Although it has been said again and again that only 3 % of retail in India is organizaed whereas rest is highly unorganized mom n pop store format but when I travel from Andheri to Mindspace , I feel exactly opposite . To name just a few mega malls which cross my way in are Fame Adlab , In orbit , Infinity , Megamall , Hypercity , Shoppers stop , Evershine , Shubhichha and what not ( My batchmate Ganesh informed me that currently 7.5% of retail market in India is organized and it is expected to go upto 20% by 2010, So it has increased for sure). half of these are located in very close vicinity to each other. A grand addition to the list is newly opened Star bazaar where you get every thing of daily need , probably the model was to repeat wallmart's mantra of big volume in low price , so most of SKUs are packed in relatively bigger chunks, I will not say the discounts are as bigger as smaller stores will offer .
One of the other innovation of Indian retail is having food joints within these stores , Big bazaar , shoppers stop already had it , same is done by Marks and spencer as well as star bazaar . These food joints are growing bigger day by day adding almost everything from Veg biryani to street food in thier menu. They do fetch some additional revenue speciall if people are coming just to do some window shopping , gourmet food can still make them spend some extra bucks without feeling guilty.
The recent realization by retailers is simple , no matter what happens people will spend money on food , vegetables and daily grocery items . Now a very large portion of entire mat is devoted to it which include green vegetables , fruits and even grains !
The challenge in front of consumer remains selecting the best and cheapest option , all of the retailers making branded goods available to thier consumers which leave them with selecting best price and the difference is not small . I planned to purchase Noka Music express 5310 which is priced over 10K in hypercity , 9600 in Nokia Service stores and around 9300 in Spencers , isn't it amazing that one of the retail format is able to sell cheaper then original manufacturer.
Whatever the case is options are many , these modern temples of consumerism are definetly attracting many ( and mind you with family and freinds) and leaving no stone unturn to pull some money out of thier pocket . I call them temples because these are the places where people go when they want to shop and also when they don't want to , when they are happy and also when they are stressed , also an obvious rush in festive seasons . Overall outcome will be a push to econmoy , to inflation and to some numerical predictions ( which are most of the time any way baseless) .
So Are you contributing to countries economy?
Monday, September 29, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Bhagvada-Gita : Revisiting the message of doing ones Duty
Gita is my favourite topic since long time , not because I understand it but mostly because I am still trying to understand it . There are so many dimensions to it and mostly my conflict is with the core message of Gita " do your duty efficiently without being attached to or affected by the results" . I can not stop thinking how is it possible that one works out so many steps to reach to the ultimate end result and this message says it simply does not belong to you so don think about it There may be two reasons behind it .
1) Influence to the result by external factors : In childhood we confronted one science example many times " what happens when 1 kg of cotton and 1 kg of metal is dropped from the same hight , which will reach to the ground first" our innocent mind always tend to answer that lighter weight will reach on ground much later then heavier one which is scientifically not true if the experiment is done in vacuum . Thats the catch .... if the experiment is done in vacuum where there can not be an external factor but we live in real world where there are so many external factors always influencing each and every activity we do and hence all the end results. so if the same experiment is carried out in external environment then it will be impacted by gravity , air and some other environmental resistance which will keep lighter weight in the air for some extra time.
Same is true for our acts , there are so many factors to prevent the pure outcome of our activity , suppose I am preparing for an exam and I read all the course material but will my surrounding and environmental condition be the same as of my other friends ... I may have some personal issues , I may be not feeling well ... On the day of exam I may come across some un pleasant event and the list goes on . whereas some one else may get an excellent environmental support and score much better then what he intended to.
2) Looking at bigger picture : Another optimistic way of looking at this message of not giving too much attention to end result can be our precision for end result. Human is not accurate in predicting results and it is very much possible that what we predict is an understatement of what we can actually do or even we may miss out on some of the important side results and other cascading results.
To put it simply If a student sets a goal for himself to score first rank in school without knowing that his calibre is to achieve first rank in entire city or in entire nation...
Arjuna's unwillingness to do his duty as a warrior, because fighting involved destruction and killing but there are other outcomes to this which are more important , It will be victory of truth and justice , This will annihilate evil forces from earth and make life more beautiful for coming generations infact it will have cascading affect till generations to give learning and lessions . Arjuna fails to see the bigger picture here
3) To perform every act by putting best of our effort: second point directly leads us to this one , if rather then shackling ourselves with some expectation which could be an understatement for us we perform each and every step in the process by putting best of our effort , there are great chances that we achieve much more than what we would have set as benchmark.
This will also help us in stopping the differentiation between various tasks , we consider some are important and some are not and so we tend to neglect the tasks which are less important whereas theory of management says there has to be value addition in each step , if there is no value addition that means a redundant task and has to be eliminated.
These were just few of the many reasons which may have lead to this mysterious message of Gita . I believe this message is worth considering , last time I heard something similar from Tiger woods when he mentioned that in his game he does not concentrate on the scores rather he enjoys & concentrates on each and every step of the game which keeps him away from the nervous ness which players get in tournaments by looking at their and competitors scores ... thats another way to look at it and I wonder Woods know it even when he may have never read Gita !!
1) Influence to the result by external factors : In childhood we confronted one science example many times " what happens when 1 kg of cotton and 1 kg of metal is dropped from the same hight , which will reach to the ground first" our innocent mind always tend to answer that lighter weight will reach on ground much later then heavier one which is scientifically not true if the experiment is done in vacuum . Thats the catch .... if the experiment is done in vacuum where there can not be an external factor but we live in real world where there are so many external factors always influencing each and every activity we do and hence all the end results. so if the same experiment is carried out in external environment then it will be impacted by gravity , air and some other environmental resistance which will keep lighter weight in the air for some extra time.
Same is true for our acts , there are so many factors to prevent the pure outcome of our activity , suppose I am preparing for an exam and I read all the course material but will my surrounding and environmental condition be the same as of my other friends ... I may have some personal issues , I may be not feeling well ... On the day of exam I may come across some un pleasant event and the list goes on . whereas some one else may get an excellent environmental support and score much better then what he intended to.
2) Looking at bigger picture : Another optimistic way of looking at this message of not giving too much attention to end result can be our precision for end result. Human is not accurate in predicting results and it is very much possible that what we predict is an understatement of what we can actually do or even we may miss out on some of the important side results and other cascading results.
To put it simply If a student sets a goal for himself to score first rank in school without knowing that his calibre is to achieve first rank in entire city or in entire nation...
Arjuna's unwillingness to do his duty as a warrior, because fighting involved destruction and killing but there are other outcomes to this which are more important , It will be victory of truth and justice , This will annihilate evil forces from earth and make life more beautiful for coming generations infact it will have cascading affect till generations to give learning and lessions . Arjuna fails to see the bigger picture here
3) To perform every act by putting best of our effort: second point directly leads us to this one , if rather then shackling ourselves with some expectation which could be an understatement for us we perform each and every step in the process by putting best of our effort , there are great chances that we achieve much more than what we would have set as benchmark.
This will also help us in stopping the differentiation between various tasks , we consider some are important and some are not and so we tend to neglect the tasks which are less important whereas theory of management says there has to be value addition in each step , if there is no value addition that means a redundant task and has to be eliminated.
These were just few of the many reasons which may have lead to this mysterious message of Gita . I believe this message is worth considering , last time I heard something similar from Tiger woods when he mentioned that in his game he does not concentrate on the scores rather he enjoys & concentrates on each and every step of the game which keeps him away from the nervous ness which players get in tournaments by looking at their and competitors scores ... thats another way to look at it and I wonder Woods know it even when he may have never read Gita !!
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