Boston Days – Part 1

(I am writing “Boston Days” as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims. This article covers the “opportunity of multi-format retail concepts under the same roof - or the lack of it ”) 

As the Emirates flight touched down at Boston Logan Airport around 1440 hrs local time, I was conscious of witnessing a personal milestone. 

As I near 50, I finally set foot in America — the land that the world collectively romanticises as the land of opportunities. For over three decades, despite several invitations and occasions that came my way, I never made a conscious decision to visit. 

Yet, here I was, to complete the third and final module of the Senior Leadership Program at the prestigious Harvard Business School.

After Immigration formalities and a mandatory Dunkin’ coffee on arrival, I checked into my hotel. For two days, this would be home before I moved into the campus for three weeks of immersive learning. 

Thankfully, a large retail plaza sat just behind the accommodation, and retail therapy beckoned almost immediately. Some habits, clearly, do not respect geography.

As I walked the parking lot periphery, a police vehicle swung by. Three officers stepped out. I greeted them and they reciprocated warmly. One proclaimed, with evident pride, that Boston cops were genuinely nice people — and welcomed me to the USA with a broad smile. 

Having binge-watched the Netflix series “Boston Patrol” ahead of this maiden trip, I was already half-prepared for exactly this kind of encounter. 

Art, it seems, does imitate life — and occasionally predicts it too.

South Bay, Dorchester felt less like a mall visit and more like a retail masterclass in action. 

Old Navy standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Five Below. 

Macy’s anchoring one end, TJ Maxx another. 

Home Depot’s nursery spilling generously onto the parking lot, with perennials and ornamental plants displayed in cheerful abundance. 

Best Buy, Marshalls, Total Wine — all pulling their weight with quiet confidence. 

The number of cars had visibly doubled within the hour, even as I stepped in and out of a dining place. The weekend pull, doing its quiet and predictable magic.

No pretence. No aspiration overload. Just retail doing what retail must — serving real people with real needs, real budgets, and real intent to purchase. 

And then Olive Garden, glowing warmly against the night sky, its stone façade and lush greenery offering a welcome contrast to the vast asphalt expanse. America’s middle-market retail, alive and surprisingly well.

The large horizontal retail format immediately reminded me of similar spaces back home in India — Chandigarh and parts of the tri-cities, which came up as planned urban expressions post-Independence. 

Le Corbusier’s 1966 master plan for Chandigarh has broadly held, and successive state governments have respected the original vision with reasonable consistency. Malls have naturally emerged in Mohali and Panchkula over the years, complementing the planned commercial zones.

A parallel exists in Bangalore Development Authority’s shopping centres, the first of which came up in Jayanagar in 1978, followed by Indira Nagar in 1982. 

Today, 14 such centres exist across the city. 

Over time, however, chronic poor maintenance has drained them of both tenants and footfalls. As recently as June 2024, the state government announced a PPP model for seven key facilities — a proposal that remains, as of now, firmly on paper.

Indian cities hold vast, underdeveloped land parcels. Open, accessible retail-dining-leisure ecosystems of this scale are entirely possible, if political will and purposeful land allocation ever decide to meet halfway.

On Day 2, a visit to “Kahaani” with batchmates offered some familiar comfort — Garlic Naan, Paneer Butter Masala, Dal Makhani. Excellent, save for the paneer that stubbornly refused to yield to the fork. 

The bill, predictably, was far from pocket-friendly. 

But then, this is the capital of Capitalism — with a very deliberate capital C. 

High cost of living drives high wages, which in turn is passed back to a consumer who accepts it as part of the compact. A well-oiled circular economy, doing precisely what it was always designed to do. 

(I am writing “Boston Days” as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims.)

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 and Part 9 here.

Twelve Years, One Long Thank You

On 3 August 2026, I closed a chapter — twelve years with Miles2Go Consulting Services, ending not with a whimper but a quiet exhale. Long enough to watch an industry shift twice over and become the person junior consultants call for advice. Long enough to owe a lot of thank-yous.

To the universe — twelve years of things going sideways in ways no deck predicted: projects that should have failed and didn't, conversations that landed at exactly the right moment. I call that grace.

To my wife, who deserves more than a paragraph but is getting one anyway. She's sat through more "just one call" dinners than we can count, and absorbed my stress without ever feeling like a burden. Consulting is a two-person job where only one of us gets the recognition. This one's for you.

To my clients, who trusted a consultant with problems that never show up in the RFP. Some of you became case studies; all became education. Thank you for the trust and the patience when I got it wrong.

To my friends and associates, who put up with cancelled plans, late-night WhatsApp messages, and talk of "bandwidth" at dinner. Consulting makes worse friends of its practitioners for a while. You stayed anyway. And to that one friend who was more relentless for my success than me, thank you buddy! 

A handful of moments from these years, tagged #milestogo and #miles2go, tell the real story better than any résumé line.

Levista Coffee was a turnaround with a client who became an employer, pushing the brand into competitors' boardrooms — with Chennai Super Kings carrying it through IPL 2020 and Kamal Haasan appearing alongside it on Bigg Boss.

Thangamayil Jewellers was built on trust and shared respect for ethical practice — strong enough that the client asked to continue even after the engagement formally ended.

Specsmakers was mentorship disguised as business: ARR grew 40% in nine months with zero incremental marketing spend, a win for twenty-plus business managers — one of them, an area manager in Bangalore, later became a hospital's General Manager.

Fabelle Chocolates was deeply personal — serving the ITC Group, where my father worked as a factory worker for 33 years, by designing the kiosks that brought the brand to consumers.

TexValley, Erode was the hard lesson: a relationship where our advisory kept losing out to internal decisions, and the opportunity drained away slowly. Not every engagement ends the way you'd want.

Indian Terrain, followed by Minmini, was the moment I knew consulting was right for me — better suited to strategic work than to founder-led organisations, where authority and responsibility blur.

Twelve years compress strangely in memory. Stressful weeks blur; specific moments stay sharp — a handshake after a hard year, a 2 a.m. email answered, a friend who showed up anyway. 

Those are the moments My Retail Journey holds.

So: to the universe, my wife, my clients, my friends, and everyone who put up with me these twelve years — thank you. Miles2Go gave me not just a career, but an identity. All of you gave it meaning.

Here's to the next set of miles.

#Miles2Go

MAA: systemic failure vs. bureaucratic apathy

I happened to travel from Chennai on a work trip recently and was aghast to see literally no passengers at most of the retail outlets at the domestic terminal – outside and inside the security areas. Not even at the food outlets.

This was the airport which refused to get modernised in 2004 when the Congress Government, led by Late Manmohan Singh passed a bill to privatise airport operations in India.

Kolkata and Chennai airport staff  of AAI resisted vehemently for months together and won the battle for themselves, cheering and encouraging each other. Little did they know how they will fare in the war, 2 decades later. 

Airport operations at Mumbai and Delhi were handed over to the GVK Group and the GMR Group for redevelopment (Brownfield Airports) while swanky new facilities came up at Bangalore and Hyderabad (Greenfield facilities) led by Zurich Airport Consortium and the GMR Group, respectively.

Over the years, the top 4 airports – all managed by private operators rake in over INR 5,000 crores in Airport Retail revenues, across shopping, F&B, Lounges, hotels and hospitality, including sale of duty free products in international departures and arrivals.  

Mamta Banerjee took it on her to ensure Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose airport in Kolkata was brought up to world class standards. It was her first stint in the CM seat and she succeeded.

The state government of Tamil Nadu, back then led by Late K Karunanidhi had identified a vast tract of land in the industrial corridor of Sriperumbudur, boosting manufacturing and exports, similar to the Manesar ecosystem in NCR.

When J Jayalalitha returned to power in 2014, she turned this down and instead her government identified a suitable land in the deep south of Chennai, beyond Chengelpet. She assured metro rail connectivity, as the facility was over 70 kms from the city centre.

Later, when MK Stalin took charge in 2021, his cabinet approved Parandur, north-west of Sriperumbudur as the suitable facility keeping in mind the proximity to the industrial cluster of Sricity in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. 

It was at this location, where the present Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay began his election campaign in 2025, assuring farmers that their agricultural land shall not be compromised for air travel.

20 years since the airport revolution began in India, Chennai Airport has not just failed to have a new airport, it has lost precious cargo and passenger traffic to Bangalore and Hyderabad. 

At the moment, Chennai ranks sixth in managing passengers annually, after Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kolkata in that order.

That the state has 3 other international airports at Madurai, Coimbatore and Trichy is not a consolation. 

Regular fares from Chennai to Singapore are cheaper than from Tiruchirapalli to Singapore! It is not the load factor that matters to airlines, rather it is the Revenue per Seat which they mostly focus on!

Just like me thousands of passengers, those flying over 12 times a year, post regularly on social media about the airport apathy. Hundreds of them tag the handles of agencies of the union government. While IRCTC takes swift action if the a/c is not cooling enough of if the rest rooms are looking dirty, AAI is in a different league altogether.

Tenders for shops were given in 2019 to an operator with ZERO experience in the field of Airport Retail – like many PSUs, AAI also relies on H1 or L1 bidders for revenue and expenses – the highest or the lowest – quality and experience are not so important. 

The present operator, who took over from the previous one is doing a great job in the maintaining the looks of the stores; but the operator does not run the business itself – so the shops add to the decorative element of the airport.

Passengers pass by the shops; but do not remember their names! Ask a regular shopper if they have seen a particular store and the answer is mostly in the negative. Kind live babus.