I received a call from vodafone a while back. The young lady spoke to my wife, who after the first couple of questions dumped the phone in my hands & walked off to do whatever wives do during lunch hours!!

The young lady started with a bang —–

• Sir, May I have your name (If you have called me, then you would have it)
• Sir, Company only gives us series of numbers (Huh! By just connecting to the computer & MTNL directory this problem should be solved)
• If you have 3 vodafone post paid numbers, we shall give you 1 more free & change all to a new plan where for Rs 160 each all 4 of you can speak unlimited to each other. AND we shall change your billing plan to .60p for within circle & Re. 1 for national for phone & text yada yada yada (Duh!!! Hold on madam, why would I want to do that? I am currently on a plan where it is .50 p circle & national for both voice & text.)
• OK no problem sir, then how about the offer of Rs. 160 (We do not speak worth Rs. 640 in either case)
• OK no problem sir, we have another offer for senior citizen yada yada yada (Sorry not interested, can you offer me something better than my current plan for data & voice?)
• Sir, we are not authorized to offer anything other than this.

Phew!! I have not understood what kind of marketing does Vodafone expect to achieve with this. Because I think this is the old tried & tested funnel theory. Call as many as you can, speed talk them, pick up documents, issue activated card, bill them. Repeat next day, week, month AND the DSA (direct sales agents get Rs. 100 - 150 per subscriber)

A couple of weeks ago, on a thursday, back from the gym, with nobody at home decided to grab a subway @ infiniti mall.

After passing through the mandatory checks, parked the car & took the lift up to the food mall.

Since it was already late & a couple of nice english movies waiting at home, decided to grab a take away. Once the packing was done,  tried to take a lift to the basement. With the light still on, the lift refused to come up from the basement. Besides me a couple of other people with children were waiting peacefully.

Finally we went to the other side, where I asked the security, who told me that after 9 pm only one lift worked. Fair enough, in fact good that electricity conserving was being implemented. BUT, upon being asked that it was after 9 that I had come up & why was there no notice informing visitors of the same. No answer except the standard one, please ask the office.

So down I went in my citizenary zeal & asked the customer service who looked completely blank at me, maybe since I interrupted his personal call to his girlfriend or whatever. After making me repeat the questions twice, he called the Security head, who had his own version & called the security gaurds, firing them for not informing me, coolly side stepping the fact of the notice.

Anyway NO ANSWER except being asked to call up the Infiniti Mall Office on 26374530 the next day and check with them. But yes they asked me not to take photos:)

YES! Did so twice, some vague, white wash offered & today more than a month later still NO SIGN!

I do not understand

• Why Malls cannot spend a small amount on communicating with consumers?
• Why citizens prefer to take the easy way out, instead of following it through?

It is small things like this which ensure that lethargy continues, the same corporators win, the same lok sabha shall come & all this Jaago Re! shall remain Soja Re!……

It was quite a pleasant shock to receiving money back when one handed over a large note for 2 tickets at a nearby multiplex.

Whilst I guess there are numerous reasons for the price reductions & why not? If everyone can do it.

However I have always been curious to know, why do the multiplex chains not weave in the loyalty factor, so to speak.

A couple of examples may illustrate this point -

A couple of friends are always keen to either watch a movie on thursday night (paid preview) or friday night i.e before any review clutters the mind. It is painful to find out if there is a paid preview, when would booking open (thanks to yashji undecided whether to release in multiplex etc) amongst other. Can there not be a card with the prefixed seat number for a month/quarter/year that one could buy (this could be for 1/2/4 seats) so that one is assured of the seat, the multiplex is assured of income in advance, which overcomes the problem of discount being offered. Here there can be variants…..such as days; combos etc. that could be introduced.

And now cutting prices - at 40% why not try out the 1:1 for people, movies, timings what have you. Take a leaf off the pizza guys.

And yes I know, some of them do have offers, unfortunately the conditions are so constraining that you just decide to give up.

AND MY FAVORITE - Just like the airline, pizza, mcdonald etc. Why can you not offer the add on/Up sell in the beginning, when tickets are bought - Sir would you also like to order your coke, popcorn, samosa to be brought to your seat…..this can work on internet, tele booking & of course the counter.

This keeps customers happy; allows logistical planning & more important adds revenue!!

Multiplex owners write into me for more nuggets:)

Multiplexes cut movie ticket prices by 40%

Arvind Singhal: Subhiksha and the Indian retail story

An interesting opinion by Arvind. However there are many aspects that bear some thoughts. When the going was good - India shining; Retail Rocking….everyone jumped on the bandwagon - consultants offering India on a platter, companies that had no clue about consumers (having spent a decade or more in the B2B space)started announcing 10/100/1000 stores in 3 years or maybe less; the search for retailers began (in a country where organized retail did not exist beyond the past 5-7 years), so bring in expats (expect them to learn India & deliver in a year) so on and forth.

This actually spawned a industry by itself:

Consulting on entry strategy/liaison/funding, property etc.
Search for people
Training
Realtors, Builders
Furnishing, Merchandising you name it.

We had experts all of a sudden with a bidding war being waged. A lot many employees took advantage of this shifting jobs every couple of months.

In all this euphoria everyone forgot/pretended to/avoided the fact & number game. So the 1st year losses accumulated & with a bit of creativity (maybe accounting/inventory management etc) it carried on to the next year & maybe another year; till the bubble burst from below.

Except for the funding companies; nobody was really in the finance business, so when bottom up everyone started asking for their money, the pyramid started collapsing. And there poor subhiksha was caught!

Whilst trying to understand their plight, the fact also remains that there was the board of directors who obviously met if not monthly, once a quarter; their auditors, bankers, vendors who all knew about this collapse - structured or otherwise. Here probably, everyone thought ‘why spoil a good thing’ someone is bound to take care of it….unfortunately that someone was no one.

And there endeth the first lesson for organized retailers!

I am not an analyst, industry leader or similar, however would like to ask…

How is this different from Satyam?
Even @ average of 5 people per store we are talking about 5000 minimum without a job, salary till may if they are lucky.

Take my word for it: There is going to be a Satyam in every industry to ensure CORRECTION for the rest of the players in that particular industry, which may not be bad at all in the long run.

However expecting people/companies to learn from this is a DREAM:)

I received an email yesterday

“Dear All,

My friend Ranjan Kamath has posted a petition at the following link. Its a protest against the Captains of Industry falling at Narendra Modi’s feet. I don’t know if any of you would like to sign it or forward it to more people. I have signed it and so I am sending it to you all. Do what your conscience tell you. http://www.PetitionOnline.com/30JAN09/”

Whilst this may make sense, I was curious & hence posed the following Questions:

Do all who have signed the petition, believe & have adhered to:

1) Not making profits thru investments with Tata; Mittal; Ambani?
2) Switching off their phones is good, but why not Vodafone, IDEA &
others OR is it because this is driven to gujarat & narendra modi
3) I can understand the petition & mail, which signifies…..I am
no one, you are no one but together we can be someone. Great! But why
cell phones? What happens after the 30th Jan….Do we switch it on
again?
4) And when compared to maybe 2000 petitioners switching it off &
causing an approx Rs 200 each loss i.e. 4 Lacs how does this drop in
the ocean help?
5) Will these same petitioners agree not to recommend; work with all the 3 big shots in any way?
6) Conscience is Fine, but there needs to be some logic behind the passion also.

I welcome opinions, views, thoughts on this

After weeks of listening to depressing news, rumors, discussions; on recession, inflation economy, sensex, problems Saturday November 22, 2008 turned to be a day that lent credence to my constant refrain, that ‘It is a much needed overdue Correction that is taking place’. Read the rest of this entry »

A difficult question to answer, particularly in India.

Whist it is true that the branded market is growing, with the plethora of brands having been introduced in the last half decade, presumably people are spoilt for choice.

Whilst the jewelers - branded & otherwise are pushing this, there are some basic differences between India & the USA which holds nearly 45% of the world diamond market. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite places to watch movies. Close to home, good seats, air conditioning, good service, decent (only veg) snacks, what more can one want.

Went into a limbo when due to the fire at infiniti, was shut for nearly a month. Saw a movie at Fame next door, which is another story. Read the rest of this entry »

I was amongst the early users to pick up an iPhone duly & start using it.

Having given up E90 due to it’s dud speakerphone…. I was convinced by Anjan Ghosh of TV18 whom I refer to as Tech Guru(for the study he manages to do on any thing electronic) that “iPhone is all about style and not about ease of use. Typing text is easy once you get habitual, but since this is a touch panel handset and we use our fingers instead of stylus, typing long test messages or mails is not that fancy. And when you compare ease of typing on iPhone with Blackberry, black berry is better. iPhone is all about style, sleek looks of the handset, the flipping of pictures using your fingers, the zooming in and out function while viewing pictures or websites and not to forget that the front panel or display is scratch resistant And don’t forget the audio quality “ apple’s iPod always had an upper hand over any other music player and iPhone anyways has all the functionality of an iPod too !! though it has a 2megapixel camera, the quality of pictures shot are amazing. One can easily get deceived by thinking it has been shot using a 3.2 or 5 megapixel cam !! He also warned me : The worst thing with iPhone are : you cannot forward SMS, or send SMS to multiple recipients. You cannot send or receive MMS. The Blue tooth feature of this handset supports only hands-free devices and nothing else. Which means you cannot pair your phone with any Bluetooth enabled handset or laptop to send or receive songs, pictures, vide os, etc.” Read the rest of this entry »

A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. When he goes to the
grocery store he pays Rs. 6 a dozen. Since a dozen eggs won’t last a
week he normally buys two dozens at a time. One day while buying eggs he
notices that the price has risen to Rs. 7. The next time he buys
groceries, eggs are Rs. 7.5 a dozen.

When asked to explain the price of eggs the store owner says, “The price
has gone up and I have to raise my price accordingly”. This store buys 100
dozen eggs a day. He checked around for a better price and all the
distributors have raised their prices. The distributors have begun to buy
from the huge egg farms. The small egg farms have been driven out of
business. The huge egg farms sell 100,000 dozen eggs a day to
distributors. With no competition, they can set the price as they see fit.
The distributors then have to raise their prices to t he grocery stores.
And on and on and on.

Read the rest of this entry »