How can you start this week with anything other than the Higgs Boson? For most of us – this is the kind of news which is important because people smarter than us are telling us it is, and like it or not, some things are just like that. Here is a Reuters article about the god particle.
An interesting story from Businessweek about Indian companies’ push into the retail sector and two things about the story stand out in my mind.
First one is that big Indian business houses are investing heavily and rapidly in this segment and so far that hasn’t affected the kirana stores that everyone is so worried will die due to FDI in multi brand retail.
Secondly, even though they are investing heavily, this is not a very profitable business for them right now, and that also shows that foreign companies won’t come in and start making money from day one and drive everyone else out of business.
Financial Express had another interesting story about retail where they wrote about a new concept of connecting farmers to the urban market pioneered by Mr. Harsha Moily, who is the son of Corporate Affairs Minister, Mr. V. Moily.
I’ve written about 3D printing several times, and I’m really fascinated with it because there is no doubt in my mind that this is going to make a huge difference to how we live a few years from now. Here is an article on 3D printed blood vessel network.
Brad Feld has a fascinating take on what it means to be busy and he talks about his own work schedule and how we create a busy trap to avoid our fear of death.
Fast Company has an interesting article on Google Glass, which makes them sound quite useable (at least to me).
Finally, Indexed has a brilliant take on things you run from and things you run to.
Enjoy your weekend!
>>so far that hasn’t affected the kirana stores that everyone is so worried will die due to FDI in multi brand retail.
I am not so sure about this. In a place where I used to live and still go very frequently ( BTM Layout, Bangalore), a couple of Kirana shops have closed down or turned into eateries since the advent of retails shops like Reliance Fresh. Of course, a few chain retail stores also found the going tough there (for e.g. a Nilgiris and a More store closed down).
Above is anecdotal evidence, for sure, but sometimes I wonder if small kirana shops will survive. My own shopping has changed totally to a organised retail chain store. Only occasionally do I go to the neighbourhood kirana store to buy stuff which I would have forgotten to buy from organised retail. I am sure that’s the same for a lot of people now.
My experience with the place I live in Delhi has been different. Even though people have changed their buying habits, the four stores that I can think of that have been there since my childhood (and much before that) are still there. I can definitely see that people’s buying preferences have changed but somehow these stores have also survived and seem to be doing alright.
The link for ‘3D Printing’ is incorrect..
Thanks for pointing that out Rutvik – I’ve corrected it now.
Btw, your link to the 3D printed blood vessel network points to the Moily article.
Thanks for pointing it out – corrected now.
The financial express story on Moily is such a disappointing one, because
1. Not a single word about what and how the business aims to do things differently.
2. Why other such models failed or were not attempted before ?
3. Very irrational exuberance on telling the story behind each product. does it mean before buying each liter of milk customer will get to know the color of the cow which yield it and name of person who milked it ?
Just goes gaga about telling the story of each product on the shelf and eliminating the middleman and back/fore-ground of Mr. Moily. Utterly disappointed. Looks like a planted story.
Regards
It doesn’t look like planted to me because there is only so much you can can cover in one story, specially one that’s an introduction. Let’s see how this pans out.
Sure an article can only cover this much.
But connecting farmer to the urban market is neither a newly found problem nor is the article talking about a newly found solution.
If it’s talking about a new and revolutionary model of business like the headline “Farm to mkt, Moily Jr. builds direct route” suggests, i would rather hear about the model, why it is new and revolutionary rather than who the person is behind it and what’s his background and how he could have gone into some other line of profession based on his ancestry and what he did before this etc etc..
The only few lines of insight into the business are
– “Every produce in the store will come with a story. where it was sourced from and what is that farmer’s tale,â€
– “produce will be tagged with the ‘food miles’ it has travelled from the farmer to the city. Fruits, vegetables and eggs will be time-stamped to record freshness”
– “By eliminating middlemen, Moily aims to deliver maximum returns to the farmer.”
Out of the 3, the 3rd one is a crucial one. And every one from ITC to Reliance is already doing it to a certain extent and trying to solve the associated problems !
2nd half of the article is completely devoted to cover the promoters rich heritage.
Now, i sure expect more than that.
Of course we can agree to disagree 🙂
Regards
I’d love to see all these details 🙂 I’m with you on that.
Just that I don’t see that they have planted this story. Sometimes I read very similar stories in major newspapers and they read all the same and that looks like a planted story, but this doesn’t look like that to me and more than that FE is not that big a paper to begin with (compared with others).