Gourmet Foods in India

Indians in a few leading cities have started taking to western gourmet foods. The market really opened up four years back when import restrictions got relaxed. Today, cheese (Cheddar and Edam being particular favourites), wine (both new world and French), extra virgin olive oils are available in quite a few places. Availability, awareness and affluence will be the critical factors in driving the business in future. The advent of fine-dine restaurants, global travel and deep engagement of the elite with western countries have helped in the spread of the gourmet foods.

There was an international exhibition on food and wine in Delhi last week. There were more than one hundred and eighty exhibitors from twenty-four countries showcasing their finest wine and other products and I am sure they did very well. This is the right point to enter India. Moet and Chandon is reaping benefits of an early entry and good publicity during its earlier entry.

I made a presentation on the gourmet food retail scenario in India in the inaugural summit of the exhibition and the delegates found it very encouraging that this huge market is opening up to quintessentially European tastes.

Caviars, truffles and foie gras are to be still accepted by the Indian palate and they are a bit too heavy for the wallet. But wine, cheese, sauces, asparagus, premium coffees, specialty meats and expensive chocolates have found their next big market, for sure. India is no stranger to gourmet foods. The Mahrajahs and Nawabs had elevated food to a fine art and used the finest spices ,ingredients and techniques for their food. The Indian tradition of hospitality and lavish formal occasions are going to be other factors helping the growth of this market.

Blaming the Politicians

There is a lot of justifiable anger and frustration at the brazen attacks and the terrible loss of life in Mumbai. The Indian state is weak and ineffective and is not able to protect its citizens. The media and the public are pouring venom on the politicians of all hues. They are technically right because the ministers in the government are supposed to be the policy-makers and supposed to take the decisions. But they have failed to do so and on the face of it they are culpable.

But these politicians are elected by us and before we chose them we knew their capabilities and character and we chose them. They were neither expected to change overnight and nor did we think they would. So what is the point of spewing anger on them?

The politicians the society chooses are actually a reflection of the society itself. A semi-literate and caste and community ridden society will choose politicians which reflect its character and our politicians by and large are what we are .

Only a literate and economically prosperous society will tend to choose politicians that the media and the average middle-class urban Indian expects.Till we transform our society, we will live with our corrupt, venal and incompetent politicians.

This is easier said than done. Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati were arguably our brightest economists and thinkers in seventies and eighties. Amartya Sen always spoke about the importance of heath and education and Jagdish Bhagwati preached free trade. We did not listen to them. We kept following a social and economic policy framework which was based on poor thinking and vested interests.

The Indian society has to get out of its habit of taking the easy way out and feeling comfortable with mediocrity. A mix of focus on primary health services, education and free trade would have made India a different country, a better society now and given us a different kind of politician today.

This is just one example of how our inherent failings and weaknesses as a people and society are leading us to a life we do not want to accept. This is the time to reflect and change.

What ails Indian writing ?

The Man Booker award to Adiga is a fine statement of affirmation of Indian writing. There have been previous winners too from India. But the Indian writers who have spent bulk of their lives in India still fail to fire the imagination of readers in the world.

Their stories are engagingly told and capture a time and place perfectly well. But the themes are not universal enough to connect to everybody. The writers lack the penetrating insight of a Naipaul, who harshly throws a searchlight into our souls. They do not have the suave urbanity and haunting themes of emotional loss of a Kundera. They do not provide the searing intensity of a Coetzee or the subtle romanticizing of a Mahfouz.

I think this happens because Indians grow up in protected environments. They live within defined boundaries and fail to explore the limits of their lives in relationships and in their own internal journeys. The society also tries its best to see that any behaviour or attitude beyond its five thousand years of past is smacked hard. So when an Indian writes and tries to plumb his depths of experience , he falls short of capturing deep, eternal truths and the unvarnished realities. There are a few notable exceptions in Indian languages however.

It does not help that the country lacks a culture of reading except in a few places.

There is a long way to go for Indian writing to flourish internationally.

All That Additional Space !

A recent report in a financial daily says that the additional mall space in India is going to double in 2010 from the current levels. The additional availability in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, NCR, Mumbai, Calcutta and Chennai is 16.2 mn sq feet in 2008. This is going to become 19.1 mn sq feet in 2009 and 32.4 mn sq feet in 2010. Does demand exist for all this space?

In the US, the first mall in the world came up in Minnesota (Southdale Shopping Centre) in 1956.Victor Gruen, a refugee from Austria, conceptualized this to provide the experience of a European city centre. He made the structure covered and air-conditioned to enable people to visit it round the year. This also helped the whites perfectly well to have a cloistered environment in the suburbs. Today, the rich whites are going back to city centres and the suburbs are getting more mixed. This is taking away the principal customer segment for the malls - the affluent, white women. The conventional mall is also facing troubled times. The US has about eleven hundred malls today and no new mall is coming up.

Contrast this with the supply situation in India- NCR alone has close to seventy malls (albeit smaller ones). A back of the envelope calculation will show that the incomes, demand and availability of space are not even remotely matched. The cities are also full of vibrant open markets and shopping complexes. No wonder, the malls are faring badly and some charge exorbitant rates to break even. But that is a suicidal game because the tenants suffer and eventually leave.

The industry now needs to have a deeper understanding of demand and supply. The viable demand is much lesser than availability and the supply of space needs to go up far more slowly.

Who is to blame for the financial crisis ?

The conventional view is that the bankers and lenders were greedy and in their attempts to get their bonuses, went on a lending spree to unsuspecting borrowers. The Wall Street has been accused of being corrupt, stupid and irresponsible. Obama and McCain ensure that the message is repeated in every rally and sound bite.

Is this true?

The root cause of this crisis is in the sub-prime mortgages. And the fact is that the US government policies have led to this fall. Right from the days of GI bill, the government has followed a policy of encouraging home ownership at any cost, blatantly flouting sound economics. The borrower had the options of refinancing a long-term loan at his convenience for times when interests went down but staying at a fixed interest otherwise. This threw the mortgage lender into a crunch in the interest-volatile periods. In order to manage the interest fluctuations esp. after the seventies, the financial system engaged in significant financial engineering through multiple instruments.

Later, the US system encouraged loans with low interest rates and poor credit checks precisely because the risk had been parceled off though financial instruments and the players like the loan originators, brokers and banks had no risk of any bad debts. This encouraged many individuals to stretch themselves thin with low down payments, high loans, long repayment periods and the party had to collapse after the increasing realty prices became unsustainable and started going down.


Now the government and the politicians want to subsidize the system through a bailout so that the individuals who borrowed indiscriminately actually get a reprieve for their follies. As in the earlier government interventions, the solution proposed is based on self-interest rather than solving the problem. This will only ensure that the system is not cleansed fully and we live to see another day.

Global Meltdown and India

The financial meltdown has sent shockwaves throughout the world. For many Indians, it is their first exposure to how integrated the world economy has become. This is a novelty for them when the newspaper headlines are not about the shenanigans of ministers or rantings by a communal organization but what is happening to Lehman or Morgan Stanley or even ICICI.

The Indian economy remains fairly robust despite the shocks. The banking system is very conservative. There is practically no use/misuse of financial instruments which have sent the Western markets to a spin. The drivers of growth like increasing liberalization, demographic advantages, low cost skill arbitrages and technology-led productivity growth in several sectors continue as they are. The stock market of course is getting battered due to fear, panic and flight of foreign capital (which is increasingly wary of emerging market returns).The overheated sectors like realty or the businesses primarily dependent on the Western markets like IT or ITes will undergo sharp changes in their business models.

I foresee no major disruption in retail or FMCG sectors due to this financial crisis. The retail sector had anyway started undergoing its own adjustments for a few months now due to its own set of dynamics.

What is the noise in the retail industry today ?

The India Retail Forum concluded recently in Mumbai with proclamations about the great future of the industry. Most speakers, from newspaper reports, agreed that the next five years are going to be much better than today.

However, the media also flashes stories about various companies cutting costs, restructuring and not able to pay vendors. There are reports of top management moving out and confusion about the pace of the industry.

What is happening?

The truth is that the retailers entered the markets with untrammelled optimism. The metrics were based on models from other countries and the growth curve was expected to replicate that of the South East Asian countries. The real estate market also entered into a frenzy in line with the trends all over the world. The people, already in short supply, switched jobs merrily with multiplying salaries every time. The infrastructure continued to be in a mess. The technology solutions were not in place. The customers did not migrate to higher consumption and evolved formats as fast as expected. The Indian consumer is unique in this – the five thousand years of civilization has its impact and she changes at her own pace, always a little slower than her Asian counterparts in embracing western ways of consumption.

But the fundamentals remain in place. The GDP growth will continue at seven to nine per cent for quite some time. The consumers keep migrating to global ways of shopping. The trust in modern retail is developing. The real estate market has started showing signs of temperance with prices falling by 25%. There is more slide to come. The pool of trained manpower is growing. The support industries around the sector like training, design, equipment are expanding rapidly. And there are a billion people!

So it is good that the sector is going through a much-needed introspection and course correction before the next stage of acceleration.

Which retail format is going to win ?

One of the big questions today is what kind of format is going to succeed in the country. Is it going to be the hypermarket or is it going to be the supermarkets? If it is the supermarket, then what is the right size?

The conventional thinking is that hypermarkets are going to wipe off the rest of the formats. This, however, is not true.

The Indian consumer is going to plug for the format which suits her needs. The primary drivers of this choice are access, price and range. The hypermarkets do score in price but the supermarkets, being located near the neighbourhoods are far more convenient. The range can be of quite a reasonable width in a smaller format also.

The Indian consumer for the modern trade unlike his counterpart in the west is hamstrung by clogging traffic, poor roads and lives in larger cities. The other factor in favour of a small-format store is the fact that she would prefer to buy in small quantities over the month and the average ticket size in India still remains low.


At the same time, the Indian customer loves a bargain and the only way she is going to go long distances is when she eyes the prospects of cheap prices and bargains. Big Bazaar has got it right here and so we are going to see massive price wars between large format stores. In order to win, the large-format stores are going to have to offer large price leverages to the customer.

The brands and the efficiency of the format also make substantial difference. In countries like England and France, the hypermarkets have a more than fifty per cent share of the formats because Tesco and Carrefour are efficient and strong. In most of Europe however, the hypermarkets have about one third of the market and the supermarkets (4000 sq ft to 25000 sq ft) have close to sixty percent of the market.

But the hypermarket story is just really beginning in the country and we are about to see serious excitement in the space.
The overall investments also bear this pattern of split between supermarkets and hypermarkets. Of the $40 billion investments in retail in the next five years, about one third is flowing into hypermarkets and one third to the supermarkets

Some Media Stories

Here are some of my comments in the media.

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Entrepreneurship-on-the-shelf/319928/

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080603/jsp/business/story_9357138.jsp

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-3169545,flstry-1.cmshttp://economictimes.indiatimes.com/.../Inflation_charts_growth_path_for_private_labels/articleshow/3047440.cmshttp://www.telegraphindia.com/1080605/jsp/business/story_9367269.jsp%20- -http://www1.economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3058848.cms

Indian Players Versus Global Corporations

The balance of power in the business world is shifting slowly but strongly. The era of domination by the global corporations is over. They have to fight for every square inch of space with their homegrown rivals. I believe the same story is going to repeat in the Indian retail space.

The global corporations earlier dominated by their capital, talent and expertise. The new financial order entails easy access to capital for everybody. The markets are more transparent and global capital today is chasing the best opportunity everywhere. The talent today is much more mobile and it has discovered that the domestic companies provide enough excitement, faster mobility and more opportunity to add value. The movement of talent also leads to faster dissemination of knowledge and expertise.

Besides these, the local companies have great local relationships and understanding. So today key players in India in retail others can match any corporation in financial muscle power. They would have acquired size, insights and the right business models by the time the foreign entrants start their businesses. The lead time along with the local insighting will be of immeasurable strategic advantage and almost impossible to neutralise. So the Tescos and Carrefours will meet worthy rivals when FDI opens and they come here.

High Real Estate Costs and Retail

The real estate rates in the country today are truly stratospheric. At their basic, the commercial rates (both capital value and rents) reflect the profile and the potential of the catchment area. But rates get skewed by the demand-supply mismatch, the amount of black money (esp. in India), the market sentiments and the dynamics in other channels of investment.

The rates in India are amongst the highest in the world. The commercial lease rates in markets like Khan Market have crossed Rs. 12000/- per annum. The markets like GK1, M Block in Delhi or Linking road in Mumbai are close to Rs. 8000/- per annum for good real estate. This has been caused by low supply of good real estate, euphoria in India’s potential and huge inflows from abroad -from Indians, foreign funds and investors.

The lease rates are comparable to those in the richest countries. The market potential is nowhere close to them. This means that the retail business starts off with a great handicap. The businesses have to find new sources of efficiencies to offset the high real estate costs. The real estate costs in Indian markets today, are seventy to two hundred percent higher than what the potential truly reflects.

This, more than anything else, is likely to slow down the retail growth in a couple of years when the excitement of new business models dies down and the reality of cash strikes back. Several players will find the losses unsustainable.

The answers, however, lie in factors which are very difficult to be addressed. The long-term solution lies in building infrastructure which spreads the population better and reduces commute time, more supply of quality real estate with better regulation and urban planning, reducing black money (which tends to get most into real estate) and making the current opaque regulation system more transparent.

Old Delhi

Here are some interesting snapshots of Old Delhi on a grey, cold Sunday afternoon in winter. This is where the past exists both in its inspiring architecture and its way of life.

Organised Retail in India- What will happen in 2010?

To say that the Indian market is hotting up would be an understatement. Every player has grand plans and it will be interesting to see the winners and losers. But the retail industry is generally a safe industry to be in. Amongst the leading 480 retailers in the world,94% made a profit in 2005.The average net profit margins were 4.2%(for the entire sample) and 4.5% for the profitable retailers. This gives hope for the Indian industry. But the real dampener today could be the astronomical realty rates. On the plus side again, retail, unlike product companies, is a tried and tested model and one could be profitable by adapting the elements of the model to the market.

But who is looking at what in the next five years?

Reliance, the big brother, is eyeing 100mn sq ft of space(Wal Mart had 490 mn sq ft in 2004) with 68 distribution centres and presence in 784 cities and 1600 small towns by 2011.The turnover - an eye popping 1,00,000 crores ($22.3 bn)!

Spencer’s has plans of 2000 stores and 6 mn sq ft of space by 2009.

Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar are looking at having 11.5mn sq ft of space and sales of Rs. 10,900 cr by 2010.

The other big ones like Bharti- WalMart and the Aditya Birla group follow a different PR strategy and are generally keeping their plans under wraps.

Subhiksha is another player which has grown rapidly and has the capability to scale up significantly.

There are other domestic emerging players like the Wadhawan group which have announced their aggressive intent through acquisitions.

Then there are Tesco and Carrefour closely eyeing the market.

However, the Indian market is big and has the capacity to accommodate about ten players with upwards of $2bn turnover(next four years) and some regional players. But the winner will be the ones who understand the customers and get their supply chain and people equations right.

Biology and the 21st century

Suddenly ,Biology is taking centre stage amongst sciences. After Charles Darwin, Physics and Chemistry took over and provided the glamour in sciences.Einstein, Schrodinger, Madame Curie were the stars of the scientific world.

In 1953, Walter Crick and James Watson discovered DNA and that set off a chain of events with unimagined consequences. First the scientists could understand DNA,then they discovered that they could slice off parts of it and attach new parts and then genome was decoded.Over time they also found out that many diseases, physical differences and even behavioral traits can be explained by genetic variations.

Today, we stand on the threshold of the greatest era of biological research. Research into the brain, biotechnology and unraveling the details of human evolution are amongst the most exciting fields in science today.

Countries like the US are aware of this at a political decision a making level and they are taking measures to see that a top class biology Ph.D. earns more than any other professional.

India, as always ,will catch on the revolution when it is a tad too late.

The Size of the Retail Pie

There is justifiably a large degree of excitement about the Indian retail industry. I hope to throw some light on the way the industry is shaping up through this blog.

The India Opportunity:

Let us see it from two perspectives.

1.The penetration of the organized market in India is barely 4% in 2006.In the US, it is 80%.In Thailand it is 40% and in China which allowed organized retail only 20 years back it is 50%.Clearly, there is a lot of scope.

The growth in the market is being driven by:
a) Rising incomes (8%+ GDP growth, higher income households growing faster than other categories)
b) Demographic dividend (larger percentage of working and younger population)
c) Increase in the number of working women (now 26% in key cities)
d) Change in preferences to western style shopping due to media, travel and shortage of time

2.The size of the market is enormous.

India has been rated as the most attractive retail market in the world by A.T.Kearney in
2005 & 2006.This rating is based on more than 25 retail-specific and macro-economic variables.The total estimated retail market size in 2005-06 is $282 billion and the organized market was $12 billion. Out of this the food and grocery segment is $211 bn and the organized segment in this sector is $2bn.The total organised market is expected to reach a size of $40bn in 2011(27% CAGR) and $100 bn plus in 2015.

With the exception of biotechnology and possibly internet on a global scale, this is the largest opportunity anywhere in the world. To put it in perspective, the telecom sector in India is just about $10bn and the organized FMCG sector is $12 bn.

Have You Seen These Billboards?

It looks like several ad folks in Mumbai have run out of ideas. The clients with their mindless quest to win at any cost have not helped either.

The hoarding for Mumbai Mirror, a sister publication of TOI, goes :

"Come on ! Give me a hundred pelvic thrusts."

I am sure no one can understand the logic of this sentence for a newspaper.

And I saw another hoarding for Euphoria Gym in Juhu:

"Some people think starving themselves is a shortcut to fitness. The Somalians beg to differ."

Utterly insensitive and in bad taste. The copywriter also probably does not know that there are more children in India with premature deaths than sub-Saharan Africa.

Cromwell In Lok Sabha

Oliver Cromwell was one of the signatories to the death warrant of King Charles I and established the Commonwealth. He declared himself the Lord Protector in 1653 for five years.

He dissolved the ‘Rump’ parliament and then formed his Barebones Parliament to which he assigned all power.

He gave the following speech on dissolving the Rump Parliament.

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of potage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money; is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not bartered your consciences for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance. Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stables, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this house; and by which God’s help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do; I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place; go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves begone! Go! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!

Four hundred and fifty years later the words ring loud and true for our Loksabha.

Yeh Bombay Hai

The infrastructure in India is charitably described as lousy. The worst roads are unfortunately in Mumbai, the commercial capital and Bangalore, the IT showpiece city.

Patna today has better roads than either of them. I do not know who is responsible for this shoddy state of affairs-the centre, the state government or the local municipal corporations. It could be even the corrupt contractors and local politicians. But strangely, the general public does tolerate filth, potholes, stray animals and even unpaved roads in the middle of the city.

Mumbai takes the cake in filth and a lackadaisical attitude towards its own roads and cleanliness. So the city which has fabulous citizens, a rocking nightlife and immense professionalism has decrepit looking buildings, animal shit on roads and in many parts only mud and potholes.

Class Discriminations in India

There are very few societies more class-ridden than India. While the country focuses on caste, the discriminations based on class do not let merit and fairness prevail. Caste in educational institutions undermines the concept of merit. But class works beneath the superficial surface and insidiously destroys justice and merit.

Class in the Indian context is a nebulous and complex concept.You can feel it, you practice it but you cannot capture it properly. It is tied at a gross level to caste but also to economic wealth, family station, your English pronunciation and also the colour of your skin! So a poor man is going to be beaten up in the police station but a rich man will stay unharmed. It is very rare even in the most merit-based institutions in the country to see a driver's son being friends with a privileged doctor's child. We do not let people of a different class rise and the concept of merit is twisted to suit the dominant section's interests. In a more open society like the US, you find some of the most influential figures like Clinton,Oprah or even Larry Ellison come up from devastated families and economically deprived backgrounds. But the surreptitious discriminations practiced by Indians do not let any person from a lower class rise similarly, except in academics and research etc. where merit cannot be subjugated.

So the leaders in any part of life today come up from the same relatively privileged 5% of the population.

This is also because we sub-consciously tend to magnify the importance of anybody with the right background and do not really give due importance or respect to people of a lower class. This is part our cultural heritage. The minister's son or the industrialist's nephew will always get the blue-blooded treatment in class compared to the boy with the most merit. Marriages are closely tied to the status of families perpetuating class differences again. The great stories of our society are about kings and princes not about ordinary folk doing extraordinary things. God Rama was not born to a poor man but to a king. The heroes of Mahabharat are all from princely families. Karna grew up as the son of a charioteer and so he was not allowed to participate in the archery competition to win the hand of Draupadi. He wins another archery competition defeating the Pandavas and Kaurava brothers and the crowd is stunned by his prowess. But when they discover that he is not from royal blood, they stop applauding.

A country of a billion people has only a few figures like Rajni Kant,Lal Bahadur Shashtri or an Irfan Pathan who come from a different class and have managed to stand out. Some child from a deprived class, who wants to dream and achieve will always find odds like this daunting and will give up in his quest.

This makes the talents of a large part of the population unavailable for our growth. But there are no easy answers to this. Centuries of mindset and discrimination cannot be undone in a few years.

Regional Disparities

According to the 2001 census, only 43% of rural households (56% in urban) in India have electricity.The regional disparities are even more disturbing. The level of electrification in rural Punajb, HP and Haryana are 90, 95 and 79 percent. In contrast, the levels in rural WB, Assam and Orissa are 20, 17 and 19 percent respectively. Bihar has a level of 5.1 %.

The percentages of Punjab, HP and Haryana rural households getting tap water are 16, 38 and 83. The number of rural households getting tap water in WB, Assam and Orissa are 7, 5 and 3 percent respectively. The figure for Bihar is 1.38 %.

So much for being one country and so much for Jyoti Basu's 30 year reign due to the prosperity in rural Bengal.