Entries For: January 2008
2008-01-14
3A Bazaar
Filed Under:
Organized retail in rural India
‘Retail’ is the new tale to tell in India nowadays. Organized retail has been the business buzzword in India for the past 3-4 years and every big Indian industrial house has made a foray into retail. Mumbai-based Future Group was among the first to make a successful foray into retail, with its chain of lifestyle (Pantaloons) and supermarket (Big Bazaar) shopping malls. There have been a spate of new chains coming up recently, most notably the Reliance Group’s Fresh and Jewellery outlets, the Tata Group’s Star India Bazaar and the Aditya Birla Group’s ‘More’ hypermarkets. Everyone seems to be in a tearing hurry to cash in on this retail boom before global majors like Walmart, Tesco and Carrefour make their entries into India. There are several other smaller and niche chains too. However, as with all high growth industries in the past, the retail industry has ignored rural and semi-urban India so far. Or, so I thought until I found out about 3A Bazaar.
3A Bazaar is India’s first mobile retail company which was launched in early 2007. The company is owned by the Paramount Trading Corp Pvt Ltd, an exporter of metal handicrafts and primarily operates in the Jyotiba Phule Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh in Northern India. The company is the brainchild of Mr. Asad Shamsi, who was inspired by a few similar retail chains in Europe. ‘3A’ represents the first letters of the names of the three Shamsi brothers, all of whose names begin with ‘A’. Before starting 3A Bazaar, Mr. Shamsi conducted extensive research in rural India and found out that India’s rural population does have disposable income, but not regularly. However, value for money, good quality and a product’s criticality were some of the factors that were to be considered. There are about 5 vans which carry goods worth 2-2.5 lakhs of rupees everyday from Mr. Shamsi’s storehouse to about 700 villages in JP Nagar district. However, most of the villages are visited weekly or fortnightly or monthly. This fits with the irregularity of incomes of villagers and the mobility eliminates the drawbacks of a static rural retail shop. The daily average sales are in the range of 8-10 thousand rupees and Mr. Shamsi is looking at increasing the size of his fleet. It will be very interesting to follow the progress of 3A Bazaar.
Meanwhile, Tata Nano, Tata Motors’ ambitious Rs. 1 lakh car ($2500), was launched at the Delhi Auto Expo last week, amid much fanfare. Even though doubts remain about safety and environmental impact of the ‘people’s car’, coming out with a full-fledged car at this price is an achievement nevertheless.
2008-01-02
NeuroSynaptic
Develops affordable medical diagnostic equipment and solutions
First of all, I apologize for my ‘no-show’ on Social Edge over the last couple of weeks. These two weeks have been hectic and fun at the same time. They were hectic since I travelled a lot, scooted around to meet people and managed some work too. And these two weeks were fun since I met a lot of friends (some of them visiting from abroad), attended a wedding in my hometown and spent a rollicking new year’s eve with friends in Goa. w00t!
This week, I am posting about a Bangalore-based technology company called NeuroSynaptic Communications, which develops affordable medical diagnostic equipment and solutions. NeuroSynaptic was started by Sameer Sawarkar and Rajeev Kumar, both alumni of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and the company works closely with the TeNet (Telecommunication and Computer Network) Group at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras to develop low-cost telemedicine solutions. The company currently offers a range of medical diagnostic kits and solutions, known as ReMeDi (Remote Medical Diagnostics). The kit and the related software cost as little as Rs. 10,000 (~ $250) and this can be used to measure some physiological parameters like body temperature, blood pressure, pulse rate and electrocardiogram (ECG). A patient’s measured parameters can then be communicated to the doctor sitting in a remote location, either through a videoconferencing application running on the computer (which is a part of the ReMeDi solution) or by uploading them to web-based databases. The low-cost and multi-tasking aspects of the ReMeDi kit make it very attractive to rural healthcare providers and the kit is already being used extensively. NeuroSynaptic’s success and innovation were recognized by the World Economic Forum recently, when it featured the company among the 39 Technology Pioneers from all over the world. NeuroSynaptic is the only Indian company to be featured in this elite list. It is also the only Asian company outside Israel to be featured in this list.
Meanwhile, New Delhi-based Ekgaon Technologies (I have blogged about them earlier) has won the first Stockholm Challenge – Global Knowledge Partnership Award 2007 in the ‘Economic Development’ category. Congratulations to them!
Here’s wishing all of you a very happy new year!
