Posts from — April 2009

When a Pantaloons store opened at the Rave mall in native city of Kanpur, I was intrigued. It was the first Western-style retail store, selling clothing in this instance.  Upon some research I found that it was run by Kishore Bayani’s Futures Group. Bayani’s company has gone on to launch a series of grocery and discount stores  (Big Bazaar and  Food Bazaar) all over India. Our clients at Amritt have have great success in building relationships with them.

Bayani is an articulate writer as well and I am stimulated by his insights. His latest ones appear in the Wall Street Journal last week.

It starts with

Capitalism runs on sentiment as much as money. Almost daily doses of bad news on television screens and newspapers have possibly done as much damage to the economy as the events on either side of the Atlantic. The biggest consumers and believers in this news are the salaried class – people who work in large companies that are integrated with the global markets.

Being the biggest consumers of media, they are also the largest consumer segment for Indian marketers. And companies that are catering to this segment have seen weakening consumer sentiment and sluggish sales.

However, hidden behind the consumer statistics of most marketers is a segment that is largely ignored. Yet they form an overwhelming majority of Indian consumers. They are the self-employed Indians.

Read the rest at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123838356050568625.html?mod=article-outset-box

or here

When Britain ruled the world, its astronomer drew the Prime Meridian,  0 degrees longitude through the observatory at Greenwich.  The French did their part in defining metric standards.  During America’s dominance in the 20th century,  the world got Country Code 1 for the United States and later the dot com domain on the internet, whereas other countries are supposed to use .uk (for United Kingdom),  .de (for Germany), .in  (for India) and .cn for China.

The European Union tried to assert its identity with the single European Currency and the Euro symbol.  What about India. I grew up using the term “Re” or “Rs” as an abbreviation for Rupee. The correct international abbreviation is INR, for INdian Rupee (as distinct from similar names in Pakistan, Nepal, even Indonesia).

Not wanting to be left behind, India wants a graphic symbol for the Rupee. According to the BBC, “the hope is that the rupee sign will become as ubiquitous as the US dollar ($), or that instant emblem of the digital age, the @ symbol.” Hey, it’s the year after Obama’s bestseller, The Audacity of Hope.

Read more than you will ever want to know about this subject by clicking here.