Opening New Stores - a Rewind...

When I first joined the retail Industry in 1997, scooping ice-cream as a part-time job for Baskin Robbins in Chennai, little did I imagine I would be bestowed the privilege and opportunity to open hundreds of stores in the future. Not that I aspired to do just this in my formative years, but I was quite clear and sure that the “Great Indian Retail Store” was in the making. And that it would last for decades to come. Looking behind 24 years, I am happy that my views and predictions have remained on course. This blog was started a decade back, as a way to respond to queries from my B-School students as I may not find enough time to share my thoughts during the classes. Over time, this blog has remained an edifice of many of my predictions, which have come true. Even as I inaugurated yet another retail store for the company I work for, I couldn’t gloat my feelings about how positive and committed I remain to the Retail Industry in which I play a minuscule role.

Statistics and numbers about the Industry prospects is one. It is indeed a tedious process and takes hundreds of manhours to get these findings accurately and later, analyse them analytically and correlate with reality. Me, on the other side, have always been a “market-first” guy while indeed relying on stats and data too. I have had the unique advantage of feeling the aura of a location, a neighbourhood or a certain geography. This is an acquired skill coupled with instincts which many of us in RBD – retail business development, are endowed with. It’s certainly not a privilege, rather something we hone our skills on. 

For me, it all began in 2005. Mr. Luciano Benetton was in Bangalore and was undertaking store visits, whom I accompanied with our CEO, Mr. Sanjeev Mohanty. As we ended the day, Sanjeev told me it was Luciano’s wish which he too echoed, to have a store at 100 ft road, Indra Nagar. India’s largest store at that. I was baffled. There was a Limelite Salon, Vivek’s Consumer Durables and 2-3 apparel brands, nothing more. Why would such luminaries in Retail and Fashion want to open a flagship store in a nondescript (that’s how it was back then) locality of the city. But they were right. UCB was the first large store ( a house was brought down and 10,000 sft was built) in the neighborhood, which is today perhaps the most expensive retail location in the Garden City. 

Thereafter, I have been in the business expansion roles at Café Coffee Day and Royal Enfield where I set-up 140 cafes and 160 dealerships, respectively across the country. While data was the lead, it was mostly our instincts with which we finalised most locations. Well, there is and will never be a 100% success rate. But the majority of the locations are still rock stars. For Ex., I was responsible for choosing, designing, setting up and operationalising the largest Royal Enfield Dealership and Service Centre in the world at Chennai. It’s been 7 years now and every time, I pass through that location, I feel a sense of pride. The Coffee Day Square at the Terminal 3 at IGI Airport New Delhi is another example. One at Raipur Airport and so on. 

The same is the case with the outlet we inaugurated today (9 Sep. ’21) at RT Nagar in Bangalore. This is the third branch within the neighbourhood for Specsmakers, whereas the locality already has about 15 Optical showrooms. Assuming an average 100 pairs a month per store, that’s 1,500 users who buy specs per month, 18,000 pa. With an estimated population of 5 lakh people within a 3 sq. km radius, that’s a sizeable population to believe there is a large market potential. Specific to the store location, the stretch already has 3 optical stores, which means potential customers are already coming regularly. With the Brand promise Specsmakers offers, I am quite sure that we will be able to get our share of the business, which should possibly be incremental to the pie. Obviously, these are back of the head calculations and it’s finally the Customer who decides whether they should conduct business with a store or not, no matter how hard Brands do try.

Happy Birthday Madras - the Retail capital of India

I have always argued that one of the reasons why the British traded with our country for a long time was our ethical business practices coupled with abundant natural resources which have been bestowed on our land for centuries. Tracing India's roots to King Ashoka's reign or to the fledgling empires of the Chola Dynasty, trade was a very important aspect of the way India has been governed. While the fabric of the Indian ecosystem, spread across the length and breadth of the sub-continent cannot be taken away, there is a strong link to the very first organised retail establishment which was set-up by the British towards the end of the 19th Century in the erstwhile Madras. 

The Spencer’s Store and Higginbothams Bookstore, which are still edifices on the city’s famed Mount Road are over a century old. The current structure of the book store, once eponymous with everything books and which boasted customers such as Clement Atlee, former British PM, Shri C. Rajagopalachari, the former Maharaja of Mysore among others, was rebuilt to suit the needs of a sprawling bookstore in 1904. Mr. Abel Joshua Higginbotham arrived first in the city in the early 1840s. Over time, he purchased the Weslyan Book Shop run by Protestant Missionaries in Madras and renamed it with his own. He was the Sheriff of Madras in 1888 and 1889. After his death in 1891, his son, CH Higginbotham ran the company from the turn of the century until 1925 when John Oakeshott Robinson purchased the company and ran it until India’s independence. Subsequently, it was acquired by the Amalgamations Group and is managed by them, till date. 

Spencer’s as we all know, was set-up in the city in 1863 by Mr. John William Spencer. In 1895, the then largest Department store in the continent with 80 departments was constructed and inaugurated to the use of public, mostly the British. The store had a large number of imported items which came in Ships from Britain and all over the world for the comfort and use of the Brits living in the Madras region, one of the largest and most important bases of the Queen’s Establishment. Over time, the company changed hands many times until it was acquired by ace Indian businessman RP Goenka in the 1980s. 

India’s first FDI in Retail was by the RPG Group with Dairy Farm International, Hong Kong in the mid-90s which lasted for a decade and a half. The first “Foodworld” store was set-up at RA Puram in Chennai where I was a Store Manager early in my career from 2002-2004. After the JV ended, the RPG Group (now RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group) renamed it as Spencers. The place where the first Department Store in India was established in the 19^th Century now houses the eponymous Spencers Plaza, which was rebuilt after a major fire in the 1980s. I have vivid memories of visiting the older plaza where a number of films have been shot at.

Pic Courtesy: Viveks.com

The city has many notable brands which are now popular not just in India but across the world, be it retail chains or FMCG Brands. Viveks & Co., one of the pioneers of Consumer Durables retailing, was set-up in the year 1965 at Mylapore, Madras. Giri Trading, a retail chain which specialises in selling Hindu spiritual & puja related products has an established presence in the US, the UK, Europe, Middle East, South East Asia and Australia. Ambika Appalams, a favourite snack food brand which has now grown to become a neighbourhood retail chain has fans and followers all over the world and exports their goods to over 50 countries worldwide. Butterfly Home appliances, a pioneer in kitchen related items and TTK Prestige, have a pan-India presence today with huge levels of customer interest online and offline. New age apparel brands like Basics Life and Indian Terrain have gained international acceptance of their designs and styles and have been well appreciated by western counterparts. On the food front, Hotel Saravana Bhavan was a must visit for those visiting the town, now replaced by Sangeethas and Adyar Anandha Bhavan. And on the entertainment front, Sathyam Cinemas was the first regional stand-alone multiplex chain to expand across the country. 

There are numerous examples of Retail glory that my Madras boasts of and I shall remain eternally grateful to the city which has given me an identity and beyond. 

HBD Madras. 

20 years in Retailing

We were 42 of us who arrived at Spencers Plaza at Chennai, one of the only few malls in India in 2001. Most of them had come outside of Chennai. We all had one common reason to come together, through all the diverse backgrounds that we had. We were the Retail Management Trainees to join RPG Group for a 3-week induction at the HQ located on the fourth floor of the same building. Imagine a career, where you have to work amongst shops selling grocery, beauty products, food and beverage and all within a full air-conditioned environment. Only that this luxury would be short lived until we moved back to our “regions” – our destinations to write our own destinies, all by ourselves. The day was 4^th June 2001. One of the most memorable days in my professional career. 

I had unofficially joined the retail industry way back in 1997 when I would scoop ice-cream part time at a Baskin Robbins parlour, the first one in Chennai and second in India. Though I was pursuing software languages in the morning at NIIT and a graduation in Commerce in the evening at Ramkrishna Mission’s Vivekananda College in Chennai, retail and consumer business became my first love, instant love, right from the first scoop I sold. For an eternal introvert until then, I never knew I could sell something to someone for a consideration, an expensive one at that, let alone the ability to speak with my chin up. 

To my utter shock, I was posted to Musicworld Kolkata for my 1^st year assignment. For the record, I hadn’t ever crossed Chennai city limits in my entire life, save for an annual vacation once in 3-4 years to Mumbai where my maternal grandparents lived or to my father’s hometown at Kumbakonam, where the entire extended family would congregate once in a while for a religious festival or a wedding. I dreaded travelling 1.5 days by train from Chennai to Calcutta. That it was 2^nd class A/c was a silver lining. After all, I was going to be travelling in a/c for the first time, that far. The only other time was one of the first rides from Delhi to Lucknow when Rajdhani was launched in the late 80s. I wondered what would I do alone, in the train, all day. And then, all alone in an unknown city, unknown people, unknown language and an unknown destiny. I am glad I took that train, much to my own chagrin, lest I won’t be writing this Anniversary article today with a sense of fulfilment and happiness. 

The memories I have etched of the city of joy, is perhaps one of the greenest that I would carry to my ashes. I made some amazing friends in Calcutta, spoke Bengali in a few months, and most importantly learnt the fundamentals of retailing at Park Street. Mr. Sanjiv Goenka was based in town, so we were always alert for he may turn up anytime. Seeing consumers spend hours together to pick up a cassette worth Rs. 27 was truly amazing. With 80% of volume business coming from cassettes, 15% from CDs and 5% from VCDs and Games, the 8,000 sft store would do a monthly turnover of Rs. 65 lakhs. Yes. In 2001. And the business grew 30% more during Pujo period and during Christmas! Amazing days. 

After a year, I moved back to Chennai on “job rotation” model of RPG Group’s HR Policy to join Foodworld, where I was in charge of the first store of the group. It was here, between 2002-04 that I decided that I wish to spend the rest of my life in Retailing, selling something or the other to end users. Extended Family members around me laughed, wondering why would someone study MBA to work in a grocery shop after all. Neighbourhood was worried if I was qualified enough for an arranged marriage. 14 years later, I received my first professional award – “Top 50 Retail Professionals in India” decorated by Asia Retail Congress. And then, three more awards in Retail and F&B in the past 6 years. In between, speaking at 100s of forums on Consumer Business & Retail in India, Singapore, Malaysia and China!

Before and after my first “public recognition”, my work in retail spoke more than what I could imagine to write. Designing and establishing India’s first ever Travel Retail environment across any private airport in India in 2006 at Bangalore; setting up 140 cafes across India for Café Coffee Day; driving and doubling the dealer network of Royal Enfield from 140 to 300 in just 2 years; and growing the topline of Levista Instant Coffee by 79% during the pandemic year 2020-21; I still try my best to stay grounded and humble without taking up any of the honours on my head. 

Every time I begin my lecture at a B-School as Visiting Faculty teaching Retail Elective to 2nd year students spanning 20-30 hours for the last 16 years, I still feel it is my very first day in Retailing, my tone and throat trembling for the first few minutes in to the class. Completing 20 years in a single Industry feels like an achievement. 

But for me, as I always say – I have just begun and I have Miles to Go before I sleep. Miles2Go. And needless to say, I am a self-proclaimed “Retailer by Profession and Choice. Since 1997”. For a reason!