The Twenty-first Century Workplace

The global workplace is changing fast. The new generation is becoming more progressive,more linked and more demanding with a radical change in priorities.What should the organisations strive for - my take in the blog for Great Place To Work® Institute - a global research and consulting firm. 




http://greatnessdiaries.com/2014/11/05/salil-k-sahu-managing-director-home-store-india/

Culture for Startups

In times of  stability, culture plays a vital role in the success of organizations. Most management studies have found ‘Culture’ to be amongst the four most important factors for success. Peter Drucker once said “Culture trumps strategy for breakfast.”Culture can make or mar startups but its importance is not adequately appreciated. 

Here is a link to an article I wrote on iamwire:http://www.iamwire.com/2013/08/leveraging-invisible-warrior/

Pricing in the Internet Era

Owing to the inherent low loyalty on the web, the ecom players are going to face a difficult battle amongst themselves on pricing. The brick and mortars of course face an existential battle over prices.Web commerce has disrupted pricing models - apps and price comparison sites ensure that how you price has become even more important. 

Here is a link to my article on iamwire on The Power of Pricing: http://www.iamwire.com/2013/07/the-all-powerful-pricing/

Micro Trends in the Indian Market

The markets are changing constantly and organisations can be on top only if they start working when the trends are just beginning - the article by me on iamwire looks at understanding the importance of trends early enough.

These embryonic trends start deep and create the structural disruptions that later end up as gigantic changes. For some these mega trends come as shocks that overturns their business models but it need not be so, if one starts identifying and working on the micro trends early in the cycle. My take in the link: 

                                                    http://www.iamwire.com/2013/05/of-markets-and-trends-start-early/

Seize the online Home Decor Market

The fragmented and unorganized Indian home décor market is rapidly becoming organized as consumers turn to chain stores and the web for purchases. The online industry has the power of the net to reach consumers throughout the country while eliminating the high operational costs of physical stores.
Here is a link for my article on the possible strategy for online Home Decor in India http://www.iamwire.com/2013/04/decoding-the-online-home-decor-market/

The perils for ecommerce in India

The ecommerce industry is seeing a repeat of the dynamics of the brick and mortar retail in India.in a fiercely competitive market, the e-commerce businesses will need to take a few lessons from the experience of offline retail in the last decade. Many lessons are inherent to a new industry but some of them are unique to the Indian market. They can ignore them only at their own peril.

Here is a link to my recent article in iamwire,a premier site for e commerce in India, which talks about what the industry can learn from offline retail.

  http://www.iamwire.com/2013/03/can-e-commerce-evade-the-hurdles-that-derailed-brick-and-mortar-retail/

Futile to Compare India with the West

India is a $1.4 trillion economy with a per capita income of $1000 odd. We tend to forget this when we crib about the facilities that the Government provides when we (read: a thin slice of the population with exposure to the West) compare our health facilities, roads, schools and welfare systems with those of Western countries like England, Germany, France and US. They are all $25000 odd or more per capita income economies. India is still way too behind.

Similarly, we fret and fume about the abysmal state of democratic institutions and the corrupt and squabbling politicians. But we are again comparing ourselves with countries which have a history of 200 to 300 years of democratic institutions and almost 100% literacy and single languages. India is still about 67% literate, has a maddening mix of cultures and languages with caste and religion thrown on top – a nightmare for governance.

It is good to be discontented and only this discontent will lead to progress but we need to accept the truth and realities too.

Anna's Movement

My post on Facebook on Anna on 23 Aug

Hi ! Can't support the movement because I think the method and the solution are wrong.

-Using Gandhian symbolisms like fasting,going to Rajghat,call for azaadi etc. for an action that is not Gandhian is manipulative.Gandhi fasted to repent or touch the conscience not to force.

- Right or wrong,good or bad,I as an ordinary citizen,have chosen MPs to frame laws - they are accountable to us. Anna's team does not hv the right to force an act on the rest.

-Dangerous precedent - signal to many that with a cause and some noisy support, they can armtwist.Too risky for a country with diverse agendas.

-Another body(an army of inspectors -Nilekeni) with such powers in India will be a worse version of legislature/judiciary/executive - corrupt & ineffective.Does not address fundmental issues of transparency,too much power with Govt etc.Cure worse than malady.

-Need to go to top experts for curing the cancer of corruption not quacks. All sensible voices who understand law,history and society etc. are apprehensive - people like Pratap Bhanu Mehta,newspaper editors,Harish Salve,Nilekeni and many more.

- The system is terribly rotten but need the right method and right solution (decentralisation,transparency etc) for lasting change.

Guilty Till Proved Innocent

Arushi Talwar’s case illustrates the abysmal level of public discourse in India.

The incompetence of almost all the institutions is the source. The wild proliferation of media, both TV and press, has positively worsened matters. The media picks up any insinuation and innuendo and has a tendency to make it a headline. The public laps it up.

In the Arushi murder case, the cops have done a thoroughly shoddy investigation, done u-turns on their conclusions, changed completely or selectively the reporting of key evidences. The trial court judgement flies in the face of common sense. The headlines in our media have picked up some incredible allegations and already pronounced the Talwars guilty. They have floated various theories around justifying the gory character of the Talwars.

In this environment, Open and Tehelka have done a yeoman service by publishing a different point of view. Their items are sensible, fact-based and coherent. It seems that anyone who studies the case closely believes that the Talwars are not guilty.

However, the bigger question is if the Talwars are not guility, who takes the responsibility for ruining their lives and in fact, they have suffered a punishment of unprecedented calumny and slander impossible for any human being to bear. Is it the CBI with its ineptness, the UP police with its crooked ways or the media with its only intent to sell? What punishment do they get?

Who is Surprised ? Corruption is Everywhere.

There is suddenly a lot of hullabaloo recently about corruption. It is as if a very honest society suddenly discovered that its ministers and politicians were corrupt and the civil servants and army were not completely above board.

On the contrary, it is obvious to anyone who has some understanding of the country that corruption permeates every aspect of life. The constable lets you off by taking fifty rupees, the provident fund clerks want money to disclose your own balance, the income tax officer takes money to release your returns and some schools want money under the table for a child’s admission. The engineers take money from the contractors, the doctors demand money from patients in government hospitals and the bank manager expects to be bribed for approving a loan. The more powerful bureaucrats and politicians dispense favours from their discretionary powers and plunder the state happily knowing that nothing is going to happen to them. They want free passes if you are holding events, premium plots if you are selling land and petty cash if you want their signature.

This is now part of the work fabric of the Indian officialdom. Barring honourable exceptions everyone knows this. This is an open secret. Yet in the public theatre of day to day life, this is discussed only when somebody is foolish enough to be exposed. In fact the ones who get caught are either stupid or too greedy. The savvy operators keep amassing wealth merrily and not leaving any evidence behind.

The much bandied amount of 1.76 lacs cr is only a notional figure. The money actually exchanged in the 2G saga may be chicken-feed compared to the systematic everyday loot by the various state players.

Record Diwali Sales

Diwali has been traditionally a time of splurging for Indian consumers and companies look forward to this period.Last two years were subdued with the cloud of Lehman hanging over.This year the sun sparkled like never before.Most businesses have had a bumper time.There have been unprecedented sales of consumer durables,gold,cars,apparel and even DTH connections.A DTH company executive,I spoke to,revealed that they had signed up 40% more connections over last year in one month.Value retailers like Vishal and premium appliances both have never had it so good.The article below from ET gives an idea of the buoyancy sweeping the market.

Diwali retail sales rocket to new highs, up almost 80%KOLKATA|NEW DELHI: Retailers, carmakers, jewellers and other consumer goods and services companies have reported highest Diwali season sales, as consumers went on a buying spree across the country except in Punjab, where floods dampened demand.

Companies reported year-on-year growth ranging from 20-80% this season and remain confident that the high demand will last, with consumer confidence expected to stay high on the back of rising incomes, positive economic forecasts, booming stock market, rising asset prices and a good monsoon.

“Diwali sales were the best ever,” said Rakesh Biyani, CEO-retail at Future Group , India’s largest retailer, which recorded more than 20% rise in footfalls and a more than 25% jump in average bill size. “Good times are here to stay,” he added.

Retailers reported about 25% jump in average bill size, as demand for premium products such as flat-panel televisions, double-door refrigerators, fully-automatic washing machines, home theatres, branded gold and diamond jewellery, fashion apparel, imported gifts and branded furniture soared with consumers upgrading their household items.

“The fear mindset of consumers has completely vanished. Consumers have splurged like there’s no end,” said Sanjay Gupta, marketing head of Spencer’s Retail, which reported a 20% jump in average bill size.

The auto industry sold about 50,000 cars during the Dhanteras-Diwali week, driving almost 4-5 times growth in sales.
Maruti Suzuki , which sells every second car in the country, drained its entire inventory to dealers during Diwali.
“We estimate that more than 15,000 Maruti cars were delivered on Dhanteras day alone across the country,” said Shashank Srivastava , chief general manager-marketing, Maruti Suzuki.

The company sold a record 1.08 lakh cars in the domestic market in October and expects sales to be even better in November. The maddening customer rush was also seen at two-wheeler showrooms across the country. Market leader Hero Honda’s all three factories have been working overtime to meet the unprecedented demand as sales in October rose 43% to cross five lakh units in a month for the first time.

A Hero Honda spokesman said sales were better than despatches. “Our retail sales have already crossed the 5,50,000 mark during the period between the first day of Navratras and Diwali,” he said. “The festive period is still on, and we hope to add more numbers to this tally in the next few days,” he added.

The mood in the market is so bullish that despite a 24% jump in gold prices since last Diwali, leading jewellers reported anywhere between 40-80% growth in sales this year. “Growth has come from the medium-value items to the high-value categories,” said Mehul Choksi, CMD of Gitanjali Gems that owns D’damas, Nakshatra, Gili and Sangini brands. He said the company’s sales were 70-80% more than last year. Gitanjali has reported sales of around Rs 450-500 crore this festive season.

Other leading jewellers like Orra and Tanishq also clocked 40-50% growth in sales. Orra CEO Vijay Jain said apart from necklaces and bangles, solitaire sales have gone up dramatically by over 60%. Solitaires are more than one carat diamonds and in the Rs 3.5-5 lakh price bracket.

At Orra, average bill size went up by 26%, while Tanishq saw it growing by over 20%. “We have seen growth happening across all categories, particularly in diamonds,” said Bhuwan Gaurav, marketing head at Tanishq.

Typically, the festive season accounts for 20% of the annual sales for jewellers. In consumer durables, Korean duo of LG and Samsung, which hold the lion’s share of the market, recorded more than 40% rise in festive sales. So did leading Indian brands such as Godrej and Videocon.

“Sales were highest in October this year. Even smaller towns showed high demand for some of the premium product categories,” said Ravinder Zutshi, deputy MD of Samsung India . Steep fall in prices helped a spike in demand for premium items such as LCD and Plasma TV, Blu-ray disc players, camcorders and home theatres.

YV Verma, chief operating officer of LG Electronics India , said the only dampener was Punjab, which recently faced an adverse economic situation due to the floods. Punjab is among the richer states in the country, with high consumer demand, particularly in the festive season. This year, floods affected demand in the state.

The direct-to-home (DTH) satellite television sector too increased its subscriber addition by almost one-third this Diwali season, mainly due to a fierce price war and aggressive marketing by all the six companies and partly helped by a boom in television sales.

With new DTH connections now costing less than Rs 1,000, some 14 lakh people took such connections in October, taking the total consumer base to three crore. “The sub-Rs 1,000 pricing led to breaking of psychological barriers for consumers,” said Salil Kapoor, COO at Dish TV , the market leader with some 8.8 million subscribers. In the first five days of November, the industry added another six lakh consumers.


(With inputs from Chanchal Pal Chauhan & Meenakshi Verma Ambwani)