By Diwakar Kumar indiaretailing.com 20, July 2009 The primary challenge in food retail, no doubt, is its supply chain, which is making things difficult for retailers and food processors to procure quality produce at competitive costs directly from farmers in India. Last year at the India Retail Forum held in Mumbai, this prime challenge was centrestage for retailers to sidestep efficiency bottlenecks of the modern marketplace. The Indian supply chain for fresh and processed food is extremely poor and characterised by panoptic wastage and poor handling. A food retailer's supply chain must be short and tightened by professionally-drawn efficient practices…
The grocery market is loud. From the times when food markets were in streets and town squares, hawkers have cried out their wares, and the freshness or newness of everything made evident to the customers passing by. So, I guess, it is no surprise that today’s FMCG and food market is also tuned to high-decibel promotion. You don’t need to search too long for the reason - margins are generally thin on these frequent-use products and inventories need to move fast. And what you don’t make a noise about may not be visible to the customer and may remain unsold.…
By Raghavendra Kamath & Neeraj Thakur Business Standard Mumbai/new Delhi June 29, 2009, Vijay Pokare, owner of a 400 square foot store in Mumbai's Dadar market, knows his onions - literally. Just four months ago, he used to sell just 20 kg of them every day. After the nearby Subhiksha store on the ground floor of Shiv Sena Bhawan closed, Pokare spotted an opportunity and started packing washed onions in two kg plastic bags with a 10 per discount tag. Sales have soared three-fold since then. In South Delhi's Kalkaji area, a dozen small mom-and-pop stores (known as kirana stores…
By Sangita Ghosh & Sarimul Islam Choudhury Indiretailing.com Thursday, June 25, 2009 By how much has the consumer's pocket been impacted by the economic crisis? This is a question that has been troubling consumer goods manufacturers and retailers over the past few months. Thoughts on how to emerge from the crisis slowdown stronger and more resilient are keeping most modern retailers busy these days. How the Indian retail industry navigates the current challenges will determine its character and shape in the coming years, experts say. It has been suggested that investing in innovation during a downturn helps retailers counter depressed…
It has been around 200 years since the birth of Charles Darwin, and about 150 years since the publication of his and Alfred Wallace’s thoughts on evolution by natural selection. In their honour, let us remind ourselves of the basic theory that all of us learn at school. (So I'm a few months late acknowledging it - please bear with me!) On Evolution: Change Happens (1) Species differ from each other, but individuals within a species also differ from each other quite a bit. (2) These differences are due to changes to the basic genetic framework of the organism (mutations)…
Speciality Restaurants expanding into high-margin QSR and cloud kitchen spaces - @devangshu shared his perspective on the opportunities and realities of managing a diverse "house of brands" in the food service sector #India #strategy #diversification
Geopolitical friction has again sparked renewed concerns over inflation and rising input costs for FMCG companies as @itmeansjustice @whysnavi write. @devangshu commented.
