DCamp’s also here now!

Finally, DCamp’s happening in Bangalore. About time.

Without intending to take away from the spirit of the event, I’m a little disappointed with couple of things after looking at the event website…

• Looking at the profiles of people who’ve signed up so far, it’s very obvious, this is a gathering of “Interaction Designers” (or “Usability professionals” or “UX professionals, etc. etc.). That’s great…but where are the product designers, graphic designers, ‘art directors’, fashion designers…and how about photographers, filmmakers, artists? Of course, one can argue this in many ways…there are obvious advantages and disadvantages in having an event focused on a specific community of professionals. But I’d personally like to see more exposure and interaction between these different professions, rather than being lost in one’s own niche.
• Secondly, the list of topics that have been listed so far, are surprising. Overall, it doesn’t sound like a “Design conference”, if you know what I mean…(and no offense to any of the presenters…many of them, my good friends!). It’s just that I’d personally like to see more of the “D” in the ‘DCamp’.

Either ways, I’m still quite excited about the event…especially about the fact that already 96 people have signed up. Doesn’t seem like a huge number, but considering where the design scene in India was 10 years ago, it’s a HUGE leap!

FilmCamp, after BarCamp

While the name, ‘FilmCamp’, sounds like an ‘un-conference’ for film making, the details on their website indicates a typical conference-like format. Either ways, the event sounds interesting and I’m guessing, it will attract a good response in Bangalore. Looking forward to it.

More details here: FilmCamp.in

Wannabe ‘value added services’?

With so much competition in the mobile/telecom space these days, service providers seem to be getting desperate with “value added services”. I get this message from Airtel today…

For the young at heart, Airtel brings BackgroundMusic! Set a Romantic/Funny tone in background when U talk on ur mobile. Call 676 @ Rs.2/min to avail. Monthly-Rs.30

Maybe it’s just me again, but who would want to listen to some “romantic/funny tone” (in other words, noise?) while you’re trying to have a conversation over the mobile? It’s bad enough to deal with network connectivity issues and the noise while you’re outdoors.

On the other hand, I really like the ‘missed call alert’ service. For Rs.15 a month, you get an SMS from Airtel whenever somebody tried to call you and your cellphone was either ‘out of range’ (unreachable) or was switched off. Of course, the message also tells you the number of the person who called, so you could call them back.

While on the topic, incidentally, the upcoming Mobile Monday in Bangalore is about Mobile VAS trends. Still figuring out if I can make it for this one.

Upcoming events

A variety of (potentially) interesting events coming up over the next few weeks/months…

• TiE New Delhi’s organizing a retail summit on July 27.
• India Retail Forum: Sep 4-6, 2007 in Mumbai.
• Design Yatra 2007: Sep 6-8 in Goa.
• EPIC 2007: Oct 3-6, 2007 in Colorado, USA.

Let me know if you’re headed to any of these. I’m still making up my mind…

The Shop: Part 2

Part 2 of the coverage of The Shop, a retail conference held in Bangalore last week…

Naresh Malhotra, CEO of Cafe Coffee Day, gave a presentation on Day 2 on the topic, “Fun & Food: Spreading the experiences and learning from the southern markets”.

Here are some of the highlights:

• The peak hour for Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) is usually between 4pm and 7pm. In most other parts of the world (?), coffee shops usually see high traffic between 7am and 11am, obviously the ‘on-the-way-to-office’ crowd.
  Not surprising ‘coz there has never been a culture of picking up a coffee, on the way to work, in India. Which also reminds me about how the cup holder, that’s now there almost by default in the newer Indian cars, is hardly used for keeping coffee or any other drink for that matter. This is one of those classic examples of how you blindly re-use a concept from the West and include it in your design it in a different country. And what people actually end up using it for in India is, keeping some currency/change or keeping your mobile phone.
• Some of the folks behind the kitchen counters, who are called “brew masters”, are usually quite young (several just out of college, or some still in college). CCD was having a problem with their productivity and efficiency ‘coz they would end up talking a lot amongst each other.So, what did CCD do resolve the problem of people talking and not paying attention to the job? They hired folks who can’t speak (at all)!I thought that was a very creative solution to this problem. The best part is, they found that hiring folks with speech disability also helped control attrition. They were much more loyal to the job, considering they have a hard time finding jobs usually. And given that they don’t gossip and chat among each other, the productivity & efficiency has improved considerably. And finally, the way I see it, it’s also a good ‘corporate social responsibility’ thing to be proud of.
• Coffee Day has opened couple of stores in Europe (Vienna, if I’m not wrong) and are finding that their stores in Europe are doing better than stores in Bombay and Delhi, given the crazy real estate prices in these Indian cities. And this was a common topic that got discussed every few minutes in the conference, rising/outlandish real estate prices in the urban cities in India.
• One of the other recurring themes/conversations during the conference was, about how folks from ‘South India’ are different from folks who have roots in ‘North India’, especially with respect to spending behaviour. Many made comments about how south Indians don’t like to spend too much.To this, Naresh clarified that, on the contrary:
  • The south Indian consumers appear to be more “serious” shoppers. Meaning, the number of folks who actually end up purchasing something versus folks that just window shop, is a lot more in South India.
  • CCD has mostly implemented their price increases in South India before the north. And they’ve only seen their sales improve. So, looks like folks from South India don’t seem to have that much of a problem with spending.
  • He also clarified that the issues is not about ‘cost’. It’s about ‘value‘. Folks from South India are ‘value conscious’, not cost conscious. So, they would spend more time & effort to determine whether what they’re spending on, is worth it and whether it’s “value for money”. Folks from other retail companies like Tanishq, Cookieman, HiDesign, etc. also validated this point (more on that in the next update).

That’s it for now in this update. More in another couple of days…stay tuned.

“The Shop” – Indian retail conference

Bangalore saw a downpour of Indian retail CEOs at The Shop last week. I’ll be posting several interesting stories & anecdotes heard during presentations and informal conversations at the conference, over the next couple of days.

To start with, the big one, the Big Bazaar story. This was during a presentation on Day 1 by Rajan Malhotra, CEO of Big Bazaar.

He talked about how Big Bazaar was conceptualized several years ago (around 2000?) — Kishore Biyani and his team were inspired by the Hotel Saravana Bhavan, one of Chennai’s oldest & most popular legacies. Some of the key learnings from Saravana Bhavan (this is not verbatim; this includes my commentary):

1. Hotel Saravana Bhavan, over several decades of growth, has been popular across several categories of consumers. You’ll find the autorickshaw drivers as well as the CEOs having lunch there. (South India’s answer to fast food, except it’s not junk food). The Big Bazaar team was inspired by the restaurant’s ability to cater to a wide range of audience, day-in & day-out. This concept was extended to the Big Bazaar, where you’ll see a real wide variety of consumers shopping there. Of course, the majority includes folks who wouldn’t be comfortable going to other “glossy” looking malls (like the Bangalore Central, Forum Mall, etc.)
2. Based on what they observed at the Saravana Bhavan, the Big Bazaar team noticed the cramped spaces in the restaurant, in the aisles, between tables, at the cash counters, etc. Somewhere there was born, a germ of an idea, to have the Big Bazaar retail space designed in such a way that Indian consumers would get a sense of the crowdedness (which they’ve always loved while shopping at the traditional markets) while shopping in the mall. Consumers, apparently, are loving it.
3. Saravana Bhavan has grown exponentially over the years, opening branches all over India as well as overseas, including in major American cities that host a large community of south indians, like Sunnyvale, New York and New Jersey. But, their quality of food has been amazingly consistent across all the restaurants (I can vouch for that myself!). The Big Bazaar team learned their lessons in scalability here…how to expand your stores without losing out on the quality and consistency across the stores.
4. Also, the store managers in each of the Saravana Bhavan restaurants are considered to be really on top of what’s going on in each store. This gives a good balance between the macro and micro view while managing the same brand of stores across several locations.

Other interesting revelations about Big Bazaar (some of this stuff is mentioned in the “It Happened in India” book by Kishore Biyani):

1. The company sees differences in buying patterns across stores in the same city…for e.g. the same item that sells like hot cakes in one store in Bangalore, is still collecting dust in the Big Bazaar store across at the other end of the city.
2. Indian consumers are loving the mega discount days that Big Bazaar has now become (in)famous for. During one such discount day in one of the cities, Rajan Malhotra (CEO, Big Bazaar) saw a queue that was couple of miles long outside the store, waiting to get in. Among those standing in the queue, was an elderly gentleman and his family. Rajan walks up to the gentleman, and requests him to go and come back in few hours after the crowd has reduced so that he can avoid standing the queue for hours. The response he got — “Arrey! Humko to bahut achcha lag raha hai; yeh to mele jaisa lag raha hai!”…in other words, “We’re loving it here, it feels like we’re at a mela!”
   So, folks actually don’t mind standing in queues for several hours just to be part of the experience, not just because they’re getting stuff at (supposedly) discounted prices!

More trivia and anecdotes about Cafe Coffee Day, Barista, and other Indian retail success stories soon…stay tuned!