Bogeys

The bogeyman is useful to scare your kids in childhood. But the problem is that he does not go away in adulthood. We as individuals, society, nation have our favourite bogeymen. FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) seems one such to me. It is occupying undue share of talktime on our airwaves and print waves right now.

Wal-Mart if it comes into India, is painted as a monster which will eat up people. Far from it. They will make products available cheap for you and me. In fact, any Indian retailer could be as big a monster under existing law. So what is the big deal if another monster joins them?

Similarly, we have the bogey of religion, terrorism, and so on. Nothing has happened to India in centuries of invasions that could not be reversed. Our resilience is amazing, and will not be easily disturbed by blips on the radar of time. So, chill madi (Kannada version).

Musings on Retailing Industry

I was just wondering when we will have an Indian Wal-Mart that becomes the largest company-bigger than the Oil Companies and the Car companies. Maybe in 50-60 years?

What seems to be stopping the retailers is that our controls have given them too much protection for too long. And the great manpower crunch. There simply aren't enough qualified people in India to run large, organised retail stores- from the frontline staff to the managers. MBAs don't think it's a respectable thing to work for Retail Stores, because of "dignity of labour" issues. But though it is hard work which is mostly hands-on, it is exciting because growth potential is unlimited if you have the right model, as Wal-Mart showed.

In a supposedly saturated market like the US which already had a lot of entrenched retailers with a long history, Wal-Mart was the upstart which redefined the landscape, and put in place a strategy that used vast suburban spaces for cheap large stores and distribution centres, dedicated infotech solutions in the age before the internet, and Everyday Low Prices as opposed to an occasional "sale". We seem to have none of these in place yet. The food and grocery stores have the challenge of competing with the low overhead vegetable vendors, and low investment-better service kirana stores.

Maybe more local/regional models need to develop for the grocery retailer, but a national model is possible, for the apparel and other products, and at low prices, according to me. So far, only Big Bazaar seems to have addressed the price concerns.