoenix MarketCity in Mumbai and Pune.
With this feature Phoenix aims to ensure comfort and convenience to consumers by offering a seamless dining experience. It will enable the customers to pre-book a table, view digital menus, place an order over their phone, make digital payments and share feedback online. Customers can choose from a wide range of 100+ dining options available at these malls.
Contactless technology will redefine the dining experience within malls and is a key initiative introduced by the mall management to reduce the human interaction, maintain social distancing and ensure the overall safety of our patrons. The table management software that it incorporates will enable restaurants to manage their operations at 50 percent staff capacity. Furthermore, it will allow customers to:
– To reserve a table at their desired restaurants, pre-order their meal and place the second round of orders via digital menu, thereby cutting the wait time.
– Check the hygiene, safety measures, and ratings for the outlet.
– Give feedback to the restaurant.
– Make digital payments
Shoppers looking for takeaways can now simply pre-order their desired food, collect the items from the respective outlet, and check out by paying digitally through their smartphone. This will ensure a smooth, quick, contact-free and safe transaction – which is important during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Phoenix MarketCity Bengaluru implemented measures like QR codes for payment and seamless entry points in an attempt to make the mall tech-savvy and Omnichannel.
“We have AI based cameras installed in certain areas in the mall to keep a check on the customer density in the mall. We also keep on displaying the number of people present in the mall, as per the government guidelines. The customers encouraged and appreciated the effort taken by the mall management staff ,” says Sanjeev Sarin, Centre Director – Mall, Phoenix Malls.

Oberoi Mall implemented a host of new services and technologies to make the entire shopping experience as contact less as possible giving customer safety and convenience the utmost importance.
“We have introduced a simple yet effective scan and pay facility at our parking to avoid exchange of cash. For our internal customers, our retail partners, we have introduced an app where all approvals and material movement scheduling can happen on an interactive paperless platform, not warranting any frequent face to face interactions, calls, meetings or follow ups, thereby improving operational efficiencies and giving them more time to focus on enhancing customer experience,” states Anuj Arora, General Manager, Oberoi Mall.

Centre Square Mall, Kochi also developed an app during the lockdown period that will help the consumers in reducing their shopping time and make it more convenient. The app also helps in finding out the exact number of visitors present in the mall in a particular time period which is also very important from the safety perspective.
“Our team is working on an app, which will tell us the exact number of customers checking into the mall. We have a database and as part of our marketing initiative, we did send messages to all the consumers making them believe that we are using all the safety measures and recommendations issued by the State Government. This will help them in getting all required information from both shopping and safety angle,” says Monu Nair, Head – Leasing, Centre Square Mall.

Vegas Mall which was launched in 2019 is a 100 percent digital
mall. The mall has an app which makes the consumer shopping journey very convenient in terms of navigation, offers, events details. The shops present in the mall have digitised Visual Merchandising with advanced LED displays. Making consumer safety as the most important priority during COVID-19 times, the mall has installed DELPO counting machines, which synchronize all the entries and exits in the mall. Whenever the limit of 9,000 people is reached, it will notify everyone with a large beep and further entry will be restricted
A digital platform installed at the food court helps consumer order digitally by simply scanning a QR code and getting the entire menu his/her phone. Payments too can be done via the same method at the same time.

Quest Mall launched its mobile app which has various features for enhanced user engagement. The app is paired with Bluetooth Beacons installed inside the mall through which users get push notifications of various ongoing offers provided by the different
brands/ stores within the mall. It also has user interactive games
and features like the ‘Walk-n-Win’ which works like a pedometer and counts the number of steps taken by the patrons inside the mall.
“We reward them for completing certain milestones like say 10,000 steps within the mall to win free vouchers. It has call to action buttons integrated for every restaurant inside the food and dining section which enables users to call them directly with a single touch and book a table,” says Sanjeev Mehra, VP, Quest Properties India Ltd.