Two separate incidents recently reinforced to me the need to know and understand the customer intimately, and to have the ability to respond to that knowledge with the appropriate product or service. One was the experience an acquaintance had with the tea-vendor at a Mumbai railway station, who had segmented his tea-concoctions by the train (and its passengers), customizing to their regional tastes. The second was a music concert sponsored by a well-known motorbike brand. The audience was largely off-target and the event was clearly not successful for the bike brand, though the audience and the band itself had a…
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It often seems like "Scaling Up = Dumbing Down." As an organisation starts to scale up, the challenge is getting everyone to work the same way as earlier. And Process with a capital "P" takes over. In the absence of inspiring and totally involved leadership, it often is just a hop and a skip from Bureaucracy. If a lot of people feel the same way, there may yet be hope for small businesses and the more personalized touch.
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By RASUL BAILEY MINT (Exclusive Partner The Wall Street Journal) DELHI, 20 February 2007 Bharti Enterprises, the parent of India's best selling wireless service provider Airtel, confirmed that it will invest up to $2.5 billion (Rs. 11,026 crores) in the next eight years to roll out convenience stores and hypermarkets nationwide, joining a raft of companies looking to profit from an expected boom in organised retailing. As reported on Monday by Mint, Rajan Mittal, the youngest of the three founders of Bharti, will head the retail foray, dubbed Bharti Retail Pvt. Ltd. Bharti's Investment will be financed by a mix…
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In my view, India and China are two countries that can change companies. Most analyses of "consumer India" are led by affluent analysts primarily based in the biggest cities. These incomplete analyses are followed avidly also by international companies to draw up their India strategy. Most do not even scratch the surface of the diversity of the country, let alone customize the approach. There are reasonably large and distinct consumer segments in India--many are alien to most companies based in the developed markets, because they have been extinct there for several decades. The companies that seem to be succeeding are…
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By RASUL BAILEY MINT (Exclusive Partner The Wall Street Journal) DELHI, 2 February 2007 Targeting an emerging segment of night shoppers, New Delhi-based round-the-clock convenience chain Twenty Four Seven Retail Stores Pvt. Ltd plans to invest Rs 880 crore (US$200 million) in opening 1,000 outlets in the next five years., in a country where even late markets shut by midnight. The company plans to open 178 stores in Delhi and its suburbs before expanding to the country's commercial capital, Mumbai, next year and thereon to other major cities. Last year, the K.K. Modi Group forayed into organized retail by opening…
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