Tale of retail – Part II

When Manoj Kumar made ‘Roti, Kapda aur Makaan’ (1974), little did he imagine that 40 years down the line his idea of bare necessities of life would undergo such a transformation (by the way, the something similar to the movie name was used as the election catchphrase during the general elections in Pakistan then). Today those necessities have changed forms completely i.e. Roti (junk food), Kapda (branded clothes where the hefty premium that we pay for quality is mostly not justified), makaan (better and bigger dwelling place). Though there still remains a certain section of the society for which the basic needs remain same as ever namely: Roti, Kapda and Makaan. However for the rest of India, the growing middle class or whatever you want to call it, these very necessities have changed dramatically. The change is not restricted to the needs alone, more interesting is the manner in which we are going about achieving or satisfying our ‘basic’ need (read greed). What Benjamin Franklin said years back is more relevant today than any time in the history of mankind:  he said ‘time is money’. Going by the same adage, the transition is quite understandable and justified. The saying signifies two of the most important resources at our disposal. We need to utilize them in the best possible manner to satisfy our greed, oops sorry need! So time plus money equals food, clothes and shelter. One factor that has made this entire process faster, easier and more comfortable is the growth of e-commerce. You are hungry? Why go to a restaurant, subject yourself to mad traffic, long queues? Order online. Need clothes? Why travel to a nearby mall and wait in queues, which refuse to end, to pay your bills? In case you know what you want, just place an order online (not many do that but writing is on the wall). Presently, we are at a stage where most of us are brand conscious but open to consider various brands (depending on where we are getting a good deal!), but there will come a time when we will graduate to the next stage: where we would be clear as to which brand we want to buy and that is when buying clothes online will reach a different scale. Latest trend is buying properties online. Few companies have tested the model and surprisingly they were relatively successful. Though it is a farfetched idea but the days are not far when more and more people would start exercising this option (regulator for the industry would help the cause). Coming back to the resources/needs equation, you would notice that e-commerce not only saves time but also ends us saving money as things bought online generally come cheap vis-à-vis regular modes, for obvious reasons. It was only a few years ago that we had heard about the advent of modern retail in India with malls coming up at every possible place, at times next to each other! And now we see even good malls seeing vacancy levels of almost 20-25%. Personally I have seen myself graduate from buying books outside Churchgate station (for years) to buying at organized retail outlets (for sometime) to ordering online (for times to come, I guess). This list of roti, kapda, makaan is not exhaustive as host of other products and services are being sold online. Forgot about buying online, people have started selling online and how! A scary thought: just imagine the chaos if suddenly everyone stopped buying/selling online! We would encounter never ending queues and pay more for goods and services. Bonus: A pizza delivery chain in Mumbai recently delivered a pizza via drone! As they say ‘change is the only constant’ and with the emergence of O2O (online 2 offline), the times ahead are exciting to say the least. Our generation will be a witness to this fascinating process where people would go from standing (in)line to buying (on)line!

Cricket versus other sports in India

Recent performance of Indian cricketers in England has drawn a lot of disdain from the ‘cricket followers’ in India! (Not to mention the England tour has also been responsible for triggering a series of jokes on Whatsapp, last seen during elections!) I am sure by now our cricketers are day dreaming those glory days of world cup victory when they had become demi-gods overnight. I have already expressed my displeasure at the manner in which the cricketers have been ridiculed and censured in my previous blog so I am not getting into it again. It is even more disgusting when the criticism gets personal and their private lives are dragged in. The thing that is going against them is their extremely good performance in IPL followed by poor performance in longer versions of the game. Every year their income figures make it to headlines during IPL. So even if they have one bad day at office, they are run down like anything. Recently concluded tour has actually exposed chinks in their armour. One may argue here saying it is too early to write them off and I agree wholeheartedly. And knowing us, I am sure one good series and everything will be forgotten, so just hang on there guys! However the only worry and a big one at that for overall cricket scene in India is a combination of factors: Sachin Tendulkar’s retirement (we had literally identified cricket with Sachin and vice-versa), fixing allegations, poor performance. People may disagree with me but I still believe the void created by Tendulkar will have a huge impact on the popularity and following of the game in India. 

However someone who likes watching a good game of sport will never be disappointed. And that brings me to my new found love, Kabaddi! Pro Kabbadi has come as a huge respite for me personally. It is as exciting as any other sport that I have seen. Not only it is fast paced, it has that raw feel to it. Most importantly, it has this ‘Indianess’ to it. There is hardly any dull moment in it. Simple and low-profiled players bring humility to the game. It is so nice to see how shy lot of these players are while giving interviews  as they are not used to the limelight and suddenly they are in focus. What is most heartening to see is that they are finally getting their due in terms of fame and money and the game is getting much needed recognition. In case you do plan to watch it on TV, make sure you have the Hindi commentary on! They are more exciting than many of the English speaking cricket commentators who have literally mugged up select phrases for all possible situations in cricket! I am sure Pro Kabaddi will only get better with time. According to reports, Pro Kabaddi’s viewership has overtaken FIFA’s viewership in India by a decent margin, super start to say the least! With Indian Super League round the corner, sports followers in India are in for some exciting stuff.   

Orkut, I will miss you

Orkut, which introduced most of us to the world of social networking and helped us take baby steps towards socializing online (with friends and strangers at times), is shutting down on 30th September

Host of networking sites have come into existence over the past few years riding on the wave created by Orkut and sudden fancy that we had taken to networking online. But most of these, I would guess, have not created the kind of frenzy they would have liked to and in the process lost prominence. Lot of us joined these not-so-popular (may be defunct by now) sites, lost interest later on and stopped visiting them. Today, we are least bothered as to what happened to these sites, whether they still exist or not as we are not using them anyways

But Orkut is an exception. Despite not having logged in to Orkut for a long time, I was a little taken back when the news broke and felt sad about it closing down. At the end of the day, it was Orkut which helped us find our old friends after years as most of us were not ‘online’ prior to the development. We were in touch with only those who we could touch, literally! (I mean close friends who we were in touch with regularly!). This is precisely the reason we have an emotional connect with Orkut. Because by the time other networking sites became popular we were ‘connected’ anyways, through one way or the other. So there was no ‘discovery of friends’ factor at play! One could even go further and describe Orkut as the school of social networking from which people graduated to the popular sites that exist today, but hey, school is always special! Why it is even more special in my case vis-à-vis any other is because I never graduated to the next level. I started with Orkut and stopped there and never joined any other networking site! Why people in our part of the world are even more regretful is because India along with Brazil was (and still is) one of Orkut’s biggest markets in terms of number of users

If you were to ask anyone as to what went wrong, you would get regular replies like it was not innovative enough to compete with other alternatives, it didn’t change with times, and especially when people started switching to networking on their mobile phones, it almost lost relevance. There could be multiple reasons. Google executive did mention that since other similar company websites had taken off well, there was not point continuing with Orkut. I will miss Orkut.

Bonus: Google’s practice of allowing employees to spend 20% of their time on things which may not be related to their job responsibilities gave birth to Orkut (called ‘the 20% project’). Who would have thought that what Google employees worked on during their free time (i.e. 20% of their working time) would lead to something like Orkut (read social networking) where people would end up spending almost 100% of their time!

Maria Sharapova versus ‘select set’ of cricket fans

Chetan Bhagat’s ‘3 mistakes of my life’ may be a best seller but if Maria Sharapova decides to write something on the ‘mistake’ committed by her and names the book as ‘the only mistake of my life’, I don’t think it will have any takers in India! As the ‘mistake’ she has supposedly made is that of upsetting those ‘select set’ of cricket fans/followers/fanatics who expect the entire world to know Cricket despite knowing themselves that it is only played by a handful of countries. One may argue here that ‘not knowing cricket is okay but how can you not know Sachin Tendulkar?! And a simple reply here would be that if someone does not follow any particular sport one bit and especially someone in whose country that sport is not as popular, chances are that he may not know about its best players.

Recent episode involving Maria Sharapova who did not recognize Sachin Tendular drew irk from hundreds on social networking sites and in few cases the comments and reactions did cross the limits of decency. And the reason why I describe them as ‘select set’ of cricket fans is because they form a very miniscule percentage of the total cricket fans in India but they have managed to disrepute an average cricket fan like most of us. I am sure most of these so called cricket followers cannot name top 5 players of our Hockey team which is our national sport, forget about naming the Kabaddi team’s captain. Despite being ignorant about other sports in India themselves, they expect outsiders to know Cricket.

But if you think over this entire situation a little bit, you will realize this is not surprising as this ‘select set’ of fans will not spare even their favorites when they fail to perform. They will burn their effigies; throw stones at their houses etc. I fail to fathom as to why we go to such extremes? Making fun of someone online is fine as long as it is done in good humor but why make it personal and nasty? My only request to these ‘fans’: please don’t embarrass Sachin Tendulkar. If we actually think of him as the ‘God of Cricket’ (which the whole of India actually does and rightly so) then please understand that Sachin Tendulkar like God is beyond reach of most of the sports personalities, beyond criticism from any human being and certainly requires no certificate of recognition from commoners like you, me or Maria Sharapova for that matter! And coming back to my earlier point about writing a book on Maria Sharapova’s mistake, how about naming it “Maria yeh tune kya kiya?!”

Life in a Metro!

If there is something that has caught the imagination of Mumbaikars, over the past few days, like never before then it was the grand opening of Mumbai Metro rail. Frenzy that was palpable on the first day was unprecedented. Though none of us existed when the first train was inaugurated way back in 1853, but I am quite certain that the excitement then was not even fraction of what we saw this time around! People from all walks of life gathered at Ghatkopar/Versova station to get a glimpse and firsthand experience of a 4-coach train covering 12 stations that was expected to change (for good) the way Mumbai looked at transport system. To be honest, excitement was justified considering the delay and the wait all of us had been subjected to! Multiple dates had been declared over the past few months for the start of metro but every time it was postponed to a later date.

Ages before it actually started running, people had started talking about it in social circles, online, on radio etc. Then it was time for the D-day! My friends and I decided to take an afternoon ride thinking (hoping) we would avoid rush. We boarded the train from Ghatkopar (the king of suburbs) and reached Versova in 20 odd minutes flat! To say it was a dream-like situation would be an understatement as people generally spend about 20 minutes waiting for Versova bound buses! Since the token acted as a one-way ticket, we had to get the same for the return journey and that is when the dream turned into a nightmare! Since most of the travelers on the first day had come for a one-off ride and in turn taken a one-way token, they all had queued up for a return token which resulted in queues longer than we had imagined when we embarked on the historic and life-changing journey! A little tiring experience considering it was supposed to be a leisure trip. Finally we boarded the train for our way back to Ghatkopar. But then, the bigger surprise was yet to come when owing to a technical snag it took us more than 50 minutes to reach our destination. Halt time at station was more than the time it took to get to the station! One could sense the feeling of surprise/frustration/shock from fellow passengers’ faces. But at the end of the day, what was nice to see was that everyone showed a big heart and forgave the technical error thinking it was a one-off thing. It was a big achievement for Mumbai and the sense of pride had out powered the sense of frustration.

Next day saw newspapers, radio and online media covering the same with great interest. Though the technical error was mentioned, overall it was a very positive coverage (and rightly so). It just goes to show Mumbai’s positive attitude towards things in general. From the first day onwards, more than 2 lac people have been using the metro on daily basis. But then good things don’t last much, do they? I was travelling in Gujarat when I got pictures showing hundreds of people who got stuck at Ghatkopar station as the shutters were brought down due to over-crowding! I am not sure whether this was again due to some technical error or some management issue but it was a little disappointing. Hopefully, these are all teething troubles and things will smoothen out in future. Life has always been good in our metro (Mumbai) and now with metro (rail) in place, it will only get better!

Man of Extremes

Whatever little I have followed NaMo over the past few years, I think it will not be an exaggeration to conclude that his has been a career of extremes.

It goes without saying that NaMo is arguably best orator that India has seen in a long time. He has this uncanny knack of coming out with funny/profound/thought provoking one-liners/examples at the most appropriate time. He is gifted with this ability to present the most commonplace ideas in the most interesting manner. He has a way with words in short. One of the things that he said in one of his interviews aptly summaries his political career, especially what has happened in the last few years. He said “aafat aayi toh badi aur khushi ke din aaye toh woh bhi bade” and such has been his political life. Either one would be a hardcore NaMo fan or a NaMo critic. Very few people have had a ‘neutral’ view about NaMo.

Let us consider some events that have shaped his career in the recent past. His record as a Gujarat CM is something that has been debated more than anything else on prime time. I don’t want to get into the data as there are various sources providing the same data with huge variances. But a common thread that runs across the data derived from various sources is usage of terms like ‘largest’ or ‘fastest’ or ‘biggest’ with regards to the achievements of Gujarat under the leadership of NaMo. A NaMo critic may argue that Gujarat’s record on certain indicators like infant mortality rate has not been impressive. Apart from few slip ups, Gujarat has done well than most of the states adding a feather to NaMo’s cap. So the ‘extreme’ growth figures are largely justified.

Gujarat riots were one of the most of unfortunate incidents in Gujarat’s history. If someone is at fault then he should be punished accordingly but whether someone is guilty or not is for the judiciary to decide. But in NaMo’s case lot of people passed judgment without waiting for law to take its own course. Like he also mentioned once that no politician in India’s history has been targeted the way he has been in the past few years. Another extreme here: most targeted leader

Recently we witnessed another extreme: the ‘most exciting & extremely well planned campaign’ in the history of Indian politics. It has had far reaching effect if one were to consider the number of people it managed to mobilize and the number of seats BJP (read NaMo) ended up winning! He travelled more than 3 lakh kms, addressed more than 430 public meetings apart from his 3-D rallies and ‘chai pe charcha’ ! He not only managed to hold entire country’s attention over such a long period of campaigning but at the same time influenced people’s opinion positively by conveying the same message though various mediums with great effectiveness.

When you manage to influence so many people at the same time with your ideas, you are bound to get some media attention. According to CMS media labs, NaMo got 7.5 times more TV coverage (read ‘most coverage’) than Rahul Gandhi. So one hand he put in more efforts than anyone else to win people’s hearts/votes and on the other media coverage helped his cause. It was my eureka moment when I multiplied the number of seats won by Congress by 7.5 and got the number which was ‘extremely close’ to the number of seats won by NDA!

After all the hard work, it was the results time. And I must say NaMo did ‘extremely well’ with BJP managing to win majority of the seats. Again you would have cynics arguing that BJP only won 31% of vote share or 38% with allies included. But one cannot deny that it was and will remain ‘one of the biggest’ margins ever in terms of number seats won by a party. The achievement is even more noteworthy in the era of coalition government. And post the results; it was time for the ceremony! More than 4000 plus peopled gathered at his swearing-in ceremony. As I mentioned earlier: “khushi ke din aaye to who bhi bade!” Being a patriot that NaMo is, I am assuming it was his way of informing the world that “a new India has arrived”

Elections highlights

Though I have already written few posts on elections, I got tempted to write one more! Given below are the highlights of 2014 election. Please note the list is not exhaustive as I am only writing those things which are coming to my mind while I am writing them! So you can expect annexure to this post at a later date!

Let us start with the agenda of the parties. BJP’s agenda was to offer development and good governance to the people under the leadership of NaMo. BJP allies had a common agenda: to convey that they were NaMo’s allies and that is it! Rest of the opposition parties had a combined agenda: to criticize NaMo. They were so insecure and focused on bringing NaMo down that they lost their individuality in the process and ended up doing publicity for NaMo!

I have already done AAP’s AAPraisal in my previous post but just to reiterate they only managed to win four seats and that too in one state and that too not Delhi! Fortunately they fought Punjab election like a state election where they addressed local issues so they were able to garner decent support enabling them to open their account in general elections. Otherwise at national level they got more than a billion thumbs down and that is quite a number! Jaadu was AAP’s symbol but it was BJP which managed to sweep the polls in style! Tough times ahead for AAP with Shazia Ilmi and Capt Gopinath leaving the sinking ship (please notice the word-play here: usage of words ‘Capt’ and ‘ship’!)

Congress prior to the election was competing with BJP to retain power and now it will compete with AIADMK and TMC to at least get opposition leader’s position! Had Congress put in even fraction of the efforts, they used up in criticizing NaMo, to reach out to people and for some genuine work, they would have seen better numbers but lost anyways!

Defeat of people like Nandan Nilekani, Meera Sanyal and many others proves individual capacity is one thing but at the end of the day it is the brand that you work for and represent that matters!

Caste based politics didn’t work in Bihar and UP. Hopefully, this is the end of such politics and not an aberration. People voted for a clear majority helping form a stable government which will not be bound by coalition pressure and will take firm decisions and be responsible for it. It was the best time to be a BJP ally!

NaMo mania had reached such heights that BJP would have ended up winning majority of the seats even in US presidential elections if it went to polls around the same time! NaMo’s intent was quite visible in his rallies where one could see how desperate he was to serve the nation and make India proud. It is a small thing but I believe clarity of thought in his speeches conveyed his message well to the audience. BJP and NaMo’s marketing acumen will become a case-study for future generations