Retail in Multi Channel World by Mr. Kumar Rajagopalan

Retail in Multichannel World

Mr. Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO, Retailers Association of India, spoke on Retailing in Multiple Channel World on the 17th of March 2014.

The session began with an introduction on retail and how retail products have become an essential part of our day to day life. Every day from the time we get up till we go to sleep, a retail product is a part of it. Ranging from toothpastes to our instant foods, everything is a part of retail product.

Mr. Kumar spoke in detail about Multichannel retailing. Multichannel retailing is the use of a variety of channels in a customer's shopping experience including research before a purchase.  Such channels include retail stores, online stores, mobile stores, mobile app stores, telephone sales and any other method of transacting with a customer. Transacting includes browsing, buying, returning as well as pre and post sale service.

At present, there are a few products that are purchased through television. But the newer and most advancing is the Mobile retailing sector. Companies are competing on the internet with new applications in which customers can buy the products online on the go with the help of a few clicks. Companies like Amazon and Flipkart make use of these applications to help connect better with their customers.

The two channels used are Offline and Online retailing. Offline retailing pertains to customers walking into the nearest retail store and purchasing the product whereas online retailing relates to customers purchasing through the internet. Both of these have their advantages and disadvantages.

Offline Retailing is where the customer gets a feel of the product. The delivery is instant as the product is purchased in the store. It is now extensively used by many well-known companies to promote their products as the online retailing has become highly competitive.

Online Retailing is where the consumer places the order online through various sites. The disadvantage is that the consumer cannot physically choose the product. Also the time of delivery depends on the location of the consumer. Price of the product purchased via online retailing is lower as compared to offline retailing as companies try to attract customers towards online purchasing.

The future of retailing is slowly changing to augmented reality where the customer can understand the appearance of the product. Many companies have already started using augmented reality which helps in saving space and also helps in connecting better with the consumers.

Guru-gyan

The buying process includes 3 things 1. Influencer, 2.  Buyer and 3. Payer. Influencers are those who actually push you to go ahead and buy the product. They actually compel you to buy the product.

The Buyer is the person who asks for the product. The buyer is also largely influenced by the Influencer to buy the product.

The payer is the person who pays for the product. The payer is influenced by the Buyer to get him/her the product that they desire.

The session ended with the speaker answering the queries posed by the students.

Ethics and Us : Ethicus by Ms Vijayalakshmi Nachiar and Mr. Mani Chinnaswamy

Another extraordinary colloquium was that of Ms Vijayalakshmi Nachiar and Mr. Mani Chinnaswamy, the dynamic couple who founded the Indian fashion brand Ethicus. It was of great benefit for us, the budding managers to understand the backdrop story in building a very unique brand.

Mr. Chinnaswamy narrated the gripping incident that was instrumental in his re-orientation towards starting a brand focused on sustainability and ethics. It once happened that all of stock was burnt in an act of sabotage. Absolutely frozen in shock he walked around colorlessly and reached atop a nearby hill. From there, as he saw the fire of his mill, it seemed not so incredible. From a distance the problem seemed to be smaller. That moment inspired him to re-think his direction and restart anew.

India is one among the greatest cotton cultivators and leads the world in terms of the area of land where cotton is cultivated. But in the various agricultural measures taken post-independence, the seeds were largely genetically modified and the rich traditional varieties started leaning down in cultivation. As the worldwide demand for organic cotton started growing and the awareness about the demerits of chemical-intense farming started rising, in September 2009, Appachi Cottons launched Ethicus.

Mr. Chinnaswamy and Ms. Nachiar patiently took us through the entire brand engineering process answering all our questions. It was a live case-study session with them handing us the case built on their brand published by Valparasio University, Ohio. Ethicus produces clothing made from organic cotton, natural and eco-friendly dyes, and ethical silk. Ethicus products are handcrafted using traditional weaving techniques on revived jacquard handlooms of the Pollachi region.

The founders also discussed on how they have innovated in every bit of their way. There are excellent craftsmen-welfare schemes in place. Product labels have the photo of the artisans giving them due credit at the same time achieving high differentiation. The incident of Mr. Chinnaswamy meeting global exquisite brand leaders and never budging to enter a partnership where the Ethicus label would not be present was very inspiring.

It was a colloquium like never before, simply because we had the very founders of a brand explain their evolution. The exuding passion they possessed in holding, carving and growing their brand was visible first-hand. May be all can read a case study. But rarely do we get to quiz the subjects of a case in depth. It left us with a deep sense of understanding of what is ethical in their industry, how hard it is to sustain and still dance through the market with sound business principles. On the whole, it was a multi-dimensional learning experience.

RUPEE, GOLD, THE CURRENT ECONOMIC MESS AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS by DR. S. VAIDHYASUBRAMANIAM

DR. S. VAIDHYASUBRAMANIAM

TOPIC: RUPEE, GOLD, THE CURRENT ECONOMIC MESS AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

Dr. S. Vaidhyasubramaniam began the colloquium by addressing himself as a ‘trespasser’ in the subject of economics but not an economist. His talk on the current economic situation covered the Indian story where he mentioned that India has a great future because of a greater past. There was a moment of deep thought when he said that – “We are facing a deep crisis today and the reasons are still fished for, leave the solution”. He proceeded by saying that the willingness to learn happens only at times of adversity and not during prosperity.

Few snippets from his talk and on the topic are mentioned below:

THE ECONOMIC MESS:

“There is no direct input-output relationship in economics and there are many factors influencing the crisis situations. Predicting the future in economics is difficult but the ‘Modern Economic Theory’ is trying to capture it to some extent. We cannot afford to be uncertain about the country’s past. Today the financial institutions sell toxic financial products which are only technically correct as per the predictions made.”

“The Indian NRI’s continuously say that HEALTH, EDUCATION AND SANITATION is a evolving problem in the country foregoing another emerging crisis of economy. The big names from different fields always had an interesting perception of the country. Economists like Karl Marx and Max Webber in 1853 wrote articles on ‘Economics functioning model of India’ without even visiting the country. They call India a primitive and semi-barbaric society. Max Webber made bold statements like Hindu- Buddhist society cannot handle capitalism because they believe in karma. Winston Churchill during the year of India’s independence said that only god can save this country. “

“India and China dominated the global GDP back in the till the 1750’s with 25% and 33% respectively while the major countries of America and UK were only at 0.2% and 0.8% of GDP respectively. This is a statement which justifies that the transformation of America as an economic superpower is not because of its inherent strength. The colonial exploitation was a reason for change in the economic scenario of the west. The west is currently the best but it is the time that the rest recognizes that the west is the best and follows the west.”

“Any growth has crisis. There have been cases of Long term management crisis, Crisis of dot com which shook the entire equity market and the challenging global financial crisis. Faced by all these circumstances, nobody asked the question of what caused the crisis but got together on how to overcome it alone. It is the subject of economics itself which is in crisis. The then Prime minister of India in the year 2008 decoupled from global economic crisis and said that the fundamentals of the country being strong, there is no crisis. The year 2013 saw a reverse thing happening.”

“The debate on whom to blame for crisis is still uncertain. Bodies like the bank, regulator, society and government are targeted without much arrival at a consensus for the reason”

“Good electoral politics leads to bad economic decisions.”

RUPEE:

“In the year 2007, rupee strengthened but after reaching the 40 mark rupee was not allowed to regain its strength. The strengthening of rupee would have led to imports getting cheaper and made the Indian manufacturing sector more competitive. Today, all the emerging economies are losing their currency strength. “

“The current account deficit is of 35 billion dollars between 1991 and 2001 and 22 billion dollars surplus between 2001 and 2004 alone”

GOLD:

“This is a subject of deep interest. It is an investment vehicle as well as a consumption index. The reasons for increasing purchase pattern of gold can be because of it being a liquid asset, the profitability it brings by holding onto it, divisibility, portability, ownership/possession of gold, trade collateral – economic benefit. The Indian wife proves to be an intelligent investor by heavily consuming gold and using it as an asset for times of urgency. After the 1962 Indo-China war, the leaders asked gold from Indian women to finance the deficit.”

The session concluded by a brief by the speaker on how the country needs to think beyond short term economic situations and that economic development can never happen at the cost of the nation’s strength.

The session proved to be an eye opener for the management students in terms of the seriousness it had in addressing the economic crisis which is a evolving problem and the speakers ideas on areas of currency and gold.

    SHRUTI KHAITAN

(Team Colloquia member)

Social Media for Social Good by Mr. Gopi Kallayil

Social Media for Social Good

    

Mr. Gopi Kallayil, the Chief Evangelist at Google+ , was definitely the most popular colloquium speaker of the year. He is an award-winning Toastmaster and a TEDx Berkeley speaker, and so it was a not a surprise that his talk became quite popular. He opened the talk asking us all, “Do you know how many organs are there in the human body?”  Many guesses went up in the air. Then he said “When I asked my most trusted source of information - Miss Google… Miss Google told me there are 78. I wanted to add to it the 79th organ. “The smart phone!”  He pointed to the fact that 6 billion out of the 7 billion strong global population has access to some sort of a mobile device. And so his topic for the day was “Social Media for Social Good”.

Mr. Kallayil said he had a moment of epiphany about all this. He took us on his journey from the rice cultivating village of Chittilencheri in Kerala, India. While he was a small kid, the whole village had access to only two telephones and he was considered a child prodigy as he had the entire village’s contacts memorized. When he was recently visiting the same old village for a ceremony, he was delighted to see almost everyone with a mobile “organ” in their hands enjoying the benefits of the all-pervasive technology. He emphasized on the fact that, without any discrimination, a great amount of the population has access to this computing power. He then said, “The important question is – what kind of social good is coming out of this level of interconnectedness between billions of people?” To showcase that, he shared three stories with us.

The first one was the story of Zack Matere from Soy, Kenya. His potato plantations were repeatedly failing. He tried learning about the problem from books but could not get much. So to quote Matere’s own words: “I did the search!” He learnt from one among the search results that ants were the problem and suggested sprinkling wood ash over the plants. It solved his problem and he got excited about the technology of internet. He then made a wooden notice board for the community there as all did not know to use the internet. As he got news or relevant information on his searches, he posted them for the benefit of the community. Matere said, “When people have access to knowledge, they find solutions to problems.” Kallayil commented that Matere’s genius lied in connecting a 2 years old technology and a 2000 years old technology for the greater benefit.

The second story came out of Ontorio, Canada and Scotts Valley, California, USA. John Butterill and Corey Fisk from California suffers from multiple sclerosis and it had been 10 years since she walked. She has great interest in photography. John Butterill a professional photographer from Canada is an expert in doing Photo Walks, where he takes photography learners to scenic locations to shoot and discuss techniques. Butterhill hosted a Photo Walk hangout and Fisk said “For the first time I feel like I am not trapped in my body!” Photographers from all over the world soon joined this project and helped many other people similar to Fisk to embark on a virtual journey.

The third story connected Cape Town, South Africa and Dharamsala, India. When Kallayil was ideating on the Google+ rollout, he imagined a conversation between His Holiness Dalailama and His good friend Archbishop Desmond Tutu on peace and compassion. Kallayil said, “When you imagine these crazy things, somehow the universe mystically aligns itself to make it happen!” Four days after he wrote this idea on a piece of paper, a fellow colleague from Google South Africa, who Kallayil had never met called him about the forthcoming birthday celebrations of the Archbishop and the celebration plan to invite His Holiness Dalailama. There was some logistics problem and asked Google if there was some technology with which the situation could be helped. The technology was not rolled out by then but was arranged for in less than 3 days making the impossible possible. And now the Dalailama has more than 12 million online followers.

Kallayil concluded that what was profound across these stories was that the community becomes the platform and a fertile ground for human beings to thrive, survive and do social good. Kallayil kept the session very interesting and interactive. He magically kept remembering names and let us all guessing how he knew our names. He also gave us answers and spoke to us about Google Cars and Google Glass. He deeply appreciated our then theme for our business fest – “Business Beyond Profits”. He left us all to ponder about how we could leverage social media for the social good.

Winning Minds by Mr. Madhav Priyan

SPEAKER- Mr Madhava Priyan

14^Th August 2014

Venue- Sri Krishna Hall

The colloquium with Mr Madhava Priyan was a memorable one.  Being the National Manager- HR, OD and Corporate Strategy at Flyjac Logistics Private Limited, his experience in the field of Human Resource management is commendable. He is also a wildlife enthusiast and loves spending his holidays in tree houses and cottages in wildlife sanctuaries in India.

The session began with his inputs on the perceptions and behavior of people in an organization or otherwise. He spoke on the psychological setup of individuals which influenced their decision making. An employee who is happy and content with his job and atmosphere in the workplace is likely to be more productive than an employee who is unhappy. The boss plays an important role in motivating and keeping the employees in the right frame of mind. “An employee leaves his boss, not his job” he claims, while speaking on the role of a boss in influencing an employee’s mind set and job satisfaction.

“Is getting habituated to something good or bad” was the next topic he shared his views on. The 75 students seated in the hall shared their views on this question. Mr Madhava Priyan believes that getting habituated to the right lifestyle or behaviour is important in performing the various roles in life. It leads to the right approach and control of a situation. He elaborated on this by giving an example of a baby elephant being chained to a tree from a very young age. The baby elephant gets habituated to this treatment of having a leg chained all the time that, even after becoming a tusker, the elephant is in the mind-set that the chain cannot be broken and he has to remain where he is chained. Even human beings, like the elephant, can get habituated to a certain lifestyle which would help them work in a particular job environment.

The next part of the session was an activity. When he called one of the students to draw a cat on the board, for the first few seconds, nobody got up from their chair to perform the task. Finally, when one of the students got up to complete the task, he appreciated him for the initiative. The person who has the courage to initiate a certain task and carry it forward shows his self-belief and confidence.

The manner in which one has to present themselves for an interview was also discussed. Various aspects regarding body posture, confidence, speech, enthusiasm, eye contact etc. were discussed.

In the question and answer session, questions were raised regarding careers in HR and its significance.

Mr Madhava Priyan believes that anybody with a passion and interest for human resource management can effectively fit into the role of a HR professional regardless of his/her educational background in under graduation. A HR professional with knowledge in other fields like marketing, finance or operations would add value to a HR role in the organization in a significant way as they would have knowledge of most aspects in the organization.

“Understanding the organizational behavior and implementing the right strategies for its efficient running is the key for the success of a HR professional and also for attaining employee satisfaction”. The session ended with this positive message from him. 

Krishna Nandan

(Team Colloquia Member)

Entrepreneurship by Mr. Shaswata and Mr. Zubair

Date – 11/8/2014

Kraft Junction and Worklab – The story of two start ups

On 11^th August 2014, an enriching colloquium session on Entrepreneurship was organised. It was presided over by our very own alumnus Mr. Shaswata Majumdar who is presently the CEO of his own establishment – ChomSha Group followed by a brief session on Worklab Group by its CEO and founder Mr. Zubair Ali.

Kraft Junction

The session kicked off with Mr. Majumdar saying that his session would be an interactive one and not a speech and also laid a ground rule that both he and Mr. Ali should be called by their first names and not Sir.

Mr. Majumdar started off by talking about the basic instinct that any budding entrepreneur must have which is the leap of faith. According to him “Taking a leap of faith is not about jumping off a cliff and building your wings on the way down. It’s about being smart and jumping with a parachute on.” The setting up of any business is purely based on taking logical decisions and understanding priorities.  The following are some of the important advices on which he laid emphasis on : 

1.    Don’t go with the herd. Go for a job that lightens you and each day of yours.

2.    If you are taking up any work, make sure that you are working for the final destination and not for the journey.

3.    Believe in yourself.

4.    Be brave to fight for your dream.

5.    You must never have any regrets. If you have done something good then it’s wonderful else it’s an experience.

6.    Never make a random decision. Make a firm one so that you don’t regret.

7.    Be the process rather than just being a part of it.

Mr. Majumdar mentioned that understanding one’s colleague is one of the most essential aspects of running a successful business. Many great businesses have faltered when people couldn’t get along very well.

He also said that importance must also be given to smaller things that matter in life such as a person’s hobbies.

Before handing over the session to Mr. Ali, Mr. Majumdar gave a brief talk about online piracy.

Worklab

Mr. Zubair Ali is the founder and CEO of Worklab Group, a company that aims to fight online piracy which is presently a menace for most of the industries.  He spoke in depth about how piracy has affected the careers of many artists and how it has led to the decline in the number of people willing to take up such creative professions. He asked the students to throw questions at him which he answered effectively. Mr. Ali also spoke about the reasons for his strong belief in anti-piracy and the hardships that he had to endure in setting up Worklab Group. He wound up by saying,”By downloading any material illegally, you are taking one person’s job by which one child might lose his dream of education”. 

The two speakers then had an effective and lengthy post colloquia interaction where they interacted with students clarifying all their doubts and instilling them with motivation.

S. Deepak

(Team Colloquia Member)

Why MBA? Are you a thinker or a doer? by Mr. M.K Chandrasekhar

 

The session with Mr. M.K Chandrasekhar was extremely lively and power packed. With an unmatched experience in the field of marketing and brand management, he took us to an altogether different level. He made us aware of the concepts underlying the basics of a management course. He started the session with a few simple questions “Who are you? “  And “Why MBA?” 

 He moved on to explain the various factors to be taken care of in an interview. An Interview is all about the tenacity and attitude one displays, and much less emphasis is given to the skills. He went on to ask about our aspirations in life and whether we were clear or confused about it. Most of us were in a confused state, but he said it’s alright to be confused as it’s a good sign and that’s the best way to be, for achieving something great in future.

He said, “Don’t learn to get a job, but digest what you learn and then move from learning for a job to learning the job”. Jobs are not to be taken for sustenance. They are to be understood and only when one learns about it, does it become a profession. He also said, “tell me, I’ll forget, teach me, I’ll remember, involve me and I’ll learn”. Learning is a continuous process, hence we should learn to grow. Growth should not happen materialistically, it should happen mentally. He explained how to think differently in each moment. Success and failure are both in our hands. The way one handles the situation makes all the difference.  It’s always better to have a “we will” attitude than an “I will” attitude.

 Mr.M.K Chandrasekar also showed a few advertisements which made its products to have a different outreach in the public. The way these advertisements promoted their brands and at the same time how they made an impact on the society as a whole was discussed. He explained the concepts of brand positioning and emphatic communication through them. He also gave a few anecdotes which taught us that not every time we will be treated in the best manner and we should learn to accept those with a positive smile always. 

Whenever we work for an organization we should sell ourselves first. He concluded the enthralling session by giving the example of a cobweb, and asked where each one of us would like ourselves to be positioned. At the end, he summarized it by saying “to be in the centre, be in the construction”. 

Ritika 
(Team Colloquia Member)