“Our overconfidence that because we ran a good business, equity would always be there, proved our undoing. We did not budget for a time when there would be no money.

..Around 600 of our stores have been targeted by unidentified elements and there has been large-scale looting and ransacking” – source

So what went wrong? Recession of course, but what about their supply chain?

Here is a good analysis of Subhiksha’s story:

PS: There is a typo in the presentation (slide 6 timeslines)

Big Bazaar, in an attempt to redefine experience (and consumption) is mulling over an idea of renting clothes for occasion wear and sell second-hand clothes.

The initiative (details not yet out) will allow customers to hire high-end clothes, bags, jewellery and other accessories for a fraction of a price.

This is nothing new – there are quite a few services (mainly managed by local vendors); and Future group, if at all, they enter this space will be the first organized player to get into this space.

Target segment? Well, right from student crowd to middle class segment..to pretty much all kinds of segment that is into festival celebrations.

What do you think of this initiative? Will it fly in India?

Image by seaview99 via Flickr

It has been long since e-commerce made its debut in India but it is still to catch on in a major way. The absence of Amazon from Indian market is a major indication that it is not yet considered a lucrative enough market by big players. A lot has been said about it, tons of research papers written, lots of  workshops/panels have probably discussed it to death. I have not read any of them and so pardon me if what I am going to say sounds very amateurish.

As somebody who is betting on a business model that has Internet distribution at its core, it is very important for me to understand why e-commerce has not caught on in India and what would it take? There is a first obvious bunch of reasons that comes to mind – lack of broadband penetration, lack of good online payment mechanisms ( which includes lack of widespread credit card use and absolutely pathetic state of Indian payment gateways), lack of good logistic providers ( some are way too costly while others are simply not reliable, you can read the horror stories all over web and then I can tell you some of my own experiences) and simply bad e-commerce websites (as put to me by one of the players in the space, pointing towards an old competitor). We all know and understand these and save for the last one, can hardly do anything about them other than pray.

But this post is about a different aspect. I was in US for 2 years and the overarching theme of retail sector there and economy in general seem to be a destruction of giant brick-n-mortar chains at the cost of more efficient online alternatives. Amazon is of course there, Zappos is there and the whole e-bay thing. The current recession has only amplified the vows of physical stores. In short – large scale organized retailers are incumbents in the new economy that is taking shape.

Turn to India and the picture couldn’t be different. The organized retail sector in India is just getting started. The last few years have actually seen the spread of the model from groceries to stationary, shoes, electronics and everything else you can think of. Deep pocket, large players are entering the space one after another in a mad rush. Again the current slowdown has brought down the expansion speed but the trend is not over by any stretch of imagination because the fruits of a more integrated supply chain managements are just beginning to be felt by the common masses.

Let’s talk specifically about books. Today we have several large format book store chains around – Landmark, Crossword, Depot, Timeout and others. And the customer experience is just so much better in them as compared to normal book shops – you no longer need to know the name of the book/author you are looking for, you can go and browse the books, read them, discover new authors right there in the book store – none of which is possible in an old format store. The choices available are much wider. The point is – the new format retail is a much bigger deal for books as compared to let’s say grocery. Most of the time you don’t have to explore and discovers new groceries. But in books – that is the name of the game. There is a value add besides simply the price.

On the other hand, this is also a fact that books are one of the best selling online items in India after ticket bookings (Air and train). In a especially price sensitive market like India, they have a clear advantage (although combined with the expensive shipping, that gets diluted). The large number of languages in India present a totally new challenge for distribution and creates many types of long tails (inherently smaller languages like Tulu, the groups of people living away from the main language area – Tamils in North) which are again ideally suited to digital solutions but none of the current players seem too keen on them. Increasing petrol prices are kind of ambivalent – they probably encourage users to avoid driving to retail stores but they also jack up the logistics costs in form of fuel surcharges.

The question I wonder about is – in this situation where these two models are seeing simultaneous evolution, how will they interact? Will we see a Indian Amazon emerge which will soon start kicking butts of big retail stores? Will the Indian retail chains adapt to Internet better and sooner then their US counterparts have managed (given that Indian companies have already seen how it can turn out)?
Will we short-circuit to the future that seems to be taking shape in US or will we reach some different equilibrium point? All these are interesting questions and those making right bets will emerge at the top.
But as we know from the Quantum Physics – “The very process of observation affects the results of observation.” Similarly these bets are also going to decide what future turns out to be.

Exciting times!

Image credit

“We were paying huge rentals for these stores, which was a huge drain on the company’s finances. This, coupled with less-than-expected footfalls, drove the operational costs to unsustainable levels.
High rental rates have always been the bone of contention for organized retail owners. The retailers had taken up space on rentals as high as Rs 250 per sq ft. “At one point of time, the retailers were paying close to 40 per cent of their operational cost as rent, leaving hardly any room for profits” – source

The retail industry has seen severe decline in consumption and it’s expected that there would be 20-30% cut in the growth rate.

Vicious circle of consumption!

Image via Wikipedia

UniverCell has announced that it received Rs. 100 crore investment (in four tranches since 2007) from Peepul Capital (earlier iLabs Venture), and the money is being used for expansion : 167 stores now to 300 by March, 2009.

Branded Mobile retail outlets are swamping the mobile market and is expected to capture ~40% of the retail telecom market in 2 years.

Apart from UniverCell, other branded outlets that exists are Subhiksha (positioned as ‘cheapest’ phone destination- positioning mainly driven through TV/Print/radio ads and has a strong brand recall), Axiom stores (Panataloon’s JV with Axiom of Dubai), MobileNxt (N18 venture), Spice’s HotSpot and several electronic retail outlets like eZone etc.

Dynamics of Mobile Retail Stores – Where is the big opportunity?

• Size of handset market – ~7000 crore a year – ULCH accounts for ~50%
• Ever increasing demand – for e.g. 9 mn subscribers in the month of August, 2008
• Untapped market -of Replacements : As per BCG research, by 2010, India’s replacement market will be 70 %! [source]

Retail stores vs. mom-and-pop stores

• Better margins – Unlike the unorganized stores (estimated ~50,000 mom-and-pop stores sell phones, recharge cards/accessories etc), Branded retailers buy directly from manufacturers – at price ~4-5% cheaper.
• The big money is on the volume and most of these branded stores are undercutting small retailers in pricing – the % market share (mobile sales) of branded outlets has increased from 1% in 2006 to 15% in 2008.
• Inventory range: Branded retail stores have far more brands than unorganized retailers – offer more brands/choice of phones.

What’s happening in the Market?

Small mobile sellers are considering pooling their purchases to have better negotiating and bargaining power with mobile manufacturers – just the way, small retailers in TN are teaming up to form a chain!

Branded retail outlets’ biggest challenge comes from piracy and gray market, but falling price (of handsets) and replacement market boom can potentially drive customers to branded stores.

What’s your opinion?

Recommended Read : Mobile Handset Market Share | Top 10 handsets (used for mobile browsing)

The Tamil Nadu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (TCCI) is working with 500 small retailers to build a loosely coupled chain that will:

• Display common interiors and colors.
• Have a common logo to 500 outlets
• Have suggested these retailers to have products in neat shelves with names and price tags and computer billing,
• In future, common procurement of products to keep prices down – source

Unorganized retail outlets/Mom-and-pop stores can be a real threat to the biggies, if they unite!, i.e. if at all this model succeeds.
The pie is increasing and as biggies spread their wings in tier-2 cities, small outlets will need to think ‘beyond the obvious’.

What’s your take? Can the same model be applied to other industries?

pic

Ajim Premji has bought 10% stake in Subhiksha for Rs. 230 crores. Subhiksha was planning an IPO to raise Rs. 350 crores earlier, but given the current market situation decided to raise money from investors (wondering why Premji and not PE investors?)

ICICI Venture earlier invested in Subhiksha (reportedly, they own 24% stake) and as per NDTV, Premji would buy ICICI’s stake.

» More on the Indian Retail Industry.

While Subhiksha will appeal to the Maharashtra High court and has blamed the rivals for manipulating the case:

As everyone is aware we follow a Lowest price strategy and offer 10% discount on all medicines and have been subject matter of boycotts and lots of harassment – at various times regulatory agencies have been instigated to act against us. The whole objective is to discredit our discounting and make it appear that we sell products at lower prices because we sell lower quality. The consumer base attests otherwise and also more importantly the inconvenient point for our detractors is that 80% of what we sell in our stores are products belonging to National brands sourced directly from them.

In its hurry to fix us, the process of law has been completely given the go by and no effort has been made even to make out a plausible case – Subhiksha which does not even have a packing license nor packs anything had been served with sale license suspension for offences committed by others. And the said Vendors who buy and pack grocery and sell them have had their licenses suspended without even a show cause notice issued to them – and these are the appeals being heard now as these suspensions had been earlier stayed though this fact was suppressed before the legislative Council on July 26.  – source

ICIC Venture Capital owns 24% stake in Subhiksha and the company has been mulliing over IPO plans (to raise ~Rs.350 crore).

A study by Roopa Purushothaman and Rajesh Shukla (co-authored Goldman Sachs’ famous BRIC report) has conducted a study (on behalf of Kishore Biyani’s Future Capital Research and National Council of Applied Economic Research’s (NCAER))

The authors have identified 20 key cities (which accounted for ~$100-billion of consumption expenditure in 2007-08) and grouped them into three broad buckets -

Megacities :Largest cities in terms of population/market, i.e. Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune

Boomtowns: Next set of big population cities with high expenditure per household, i.e. Surat, Kanpur, Jaipur, Lucknow, Nagpur, Bhopal and Coimbatore

Niche cities: Smaller in terms of overall population, but still hit well above their weight in spending per household, i.e. Faridabad, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Chandigarh and Jalandhar

Few interesting insights from the report:

• More than half of households will be middle class by 2016
• The high-income segment will triple by 2016, quadruple in boomtowns
• Megacity households spend the least on average on education and recreation
• Surplus income rates in the top cities are nearly double the national average
• 19% of households prefer to keep surplus income at home
• Households overwhelmingly draw on savings to cope with shocks
• Niche cities have the highest asset penetration, but lowest financial penetration
• Nagpur leads in insurance penetration
• Coimbatore and Jaipur have the highest credit card penetration

View the report

Download from here | More details here.

That’s Zerostock!

ZeroStock is an interesting retail startup that is attempting a breakthrough in supply chain.

Their stores do not have any readymade apparel available, i.e. zero inventory model.

All a customer has to do is walk into any of the stores, figure out the size which will fit them with the trial shirts on display and then select the design and the material of the shirt. Once the transaction is done, the shirt will be dispatched to the customer within a matter of 24 hours to 48 hours from their centralized inventory at no additional cost. [source]

Started by Wharton grads, ZeroStock plans to have 300 shops (brand name: Cornerstone) across major cities and towns by the year end.

In essence, zerostock is trying to improve the supply chain inefficiency and their major USP is

the money saved by not maintaining any inventory (and the associated jazz). They have central inventories and source the products on-demand – essentially a postponement strategy, which will keep the cost low (hope they transfer the saving to the user as well)

One of the other USP of ZeroStock is that have sizes right from 29 to 46 (i.e. sequential, one can buy 33/35 size as well).

The team has raised $4 million from angel investors (I heard about them last October) and are planning to raising Rs 50 crores to support growth plans.

Their online version will be available soon.

What’s your take on this model? Are you willing to wait for a day or two to collect the shirt you saw a few days back?

Shopping is quite an impulsive decision and unless they provide major discounts, the selection-to-delivery delay will be a hindrance in mass adoption.

Your opinion?

Writers, most of the times, are clueless as to what to do about their works. Our self-publishing initiative would allow them to publish as low as 25 copies. What’s more, we will launch the book and sell them at our stores across the country for a few weeks and, then, return the unsold copies [source]

This is quite a significant development for the nascent print-on-demand industry and Future group’s entry will boost the startups who are offering self-publishing – cinnamonteal and pothi specifically.

What’s your opinion? How will you react, if you are one of those startups running your own print-on-demand service?

Will other big retail/publishing house get into this industry? I really doubt that.

‘Reliance plans to shut two-third of its 1,400 petrol pumps in the country by next month as it is unable to match the fuel price offered by public sector oil retailers, who get compensated by the Government for selling fuel below the cost’. [details]

Retail advertisers in print goes up by 4%

Retail sector advertising in print grew by 4 per cent in 2007. In the second half of the year, it grew 25 per cent compared to the first half (via AdEx India)

The top 10 advertisers accounted for 27 per cent of the print ads. Pantaloons topped the list with 8 per cent share, followed by Maruti Suzuki (4 per cent) and Tata Motors (3 per cent).
Five out of the top 10 advertisers were automotive companies

Maharashtra had the largest share of retail sector advertising at 19 per cent, followed by Tamil Nadu (17 per cent) and Andhra Pradesh and Kerala (both 11 per cent).[more]

Indians #3 in buying foreign brands

As per a survey conducted by Nielson, India is the third most brand conscious countries in the world, after Greece and Hong Kong. According to the survey, India ranks as the third most important market globally for Gucci, the sixth most for Calvin Klein, the ninth most for Diesel, and the tenth most for Fendi.

The study finds that the overall awareness about designer brands has been aided by people travelling overseas. [details]

Technorati tags: indian retail industry

Lessons to be learnt? Get the right people on the team, let them take risks, invest in the future and try to empower your customers.

Today in Economics Times article, he made clear his thoughts when he said,

…we want to create a strong sectoral play to capture the transition from a savings-led economy to a consumption-led economy.

Now this small piece of comment has a lot to say about Mr. Biyani and his thought process. He has identified, at the right time, that Indians are changing the way they live. There was a time when they were saving more than 50% of their earnings and living on basis necessities. Now slowly and gradually they are living lavishly and often spending the entire monthly earnings before a month is over. They are now more confident about opportunities and their economic well being.

Future Group today has a very strong presence in retail (with Big Bazaar, Depot, Pantaloons, ezone etc.), online retail (futurebazaar.com), advertising and media (Future TV, Future Media etc.), Financial services (Future Generalli, Future Money), Entertainment (holdings in Inox, failed plans of getting into Dish TV, Galaxy Entertainment etc), Customer services (Mr. Right). They are on the track of getting the largest pie of an individual’s spending.

Imagine yourself spending a day out. A typical day out would be a leisurely brunch a good restaurant, a movie at a plush theatre, shopping at a mall and finally a late night movie or a drink. You will encounter following services – transport, public places, restaurants, retailers, media and your house. Future group has its presence everywhere except transport. Wondering if they are planning something on that too .. ?

Apart from a holiday, your typical day would start with breakfast cereal or fruits (brought from Big Bazaar), clothes for office (from Pantaloons), Laptops and electronics equipment (from ezone), office or home furnishing (again from Pantaloons or Big Bazaar), books and stationary (from depot), probably a coffee (at Coffee World), bill payments (from Mr. Right), evening at Sports Bar Express or The Bowling Company and finally a TV (bought from ezone) in your bedroom (done by The Home Store).

Future Group companies touch a customer more than 18 hour a day. And more often than not they get value for money. With Indian customers ready to spend more and more with times to come and demanding value for every single rupee they spend, I can easily see Future Group leading the new India.

And by the way, look out for BCCL (NO, not the cricket board but the Times of India group) and TV18 group also in times to come.

Recommended Read: Book Review – “It happened in India”

[Saurabh blogs @ saurabhgarg.com]

Did it meet the expectations?

While the exact diwali sales numbers are not yet announced, here are a few interesting tidbits:

• This year, over 45 per cent of online sales have been of electronic items (In 2006, electronic items accounted for a mere 5 per cent) – digital cameras, and MP3 players were popular gifts for the season.
  Sony and Canon are top brands in the former while it is Apple all the way in the MP3 category with the iPod music player.
• On eBay, Nokia’s GPS mobile N95 features in the top most searched keywords.
• On Compareindia.com, HTC mobile caught up to the crest of the buying wave, while Sony Ericsson and Nokia tied for the top slot.
• Televisions are also a hot favourite – Sony, Samsung and LG are the most sought after brands.
• Nokia still rules the roost at Indiaplaza.in, followed by Motorola and Samsung.
• Sweets sales have dropped while diamond jewellery and gold coins now hold third place. Apparel, books, music and video follow

[via hindu]

While this sounds like a good start for a great Indian Internet story, what’s interesting to note is that Indians are still not buying goods which are “touch/experience independent”! Most of the items that are bought online are electronic goods (where any SKU is as same as the other)!

What’s your take? Do you see a pattern change in the coming years?

What’s storrz?

storrz is an online retail shop that is using interesting ways to break the online shopping barrier.

It’s probably the first Online shopping mall in the country to accept payment at home by any Visa or Master, Credit or Debit card.

Storrz representatives carry a Mobile enabled point of sale device to the customers door step to make this happen. Storrz accepts Sodexho passes from the customer allowing a large number of coupon holders to now use their coupons Online.

Given the fact that families do look at grocery shopping as a chore activity and vehicle parking etc is a big decision criteria (esp. in Bangalore) regarding shopping timings, I see a strong adoption for online grocery market.

storrz is currently available only in Bangalore and they have set the minimum order amount to Rs. 250/ which I believe is quite valid, given the operational aspect of such business. storrz offers same day delivery for all products in Bangalore.

Based out of Bangalore Storrz.Com has tied up with Major Retailers and OEM Brands like Namdharis Fresh, MTR, Dr Morepen,Jus Trufs, Mars, Pedigree, Telia, The Art Of Living, Indus Tree Crafts etc. Each brand has its own Brand store at the Storrz.Com Shopping Mall. Customers visit the Storrz Mall and purchase from the many brands that are selling Online. While being promised the same quality of service from Storrz.Com (source)

As far as the site is concerned, storrz has made good use of AJAX and one can drag/drop the items from online catalog very easily. What’s really missing is the effort in the landing page: They need to really work on improving their landing page and showcase discounted products/daily use products in a far better way.

If you are a Bangalorean, give storrz a try and share your feedback.

storrz, online retailing in India

The other interesting aspect of autsun is “U-make-the-store” concept, i.e. for products which aren’t available in Autsun site, one can order and set price for the product and Autsun will hunt the product for you; and will try to get the product at your ask price (i.e. on-demand retailing)

What’s really cool about Autsun is it’s targeting the Indian psyche of “touch-and-feel” by giving away a new experience in online shopping.

Here is a candid interview with Prabhat Garg, CEO/co-founder of Autsun. If you have questions related to Autsun products, please leave them in comments section.

How does U-make-the store process work? Is it a way to incentivise people to add products? How do you attempt to match the expected price? – Candidly speaking, this can be considered a hook to attract eyeballs, what would you say about that?
Prabhat Garg: First of all, let me try and assuage some of the skepticism around U-Make-The-Store™ service. From the very first day of the launch of this service, we have started receiving product requests. Some of these orders have already gone through the full cycle of UMTS (U-Make-The-Store), i.e. customer’s recommendation -> product sourcing by AUTSUN.COM -> addition of product to our catalog -> customer order -> fulfillment.

We’re proud to say that we now have customers on record that can vouch for our concept, service and delivery.

If you really think about it, U-Make-The-Store™ is not at all infeasible or complex, once you start to think about doing the best for the customer. Traditional sales models are push-based, i.e. the marketer has a product that he has to sell. When we go to buy something at a superstore, we get so overwhelmed sometimes by the number of products/choices that we tend to forget what we really need. Or it may happen that we know what we want – say I want a cell-phone but the store only stocks the most expensive brands. Now imagine a store where you can say: “Ok, I want a cell-phone, but I’m looking for brands with this exact budget.”

This is the flexibility that UMTS provides. There are thousands of products and hundreds of brands. We’re giving our customers the freedom to express their choices to us first hand. It’s a win-win situation. As a retailer, we get to sell what the customer wants, and the customer gets to buy exactly that and not a compromise. This is what we AUTSUN.COM has termed as ‘On-Demand Retail™’.

UMTS allows the customer to indicate a desired price for the product. It is about a responsible shopping experience. If a product is available in the market for say Rs.1000, I hardly think that a responsible shopper would recommend a price of Rs.100. Yes; she may recommend a price of Rs.800 or Rs.900. This adjustment to the market price may be justified and the customer deserves every penny worth saving on her hard-earned money, within reasonable bounds of market dynamics and while maintaining the standards of quality and delivery.

Please share a few details of your operations/supply chain.
Prabhat Garg: Supply chain is an extremely important aspect of our service. AUTSUN.COM currently has products in more than 10 major categories, more are to follow soon. True, the service was launched only recently, but we’ve been working on our supply chain network for the last 3 years. We’ve undergone a rigorous process of evaluating and forging business alliances. We have tough negotiators – some very smart people who handle the procurement and negotiations.

As a retail company, the mission of AUTSUN.COM is to make the experience of shopping online extremely rewarding, entertaining and fruitful – even better than going to a physical store and buying the stuff. We’re prepared to work at lower margins – and can do so because our infrastructure costs are much lower as compared to a physical store. We treat our business as a service-business and follow the value system of a service company.

What’s your take on the future growth of online retailing in India? What are the challenges you see in the market? Isn’t the Indian consumer psyche still a “touch-and-feel” one?
Prabhat Garg: Well, ecommerce is definitely set to grow across the world and India is no exception. Whereas earlier Indian market used to follow the European market which in turn followed the US market, today the Indian consumer has started short-circuiting the trends as the penetration of the Internet increases rapidly in India. It may not be surprising if we have the maximum number of online shoppers very soon. However, the overall size in terms of revenue leadership may still be a long way, though we have seen that micro-purchases like ring-tones are ringing in huge profits for telecom companies. Our subscriber/consumer base is phenomenal.

As far as the “touch-and-feel” psyche is concerned, I feel that there is always going to be a good number of people – whether in India or the West, who will always go by this philosophy and would be late adopters to the ecommerce way of doing things. However, the Internet is a deeper social phenomenon that is radically changing perceptions and behaviors.

Please share some info about the founding team.
We’re three founders, all experts in our fields.
Prabhat Garg, CEO: More than 9 years of marketing and technology consulting experience in international markets including India, Germany, Spain. He has a bachelor’s degree in engineering from BITS Pilani and masters in business from MDI Gurgaon
Urvi Khanna, CCO & Product Designer: An experienced product designer and art director with more than 9 years of experience in handling creative responsibilities at some of India’s best multimedia communication companies, including India Today and Euro RSCG. An accomplished photographer of repute, Urvi has been featured in the press as one of India’s prominent women photographers. She has a graduate degree from College of Art Delhi.
Malavika Khanna, COO & Product Designer: Has over 45 years experience in manufacturing, marketing and design of lifestyle products. Previously she was GM Marketing at Central Cottage Industries Corporation of India, a public sector enterprise under Ministry of Textiles. Between 1980-96 she grew Cottage Industries into a trend setting multi-crore turnover company. She is an alumni of IIM Ahmedabad.

Between the three of us, we have experience in technology, experiential marketing and design, and retail.

AUTSUN.COM is a part of a group of companies called INVENTIV. (inventiv.biz), which also comprises of a marketing consulting company and a product-based IT company.

Please share a few entrepreneurial experiences, and your tips to budding entrepreneurs
Prabhat Garg: I thoroughly enjoy the life of an entrepreneur.
Being an entrepreneur in India is difficult since we’re only slowly seeing the infusion of venture and other forms of private capital. One can look at the West and say that there is so much that they have that we don’t have in India. But that is precisely what opens the doors of opportunities here. So many things that we don’t have imply so many more opportunities to avail of as an entrepreneur.

That’s the most exciting part, and we’re in really exciting times. I like dreaming of big, seemingly difficult ideas and then trying to put a plan in action to bring them closer to reality. The trick is to not worry about success or failure – what matters most is whether you’re having fun doing it or not. I believe that the fun bit is most important – if one is truly enjoying the process, then it will all work out.

tags: autsun

Printo is India’s first branded retail chain for print and document services which leverages digital and Internet technologies to offer print products of international standards. You can order business cards/photo prints/album prints etc online and collect the same in their retail stores.

Printo is attempting to personalize the printing experience as well as setup the organized retail chain of printing services in India (pretty much on the lines of Kinko of US). The target customers are small and big businesses as well as consumers.

Digital Photo Printing Market in India

• The Indian digital printing industry is projected to grow to $17 billion by 2010 from an estimated $11 billion in 2005, and growing at a CAGR of 85%.
• According to industry estimates, one-third of digital work will be personalized by the end of 2007. (source)

I did a quick interview with Manish Sharma, founder of Printo and am glad to see their future plans of setting up printing stores in Tier-II cities by 2008.

Interview with Manish Sharma, founder of Printo

• Please tell us more about Printo (and how the service works).
  Printo is a chain of print and document shops, serving individuals as well as businesses. Besides the regular colour and black and white printing, consumers can walk in and order from a range of predesigned products like business cards, invitations, brochures, photo calendars and several other products. Printo also offers remote ordering through its website www.printo.in
• Please share some info about the founding team, and their background.
  Lalana Zaveri (ex-Xerox, Life Science Major, MBA from Nottingham, UK) and Manish Sharma (serial entrepreneur, B.E. in Computer Engg. and MBA from Oxford, UK)
• Printo is targeting both corporate as well as retail customers – Is the retail usage limited to online ordering?
  Over 25% of Printo’s customers at physical shops are are individual consumers.
• Printo has invested a lot in retail outlets/offline channel – What’s the strategy behind this?
  Printo is primarily a walk-in, retail service. This is how we deliver our services and it is not an alternate channel for us but our primary mode of business.
• The printing business in India is still a low margin business – What are the other services you plan to offer in the near future?
  Printing worldwide is a competitive industry, but digital printing is growing at over 85% in India. We are consistently launching new products that help customers save time and money, while accessing high grade designs.
• The digital printing business is highly unstructured. What are the challenges you see in this industry?
  Poor infrastructure (community amenities space and electricity) and trained manpower.
• Please share your funding status.
  Funded by founders and Seedfund (www.seedfund.in)
• Please share your future plans.
  250 stores across India by 2011
• You have also co-founded NEVG. Please share some info about that.
• NEVG was a software product firm investing in a platform for artificial intelligence technologies in the data extraction space. It developed some exciting products which did not see the market light post the 2000 bust.
• Your tips to first time entrepreneurs in India (especially on seeking VC money)?
  Choose the right set of angels before moving on to VC stage.

tags: printo, online photo printing India

What’s so great about the site?
The site takes online retailing to a new level by giving away all the possible options to the buyers (in a neatly executed style). One can search for car by city, category, price, brand, fuel type, color and seating capacity.
InfiBeam is one of those few web2.0 sites which exploits AJAX to it’s maximum, yet retain the simplicity of it’s offering (explore it for yourself!).
The workflow is very simple – once you select a car, you can physically inspect the car at local dealer location, make the payment and drive home the car.

InfiBeam also conducts car auction (1 new car is auctioned) every day. Currently, InfiBeam offers 2,500 selections across 65 brands and 14 makes in six cities, which is expected to grow in future (source)
Do give InfiBeam site a dekho – I think these guys have done an awesome job of simplifying the entire discovery process. Do you agree?

tags: infibeam, online car retailing

[Facts and Figures]

• India has a per capita income of US$900 and, despite this fact, 25 per cent of the people in the country earn less than $1 per day.
• India generates the second largest number of engineers in the world, numbering around 4,00,000, but 90 per cent of students in the country do not receive education beyond the 10th standard.
• India also has the second highest GDP growth in the world, yet 35 per cent of the population, which is in agriculture, contributes not more than 3 per cent to the overall figure.
• According to IMAGES India Retail Report 2007, of the Rs.12,00,000 crore retail market, food & grocery retail is by far the single largest block estimated to be worth a whopping Rs.7,43,900 crore, but more than 99 per cent of this market is dominated by the neighborhood kirana stores.
• India’s retail sector is largely unorganized, with about 15 million tiny outlets catering to consumer needs across the country – it employs the second-largest number of people after agriculture.
• Organized retail is now focused primarily on the 300 million urban “middle classes” and an additional 200 million rural rich, who form a consumer market worth more than US$100 billion. So, there is enough ground for the modern and the traditional formats to co-exist
• The biggest boon for India is that 890 million people are under 45.

[Futuristically speaking]

• 48 per cent of India will become urbanised in the next two decades
• The Indian retail industry is expected to grow to a figure of $400 billion from the current $312 billion.
• The organized retail market, which contributes to only 2-4 per cent of the overall market share, will contribute 20-30 per cent, and is poised to reach Rs. 2000 billion mark.
• By 2010, organized retail market will generate jobs for 12 million people.

[New Developments]

• Bharti and Wal-Mart have already agreed to a 50-50 joint venture for a new chain of wholesale stores in India to serve small retail shops.
• ‘Barbeque Nation’ decides to set up 100 ‘cook-yourself’ live grill restaurants in 3 years (source)

Sources: IndiaRetailing, Agencyfaqs, Forbes, India Retail Forum site

The event also witnessed the launch of IndiaRetailing.com – retail information portal (which like the present day supermarkets is loaded with intrusive ads)

Related: The Indian Retail Success Story – “It Happened in India” by Kishore Biyani

tags: india retail forum, indian retail industry

AT Kearney’s GRDI (Global Retail Development Index) ranks India the #1 spot for retail investments (India scored 92/100, while Russia and China stands at 89 and 86 respectively).

And this is the third time, India has bagged the #1 position!

The annual A.T. Kearney Global Retail Development Index ranks 30 emerging countries on a 100- point scale—the higher the ranking, the more urgency there is to enter a country. Countries were selected from a list of 185 based on three criteria:

• Country risk: more than 35 in Euromoney’s country-risk score
• Population size: more than two million
• Wealth: GDP per capita more than $3,000 (GDP per capita for countries with populations of more than 35 million is more flexible due to the market opportunity

The Indian Retail industry is expected to grow from its current $350 billion to $427 billion by 2010 and $635 bn by 2015.

The report cautions the players to localize the store formats, especially when targeting the tier-II cities (something which Kishore Biyani has always believed in)

Download the report here. Read The Great Indian Retail Story

“It Happened in India” is KB’s story of struggle, failures, restlessness, and sheer grit. If you are interested in building India centric products/services, there is no way you can afford to skip this book.

If you recall my podcast with Ziva’s Ajay Sethi , Ajay laid out the differences between insights and observations and why startups need to have greater insights in the market they are operating.

KB’ success is a classic example of how deep insights can create an impregnable differentiator among your competition which are purely led by observations and theoretical market research reports.

And most of KB’s deep understanding is attributed to his ‘marwari/trading’ family upbringings and his interest in observing people and understanding their behavior.

KB, famous for his unconventional style of running the business was ridiculed by media [his stores were referred as 'dirty stores'], was never called for any trade body meetings/investors conference.
Maverick that he is, KB never gave a damn to all these , and went along shaping his own destiny.

What impresses me the most is KB’s ability to defy the status quo, to challenge the regular mindset and most significantly,think BIG, very BIG.

In this book, KB traverses thru’ his childhood days, how he became a big source of irritation to family members [used to question every damn thing in the world], talks about his college days [scarcity of girls and his "special" pen-friend:)] his first taste of leadership [by organizing a dandiya in his area], his first venture [selling stonewash fabric to small shops in Mumbai] to starting up Pantaloon and other stores.

The book isn’t just a mere PR exercise; KB isn’t shy of talking about his failures, especially his foray into Bollywood movies [he produced Na tum Jano Na Hum and Chura Liya hai tumne].

The book has quotes/anecdotes from KB’s family, co-workers, Investors, partners and others who helped KB in scripting the success story.
And these anecdotes really makes the book an interesting read [I realized I am 'mall rat' after reading this book].

Living up the Big Bazaar spirit of lowest price, the book is available at an affordable price of Rs. 99!!

Buy the book online. Visit the official site.

tagged: It Happened in India, Kishore Biyani, Pantaloon, Big Bazaar