Today - while browsing through Economic Times, I came across this interesting article on the predicted Retail war between the Ambani Brothers.

The Article is Here

India is a very lucrative space for the Retail industry in the nearby future.

My take on the Indian Retail industry:

Picture Source: http://knowindia.net/retail.html

So far the industry is so fragmented with many mom & pop stores across the streets and now the entering of "The Big" Retail giants into the Indian domain is a big move in the retail industry. Though it is in the fragmented phase, retail industry is contributing for over 10% of country’s GDP and more than 8% of job opportunities. This industry is emerging as one of the most rapid and dynamic industries with lot of players stepping in – to grab the market. Government policies are becoming very favorable. Walmart is already putting its foot hold with the help of Bharti. Reliance is also making its strategic retail moves aggressively.

The Indian consumer has changed his buying behaviour very aggressively and this created a revolution in the shopping pattern. Large malls, multi-storeyed shopping complexes are popping up in every city with food, entertainment and shopping under one umbrella. The sudden drift in this shopping behaviour can be attributed to the development of large & young working class communities, nuclear families in metros, increasing working women and the wide open opportunities in service sector.

I believe that Retail industy is in the consolidation phase and transforming itself into an ‘organised’ sector in India... but we need to wait and see who takes how much of the Pie in this market share.

Labels: Industry Insights

Happy Republic Day........ To all the Bloggers & Blog Readers....

Labels: ISB Diary

Recently updated my blog with Google's AdSense. Great to see ISB's ads on my blog........

The first ad directed to www.Vault.com & the other ad directed to another blog -
www.eurekhaonline.blogspot.com .....
(I just put my mouse on the ad and the weblink is shown on the bottom bar)

I am aware of the content in www.Vault.com but I have no clue about the second site.

I didnot & do not want to click the Ads - as I am one of the true supporters of the 'anti click fraud' drives........


Hope every one follows this approach..........

Labels: ISB Diary

Yesterday I had a submission for my final take home exam – for the course “Outsourcing & IT-Based Businesses ”. Through out the course, in every class at least there was one question about the competency of Indian firms to lead this outsourcing space. So the bottom line for every question is - Can India be the Future Winner of the Outsourcing Space?

My $0.02 worth:

Outsourcing industry is slowly moving from a fascinating, rapidly growing phase, to the Matured Industry phase. Emphasis is shifting from cost-efficiency to a more holistic customer proposition. Customers are putting focus on the combination of quality of services rendered, amount of value created and cost.

Indian offshore/outsourcing giants already realized that this wage-arbitrage-based cost leadership is not a sustainable competitive advantage for sure. Also, low entry barriers are welcoming lot of foreign players to compete in the India market that is increasing the downward pressure on prices. So what should Indian companies do in this regard?

One way to think of the solution is to move UP the value chain to Higher-end Complex services – IT consulting, Systems Integration, Product development. One advantage with this model is that the ROI will be high and margins will also be high. Also, these services are highly focused on individual client relationships - there by the company do not face threat from competitors. But the downside is that companies need to make substantial investments to attain the domain expertise.

One solution thought by a few Indian companies is to have a blend of both ‘onshore presence to manage the local Client relations’ + back end offshore setup (To provide scalability and operations for maintaining delivery excellence). Some Indian firms already mastered this onshore-offshore model. But at the same time the biggest threat to this solution is that some MNCs are establishing their offshore units in India, which is on the same lines that these Indian companies are following. These companies are much bigger in scale, cash and client relationships. Can Indian companies have enough capability to counter this threat? This rises to an interesting observation – “Onshore firms are setting offshore operations and offshore companies are trying for onshore presence – so there is a collision on a global basis”.

If this is the scenario, what is likely to emerge over the next decade?

A million $ question………!!

Labels: Industry Insights

From the past one week, life is moving at lightening speed. Exams, submissions, Deadlines and some family urgencies....... all made me to travel along with the hands of a clock. Yesterday was on the top. 3 submissions and one exam. Am going crazy..............

Festive mood in campus: Lot of exchange students are joining our campus & lot of my batch mates left for exchange programmes.

Yesterday, there was a big Marketing Club Event 'Ikshaa' and today CITNE's second major research conference, 5^th International Symposium on Data Envelopment Analysis. Every one is busy. I got a submission on Monday. Till then I can relax.

New year looks promising… :) How far the dreams will be fulfilled… we need to wait and see……..

Labels: Random Thoughts