Sodexo targets schools, MSMEs in India

Mumbai: The Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services (BRS) is targeting schools and small merchants to expand its base in India. It will allow customers to use Sodexo cards on mobiles to buy school meals or products from kirana stores, said Sodexo BRS’ global chief executive Aurelian Sonet.

The company is planning to take its rewards and benefits programme beyond business-to-business, or corporate clients, and reach out to the consumers directly, he added.

“There are huge runways in schools, probably 10X as many school or university children as corporate employees,” said Sonet talking about the potential base for Sodexo.

The France-headquartered firm has 3.5 million consumers in India, primarily comprising salaried employees.

Its benefit and rewards programme for India Inc now goes beyond cash. Earlier, the firm offered a meal card for corporates employees, but subsequently expanded to a rewards and benefits programme that included air-tickets, holidays development courses and buying gadgets, among others. Its cards can be used at 100,000-plus merchants outlets across over 1,800 cities in India, and over 125 online sites.

“We started as a tax benefit programme, but we are seeing interest from other things like schools and universities. For example, if school students put a Sodexo instrument sticker on their ID cards, they can tap and access the cafeteria. We are seeing this in many clients as well in different segments and use cases for the product.” the CEO told Mint.

Sonet said the other focus will be small kirana stores. “We have a lot of potential in India. There are still a lot of small and mid-size businesses we must go to, mostly traditional ones,” he added. India ranks among the top 10 geographies for the company with Brazil at the top.

Small and medium enterprises which witnessed a surge in digital adoption during the two years of the pandemic is a major focus area for the company that started offering meal card services in India 25 years ago. It is aggressively partnering with EdTech, ITeS, neo-banking, foodtech and cloud kitchen companies to expand its presence. In the last 5 years, Sodexo BRS India saw over 15% growth in its service portfolio on the back of expanding its services to startups and SMEs.