August 17th, 2007 §
Kishore Biyani has figured out that in order to sell more, he needs to
- make the aisles in his supermarkets narrower, and thus more difficult to walk through
- spill some wheat and seeds on the floor
- introduce some semi-rotten vegetables into a bin of good vegetables
- make his stores noisier
Counterintuitive for westerners perhaps, but this offers a peek into the Indian middle-class psyche.
The article about Biyani’s chain of supermarkets that generates $600 million+ in profits at WSJ is worth a read. In it, Biyani says that making things chaotic enough is not easy, and that the trick to give the customers the impression that “they have won”. Hence the half-rotten vegetables mixed in with the regular good ones, and the choas and disarray. He is quite the man when it comes to inventory control, and modern business practices, and proudly display Sam Walton’s picture on his wall, next to Mother Teresa.
He sells to “India Two”, the Indian population that includes the drivers, maids, cooks, nannies, farmers and others who serve India One. He estimates that 55% of Indians — roughly 550 million people — fall into this category, says WSJ.
“We advertise in the language that people dream in,” says Mr. Biyani, who is proud he isn’t one of the many business leaders in India who has lived or studied abroad. Though he speaks the language, “I don’t dream in English,” he says.
Remarkably enough, everything that leads to more apparent chaos serves him well, including making the check out lanes more confused and chaotic, which apparently increased sales by 30%. It takes a different kind of business smarts to make money in India. No amount of western education can teach one that!
June 6th, 2007 §
The world’s happiest man happens to be a French guy who quit his Ph.D. in favor of Tibetan Buddhism. I had to read the article after I read the title – after all, wouldn’t you want to know how one can measure something like happiness?
Happiness is as simple as keeping the front half of your brain all pepped up! The trick is meditation, and mind control.
I have tried meditation so many times – it is always the pain the legs that gets me. Keep in mind that when I was young, I used to have to sit cross legged at the temple, during the veda class, and at home, while eating etc. It used to hurt then, and it hurts now. I used to think that with practice, and over time, the pain and discomfort will disappear, but it hasn’t really. My legs are weird, I tell you. I have read that you can meditate in any comfortable posture, but my mind seems to reject the idea of sitting in a chair and meditating – it just doesn’t feel right. So for me, it is a little bit of both, body- and mind-control. I tried meditating today, to get my mind back on track. I quit after 10 minutes of discomfort. Then there is the thing about doing it right – I have this stuck-up notion that I need someone to teach me and do it with me, and help me through the process. Doing it all alone somehow doesn’t seem right.
I know, these are all excuses, and what I really need to do is just sit down, and do nothing.
April 1st, 2007 §
One of the most intriguing people I have known indirectly has died. I came to know this through Chetan
Laurie Baker passed away this morning.
Baker was a well known architect who made my humble hometown(Trivandrum/Thiruvananthapuram) his hometown. Read this article for a peek into his life. He was born British, and he died an Indian – having made India his home in the 60s. He had a house in Trivandrum. His architectural principles spread wide and fast in Kerala, as his houses were cheap to build and very efficient. They looked of the earth – natural, and fit into the landscape of Kerala much more naturally.
This picture of his house reminds me best of how his designs looked like – they looked unlike any other house you might have seen before – warm, earthy, cool even in the harshest of summers, and very natural. I would very much have loved to live in one of those houses. A close friend of mine lived in one such house – commonly known as “Baker Model” houses.
He will best be remembered for the low-cost, energy efficient, environment friendly, cool houses and offices he designed. Thank you, Laurie-ji.
July 30th, 2006 §
Narayan Days is Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri’s review of Malgudi Days, that R.K.Narayan work that we Indian’s have come to love. The review introduces you (if you are unfamiliar) to Malgudi, and if you have read the book, reading the review will bring back fond memories.
In celebration of the 100th anniversary of R.K. Narayan’s birth, here is one way I propose that you read his Malgudi Days: one story per day for 32 consecutive days, by the end of which you will have experienced Malgudi Days as a Malgudi month, more or less. Each day’s reading, with only a few exceptions, will take about ten minutes. The vast majority of the stories are less than ten pages long; several are under five; and only one is more than 20. “What a fine idea,” you are perhaps thinking. “Ten minutes a day: I can manage that.” And if you are the type of virtuous person who is satisfied after just one piece of chocolate from a chocolate box, never tempted, until the following day, by a second, then perhaps you will be able to savor Malgudi Days in this restrained fashion.
July 22nd, 2006 §
The long dawn of Indian internet activism — jace.seacrow.com
The long dawn of Indian internet activism
And so a week has passed. We kicked up a ruckus, got mainstream media to back our case, appealed on television, made various government babus look like idiots, rattled their departments, extracted their precious document, made it public, set them off on a blame game, and finally, got the ISPs to restore access to our blogs.
Have you ever seen a long, detailed, well written article, with every single phrase in the article being a link to some informative article somewhere? Read the above article. It is the first such I have come across, and speaks of the recent Indian Govt ban on some blogs and websites. Information and opinion should be free for democracy to prevail.
Amazing, I wonder how long it took for him to put this article together, and how many tabs he had open when we wrote it.
July 17th, 2006 §
India bans some websites at the ISP level(or if China can, we sure can too, though we are a democracy)
June 22nd, 2006 §
Like all good Indians (the kind that go to school on elephants 
) I mispell the word “believe” as “beleive” from time to time. Fortunately I think I found the perfect way to remember the right way to spell it. A friend on a mailing lists had this to say when I expressed disgust at misspelling that word again:
“Remember, beLIEve has a LIE in it.”
Thanks, that should fix my brain.
March 6th, 2006 §
February 28th, 2006 §
This is so deserving of WorldChanging.com attention.
Alka Zadgaonkar wrings plastic waste for profit.
A Ph.D. in organic chemistry in Nagpur, India has put into practice a plant that converts all sorts of waste plastic into fuel oil, petroleum gas and solid petroleum coke. It can work with all kinds of plastic waste, and doesn’t need the waste to be cleaned first. A fractional residue containing metals is the only possibly harmful by-product.
Alka and her husband Umesh, are buying in 5 tonnes of plastic waste everyday in Nagpur at prices attractive to rag pickers. They are wringing fuel oil out of that unsightly pile and selling it to industries in the Butibori Industrial Estate, on Wardha Road out of Nagpur. Production from their plant, Unique Plastic Waste Management & Research Co Pvt Ltd is sold out for the next year.
Reading the article gives some insight into the method used, as well as the difficulties they had to face in starting this up — their offer to let the government make use of the technology got stalled, and they finally struck it out on their own with a bank loan.
Their son, Akshay, is a geek, and the “youngest” MSDN developer in the world, at 12!
That encouragement led Akshay to become at 12, the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Software Developer [MCSD]. The Zadgaonkar family was sent tickets to Seattle for a private meeting with Bill Gates. [Akshay, yet to finish college is interning with Microsoft at Hyderabad.]
My first thoughts on reading about this on some other site was that this too will be a hoax — snake oil — so to speak, but I think this one passes the ultimate test of legitimacy – a google search (just kidding).
Man, if these guys were in the United States, she would have been a millionaire, and VCs would be lining up on their porch. Not in India, though:
But at the Zadgaonkar household, values have hardly changed. Success sits lightly on this family of knowledge seekers: Alka refuses to give up her calling as a teacher.
Somebody take up on this, and start disposing of plastics in a useful way, please.
(If you eat at Subway, you can help, by saying you don’t need the plastic bag for the sandwich 
)
August 17th, 2005 §
I ended up at this interesting post inviting ideas for books for children’s libraries in India.
What a list! I hope it is around when I start buying books for kids.
