Most of you do not know my uncle. T.C. Krishnankutty Menon (TCK), or to me Aniyanmaman, passed away recently. He resided in Trichur, in God's Own Country, a town more famous for its literary figures, jewellers, temples and Pooram. I was born there and he stayed in a house next to ours - we were all from the same family. TCK was, in a sense, a true blue Keralite. He did his schooling in Trichur followed by his graduation in Chemistry at Maharaja's College, Ernakulam, quickly followed by a post-graduation through research. He joined Sri Kerala Varma College, Trichur after that, in two spells and taught there till his retirement. In-between he did drop into the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Delhi for his Ph.D but for reasons which lie buried with him, he returned to Trichur and that's where he stayed for the rest of his life. His visits out of Kerala were few and far. A Keralite he was but parochial he was a not. In a s...
The airline industry in India has been going through an enormous amount of pain. It has seen more downs than ups. At a time when the economic outlook is far better than the US or European geographies, the whole business is going through a crisis of sorts; some due to its own doing and some due to extraneous factors. Market In recently announced statistics, the domestic market has increased 1.1% year-on-year in Mar-2012 to 4.87 million passengers. This is the slowest month of domestic passenger growth since May-2009 when passenger levels declined 4.4%. Passenger traffic increased 6.55% in 1Q2012 to 15.3 million. For 34 consecutive months the market has seen growth however it is the third month in the same period which has seen a single digit growth. There has been 16 months of double digit growth prior to that. The drop in traffic can be directly attributed to the reduction in coverage by Kingfisher Airlines. Till such time, India's growth rate was among the highest ...
At around $350 billion, India is in the top grocery markets of the world. This is approximately 70% of the Indian retail business which is around $500 billion. Modern retail accounts for 10 - 20% of this pie. E-commerce or hyperlocals are obviously a tiny part of the pie just yet. Most companies, therefore, are still at a stage where they have to prove their business models and change consumer behaviour. These type of businesses are expected to reach around 2% of the grocery market by 2020, creating a potential market size of around $10 billion (Rs 60,000 crore). The hyperlocal on demand grocery has mainly two models - a) A large player like Big Basket offering localised services. Inventory is carried by the company. b) An aggregator using the local retailers to source products and handling the delivery c) An aggregator using local retailers to stock and deliver It is a no-brainer that an aggregation model, as it is asset-light, is les...
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