Future Of Retail

                                               

                                      RETAIL SECTOR

When we hear the word retail, the nearby kirana store or retail chains like Big Bazzar etc come to mind ,all part of physical retail channel the one which we have seen traditionally, but is the retail space the same like the one we used to see a few years back where we had to go out to shop? Maybe for some high end products but with advent of internet and e-commerce we have seen major shift in shopping patterns not just in urban areas now due corona induced lockdowns and internet penetration even rural population is shopping from the comfort of home at the click of a button. According to IBEF reports India is the fastest growing e-commerce market and is expected to grow at 1200 percent to 200 billion USD by 2026. The physical retail stores have not only seen a decline in footfall but also during lockdown the retail sector  faced losses of about 90,000 crores. But is this temporary?, is retail going to bounce back?

The pandemic has made people adjust to the new digital shopping routine and now what change was expected to come about in 5 years we are probably noticing now.There are various online platform delivering grocery to furniture and recently even automobile manufacturers have started selling online.

Competing with online retailers is not the only challenge but with Reliance retail, walmart and other retail aggregators coming into picture, the retailers will have to fight to keep their customers like never before.

Physical form of shopping may not become extinct in near future but with virtual reality and other technologies coming into picture the physical shopping may decline and online aggregators are able to provide low costs due to aggregation.

Looking at all of above conditions does not create a pretty picture for retail but there are a few things to consider-

1. There are some products like vehicles, clothes and some other high end items that people prefer to buy in store.
2. People in india still like to go out to shop.
3. Reliance, Walmart, etc are heavily investing in the retail market as they have realized there is still a lot of untapped potential in the indian retail market.
4. With advent of omnichannel distribution the almost everyone is benefited-

              Retailers - With increase in orders, recently when myntra started its omnichannel distribution the retail stores saw about 20-30 percent of increase in sales.

             Customers - Customers can get products on the same day of delivery and can easily track stores from where their order was delivered.

             Online platforms - They have seen reduction in transportation costs and increase in revenues due to improved service times and the returnability is also improved and becomes less expensive.

                    

We have seen how retail is affected by the technological and pandemic disruptions and it looks like omni channel is going to be the way forward and also the retailers will have to become more responsive and enhance the shopping experience in order to attract customers to the stores.

Shopping in future is going to be a experience and not a chore.                        

Business Communication 101

BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

Business communication is everywhere around us from hawkers outcries to Billboards on roads so we will try to understand basics of business communication and move on to personal branding. 

History Of Communication

Human communication was revolutionized with the origin of speech approximately 500,000 BCE. Symbols were developed about 30,000 years ago. The imperfection of speech, which nonetheless allowed easier dissemination of ideas and eventually resulted in the creation of new forms of communications, improving both the range at which people could communicate and the longevity of the information. All of those inventions were based on the key concept of the symbol.

The oldest known symbols created for the purpose of communication were cave paintings, a form of rock art, dating to the Upper Paleolithic age. The oldest known cave painting is located within Chauvet cavet, dated to around 30,000 BC.

BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

Business communication is essentially using the media to communicate the vision, product portfolio and services to potential customers. Organisations do it through marketing, customer relations, advertising and many other ways.In a recent session in NITIE by our alumnus Nikhil Kulkarni, co-founder Darwin Travel Tech we were taught about how one can successfully communicate business solution through the Pyramid Principle which is the simplest way to structure a documentin three parts i.e. Introduction, Main Body and Conclusion. He emphasized on the need to find answers to four basic questions before structuring the document -

1. What is the objective?
2. Who is the audience?
3. What is the context in which content will be consumed?

He also mentioned his formula to make documents, presentations and solutions professional and attractive -

1. Visual Content .
2. The MECE concept that states that sub-parts of Business communication document should be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.

                                

PERSONAL BRANDING

Personal branding is something that attracts companies, colleagues and sub-ordinates or for the matter of fact any unknown will want to work with you. In these commodity times people too are brands and it is essential to have a brand that would attract people or organisations to work with you. In his session Nikhil Sir mentioned the importance of personal branding and how can one create a personal brand for themselves, he gave examples of very famous celebrities like Dhoni and even people working in the IT or Banking how had created a brand for themselves. Mr Nikhil himself is a well known brand in the consulting industry with eleven years of experience in consulting and he left as associate director from their to start his own entrepreneurial journey. He has a blog since 2004 and encouraged all of us to start something on the digital platform to have a footprint and if all works out even influence. He suggested following -

• Start a Blog on medium (preferably)
• Start a Youtube channel( Can be about anything)
• Make a twitter account and post opinions.
• Use social media platforms like facebook and instagram to create content and be visible.

So we have discovered that business communication is required not just for businesses to be successfull but even for individuals. I would like to thank Nikhil sir for the session and allowing us to use his content to have our own visibility, I have attached his blog, have a look if you haven't yet,

The New Normal

 Change is the only constant is something that is even more relevant in these pandemic times where we have changed from the way we shop, we work and to the way we socialize.There has been a lot of disruption from supply chain to banking industry even the way we learn in school and teaching has shifted online.My change was supposed to be from corporate to MBA college but pandemic shifted that too to online.I got admission in NITIE Mumbai known as the Mecca Of Supply chain and operations, but classes were scheduled virtually and everyone was skeptical about the change but nevertheless something is better than nothing. 

When everyone was thinking about coping with the change of classes being conducted online , but the real change that we saw was in the first lecture of MBA journey by T.Prasad Sir also known as Mandi Sir.This change was not just about lectures and ppt being online it was much more about the way Business communication or for the matter of fact any subject is taught. The first class started with The brick in the wall by pink floyd none of us expecting a professor hand banging on a rock song,but then professor Prasad explained the relevance of song about how there is a need in the way we are being taught at schools and colleges.He gave the Mandi Concept in which there is no meaning of business education if you can not earn with the knowledge gained. He introduced us to the concept of "Earning through Learning" which is also called the "1/12" concept which he described as one must earn 1 rupee for every 12 rupee one spends on education. He educated us about the various entrepreneurial projects our seniors and alumni were doing and asked to start something by ourselves not because he wanted us not to take up jobs but to go to the interviews with actual field/market exposure.All this change was too much to take in one class but nevertheless over the series of lectures he taught as that even the hawkers, vegetable vendors do business communication by outcry. He was very clear that this subject was not something that could be taught in class through PPT's or lectures but could only be taught by experience in market, and for this he had already introduced an event called MAHAMANDI,  an event that is usually held in campus where students are given products which they have to sell by doing business communication in the nearby market but as the pandemic has changed everything so now this too had to shift online and the theme these year was "VOCAL FOR LOCAL" which as in alignment with our PM's mission.So what we had to do was to find a local product in our city and promote it through social media(the new market) by creating posters , videos etc.

MY MAHAMANDI 2020

I am from Jodhpur Rajasthan and when i thought about what are the products that are famous the first thing that came to mind was Chittar Palace but i could not sell the king's palace but after some thought Eurekkaa!!! I maybe cannot sell the Chittar Palace but i can definitely sell Chittar (a special quality stone made in Jodhpur that is used in construction). I went ahead with Chittar because -

1) It was something that depicted the cultural heritage and flavour of jodhpur.

2) Houses in metro cities actually look the same there is no distinguishing factor between them and in these new era where customers want everything to be cutomized and stand out why should there houses look all the same.

Hence we came up with the idea of Mharo Chittar. Through research we found that the stone indutsry in India is about 60,000 crore and about 30 percent of production was in Rajasthan which was another green signal. We designed the poster considering the independence day coming ahead, the "VOCAL FOR LOCAL" theme and our own vision of helping people stand out. We also came up with a tagline to incorporate the sentiments of standing out and being local at the same time.

Our logo 

Our poster 

Our handles

https://www.facebook.com/MharoChittar-100352038455733

https://www.instagram.com/mharochittar

All of this has really taught us how can one go about running a campaign and presenting ideas which is what business communication is all about and that is the New Normal of learning for us from now onwards.