A unique partnership drives insight, growth for FairPrice Group

One of the world’s most innovative grocers was created with the consumer’s bottom line in mind — as well as steady jobs for workers. Those social goals, however, have not kept FairPrice from being on the leading edge of retail innovation. 

At NRF 2026: Retail’s Big Show, Vipul Chawla, group chief executive officer for FairPrice Group, discussed how the unusual arrangement between the Singapore government and labor unions propelled the company. FairPrice was among the first to introduce a third-party marketplace, media businesses and scan-and-go, and Chawla talked about ways the company culture allows such innovation. 

“Why we exist is to make every day a little better for our customers and for our people. So that's our why,” he said. “And what we do is make it easy, easy on the wallet, easy on the experience and easy on the planet. This strategy guides our thinking as we transform into the future.” 

With that as a guiding principle, Chawla said improvement is a daily goal. “Making sure that we have a strong value program, for example, forces us to review our processes almost every day.” 

Though FairPrice has about 60% of the market share and Singapore is a relatively small country, competition is fierce with Amazon, Alibaba and other omnichannel competitors in the market. 

It was that intention of maintaining its market share that led the company to invest in omnichannel in the first place. 

“It is absolutely true that, for a bricks-and-mortar company which has had a traditional tone and manner of operations and a P&L that exists, the first few years of investing in an ecommerce business is brutal,” Chawla said. 

“We thought long and hard about this, and it was clear to us that if we do not participate in this space, we will be left without a business in the future because our customers were increasingly demonstrating omnichannel behavior.” 

The data backs that up. About 70% of customers visit a physical store three times per month and shop digitally once a month, he said. “But the digital channel is not just being used as a top-up. The digital purchase basket is five times that of the physical purchase basket.” 

Digital, particularly app use, enables FairPrice to know more about its customers, which is helping drive current innovations. The retailer is in the midst of data cleanup to link its data to the national ID system “so we’re able to identify the customer down to a segment of one. Now as we get access to customer behavior across four or five lines of business, our ability to understand and now starting to predict what they will need is getting better.” 

That data has led to a concept store, the Store of Tomorrow, where technology can help solve pain points. At least nine digital innovations are currently being tested, most of which help the customer directly, and often work in tandem. A trolley with a tablet embedded is the starting point: A quick scan of the app identifies the customer and makes suggestions based on previous purchases. A customer presses a button that selects eggs. The trolley navigates to where eggs are and a shelf label blinks. 

“You put the eggs in the trolley, and it asks you, ‘Would you like milk, bread?’ and so on,” Chawla said. “And it helps you find where that is. And once you place those products in the trolley, you're done with checkout.” 

The Store of Tomorrow also helps the grocery leadership, anticipating shopper behavior and needs based on the weather. Cameras with AI vision detail which stocks are running low, or where there is a spill. 

The smart trolley has driven the purchase basket up by 70%. “It's helping clearly the whole aspect of personalization and promotions,” he said, making “the work of the customer much easier.”