Product

Rebooting Education An Innovative Way Part II

In his book “Differentiate or Die”, world famous Marketer and Management consultant Jack Trout has written; “Your competition can copy your product, copy your strategy, but they can’t copy your level of commitment and passion”.

There are many who are using technology to solve the problems which are plaguing our education system. Some of them are successful; few more may succeed and may create a Billion Dollar Unicorn but how long they will stay in this business will always remain a question. Present culture of VC funding and Angel Investment may force them to cash out and either exit the business or hand over the management control to the investors. They may not be able to match the commitment and passion of Mr. Sandeep Srivastava. He runs an investor free and debt free organization for the last 14 years. He has been earning and putting it back in the organization he has created. That’s why I avoid mentioning it to be his business.

In first part of the interview, we talked about why and how he started his journey as a social entrepreneur. Link of the same is here: Rebooting Education An Innovative Way

In the second part of his interview, we will know about Sandeep’s opinion on Education System and its impact on Job Market and how can we set things right.

Review Board: Is there disconnect between our Education system and the Job Market? Though employment data may be saying something else but the real unemployment in the country is huge. Underemployment is a huge problem in our country….

Sandeep Srivastava: Underemployment is much bigger problem than unemployment……..Why won’t it be??? It goes back to the basics….There is a staircase with steps of success to go up in life….. Pre-school, Primary school, Middle school, Secondary school, Senior Secondary school, Under Grad, Grad….so on and so forth….

And what we are saying or doing….. First five-six steps are damaged, so, remove those steps and directly jump to Graduation or level above or level just below. How can this help? It is bound to make students weak.

Look, we can’t do better if the basic school deficit is not fixed. The school deficit can’t be 100%. There may be some deficit…but not of this magnitude. Today morning itself, I bought some snacks from an up-market store in Kailash Colony and the person at the cash counter asked me for “Ek kum saat sau sathh” (One less than Rupees Seven hundred sixty). This is the level of education, in Delhi, in an up-market place like this. The person was not able to speak numbers properly and that too in Hindi. That’s the situation….

Review Board: If this is the situation in a place like Delhi, then what will be the situation in other parts of the country? I was reading somewhere a few days back that India produces around 6.3 million graduates every year…..what quality of students this system might be producing?

Sandeep Srivastava: India needs to create 1 million jobs every month. Around 12 million people get added in the supply side of job market every year.

Review Board: It will be really chaotic situation; someday somewhere…..it may burst out on the streets.

Sandeep Srivastava: Hasn’t it been happening already? Have you read the newspapers of yesterday? Trains were stopped by people seeking jobs in Mumbai….Apprentices were on the railway tracks demanding jobs.

……. For me, it boils down to getting the three languages right.

…….The First language of human is art and music. You might have seen children spoiling the walls with their drawings when they first start learning something. Music is the other one………It is proven fact that music plays a big role in developing a child’s brain. 

.......The Second language is a person’s mother tongue. It is also called the natural language. In our country, we have stopped using the mother tongue and have created a conflict; because in our country, language of academics is English, which is NOT the natural language. We have not developed any other language of our own country which can be used to teach Medicine or Engineering. Even if we start now, we can’t teach these courses in any of our languages and it would take centuries to reach there.

…… The Third language is the universal language and it is called language of Mathematics. Two plus two is equal to four, is same anywhere in the world. Only how you write numerals will change, otherwise everything will remain the same. Lot of subjects become easy when you write it mathematically and there are a number of subjects which are Mathematics based. Physics is actually Mathematics. Einstein didn’t do any lab test for his formulas; he only found answers through mathematical formulas and all his greatness are outcome of mathematics only.

These three things need special attention and needs to be corrected. You will be surprised to know that there are only twenty countries in the world where their mother tongue and language of academia is different. In a country like Thailand, even medicine is taught in Thai…..they have made their language so rich. I was shocked when I heard this…..we couldn’t take any of our languages to that level. This is not the problem of developed world. This is the problem of these twenty countries where the mother tongue (first language) has not been taken to the level of the second language i.e. English. And if we are able to do these things in our mother tongue, say Hindi or Bangla or Tamil or Telugu….. It can easily be transferable in the second language, i.e., English.

For all of it to happen, we need to create a country of readers. We never read as a nation…..only 5% of the population i.e. the Brahmins read……otherwise everywhere else there was an oral tradition. Time has come for us to start reading!!

Review Board: Sir, this brings me to my next question. We need money to educate ourselves and we need jobs to earn that money back. It is like the cycle of zero sum game. Especially in our country, when a child is born parents are ready with a list of career options and all of it ends with a job. The Indian education system is creating a country of job seekers. Barring IITs, which are giving a good leverage to entrepreneurship, almost all other educational institutions in India are producing consumers for the job market and this has been continuously creating havoc like a very high unemployment rate, poor mental health of many which no one is ready to talk about and lack of inclusive growth across all economic strata of population. What steps should be taken to make this system capable enough to make our country a country of job creators and what role entrepreneurs can play in it?

Sandeep Srivastava: This is a very interesting question. We are celebrating the fact that we have a very expanding middle class. There are around 350-400 million people in the middle class; though there is huge disparity in this class itself, but we have defined it on a certain basis and reached this number. Now we are happy….This number is big…even bigger than the population of USA…..world is looking at us….beautiful…..But there is a flipside……and I call it “Curse of the middle class”. In this class, people look for and cling to security. We want our EMIs to be paid on time; we want a life where our children will keep paying their EMIs.

The Goal of education has become limited to “financial security”. It has stopped being the source of becoming human and an understanding of life; what else can be done with education. The curse of expanding middle class is that as it is expanding the points of this financial security are narrowing and converging. We are zeroing down to the most secure point where we can live a financially secure life and everyone is chasing those points only. We are bothered about adding something to it but not risking anything out of it to create something new…..one more house, one more flat to earn an extra rental income….that’s all we want.

In past fifteen years, professionals like Doctors, Engineers, CA’s etc., have made more money outside their profession. You will often hear a statement from people that “my hobby for Saturday and Sunday is to search property for investment”.

Review Board: We are busy securing money…..but that is not creating anything.

Sandeep Srivastava: That is the middle class curse…Business is all about coming out of your comfort zone, taking risk……….but middle class is risk averse. And with this expanding middle class, we have become more risk averse as a nation. Even if we want to do business, we look for Angel Investor first. We don’t want to take risk on our own money. The moment you get money from someone, pressure starts building from the day one. Obviously it will happen because when we have taken money from someone, we will be under pressure to pay him back……so rather than the idea behind the business, money becomes the priority. So, this whole expanding middle class becoming risk averse has repercussion on others.

Lower class people are watching this and they realize that if it is the goal of the middle class, then it must be the best solution for aspirations of life. And that’s why; the entire nation is looking for jobs, rather than thinking about creating one.

There is an electrician in my office who is on the retainer basis. He has been coming to me and crying that his son somehow cleared the tenth grade and now he does not want to study and also does not want to work with him. He wants to get a job. That is the situation everywhere. So, this middle class has created a risk averse education system and social environment where the financial security tops everything and that is a huge problem.

Review Board: And how will it change?

Sandeep Srivastava: If we are able to understand it then we will solve it. But, there are elements to it…..steps to it…..and Parenting is the first step. Education should focus on overall growth of the child. We need better education system which promotes innovation, which promotes change, which promotes entrepreneurship. Without giving any benefit, government is putting all the pressure, its responsibilities on entrepreneurs. It should not happen. An entrepreneur, who is barely surviving in order to create something must be supported and not pressurized to share the social responsibility of the government.

Review Board: So we have two takeaways from it: one, we have created a country of risk averse middle and lower class and second, if someone wants to create something….take a risk….then the government is piling on them the pressure of social responsibilities.

Sandeep Srivastava: I would like to put it this way……small entrepreneurs should not be treated as big corporate, at least for the purpose of sharing government’s social responsibilities….for example opening a crèche or giving a nine month’s maternity leave to a pregnant woman. Normally a woman comes back to work after a couple of months of delivery. She also does not want to be left behind in the career by staying out of the work. An entrepreneur also can’t go without a resource for nine months.

Government should first allow the entrepreneurs to reach a level where he can carry the burden of social responsibility. As an entrepreneur, I shall be given the same amount of privileges as big corporate. My degrees, my knowledge has no bearing on my capacity of raising money from the bank. It will only look at the collateral I can provide to the bank. Though people who can and have influence are able to get or manage the credit line. If there is no value of knowledge assets then what’s the point in creating that knowledge asset. By giving it no value at all, the government itself has put a question mark on the education system it has created. If all these things are happening, then how can a country of job creators be created?

Review Board: Sir, I won’t talk ask about policy decisions to improve the education system of India. That’s government’s prerogative and responsibility. But in this prevailing situation, what advice you would like to give to the students who aim to get the best education, which can give them best return of their investment in terms of time and money and keep them productive till end?

Sandeep Srivastava: Beautiful question again……..A child learns when the family learns. There is one approach since eternity where parents tell their children to read……It is “Go and study”.

How will your children go and study when you are either watching TV or talking to someone or doing something which is not related to study. A child imitates their elders. So, to educate a child, elders need to sit and learn and get educated again with them. Even if they are highly qualified, they need to do it again. First time they did so for themselves, second time they will have to do it for their children.

If as a parent they can’t do that then they won’t be able to make the life, purpose of life and goal of life clear to their children. An uneducated parent may face the challenge, but who are educated, must focus on it. As I have already told you that to get the education level of a family right, at least 3-4 generation is required. So, if someone is at the first level of this ladder, a lapse can very well be expected and can be accepted…..but not with the parents who are already well educated.

Once they start sitting with their children, they will understand them well and guide them with all the love and care. During this course, they will be able to get all the best learning’s of life to their children which will be with them till the end.

Review Board: Sir, you have already answered my last question. I want to ask this question again but from the parent’s point of view.

Sandeep Srivastava: We have already discussed that present education system and quality has degenerated to such a level that we need a completely new system. I will again reiterate that onus is on parents to seek better life for their children.

Better life doesn’t mean fighting tooth and nail for already narrowing career options and making it narrower by driving more and more people towards it. Purpose of life should not be to get to a situation were one is depressed or becomes a heart patient by focusing more and more on monetary aspect of life.

So, my request would be not to add anything more into it of that sort. Don’t reduce the human life to the level where only money matters….. Understand the very first fact that we are humans…….We have come to this world to evolve as a better human being…..not as a machine or an animal…..

We are more than seven and a half billion people on this planet earth who use hundreds of different electronic devices daily. These actions result in creation of infinite permutation and combination of actions, reactions, results and probability of results. How can an individual brain with definite space cope with all of it???

By forming patterns, deciding priorities and repetition…….

The above mentioned three actions create blocks in the mind to process information in a systematic manner and make life easy, but it happens only when life is easy!! As there is an infinite possibility of unexpected challenges and outcomes; pattern and blocks most of the time creates road blocks rather than working as anything else.

This brings us to “creative thinking” …….the right brain thinking…..out of the box thinking…..but not many people know what it is and how to make it work for themselves in order to find solutions to unexpected challenges…..

Gaurav Bahl; the name brings a huge smile to my face. He can write poetry, he can sing, he can make you laugh at the drop of a hat……..No no….He is not an actor, poet or singer….. He is a Creative Leader and Founder of Quirkee, a Gurgaon based Integrated Marcom Agency, who has worked with most of the top advertising agencies of the country. Percept, Leo Burnett, Mullen Lowe Worldwide, Hammer Communications, K Factor and Bounce Design to name a few showcase the skills of the man for more than 14 years. While we were chasing our corporate dreams, he left his well paying job, took a sabbatical to detox his system and then re-joined with a very small advertising agency after sorting out his priorities in life. The money which he was making from this job was not good enough to cover even his travel expenses. But, he sorted out and went on to do what he enjoyed doing. A very strong communicator and a patient listener, who has handled team and situations and has delivered best of results because of just one thing…..He is supremely creative….he gets into the mind of his clients to know what they want and deliver exactly the same.

That’s why I chose to talk about creativity with him. Let’s read what he has to say:

Review Board: What role creative communication plays in building a brand?

Gaurav Bahl: You have asked me what role creative communication plays in building a brand. Answer to your question rests in the fact that if you look around and see at today’s brand communication scenario, every person is flooded with too much of ‘Look at me’ objects everywhere. He goes on road and finds hoardings and banners at every nook and corner, he opens the newspaper and finds advertisement on probably every page, he opens a website or his social media account and finds advertisements flowing down from every corner. A person is having too much of it…. Literally.

Review Board: To substantiate your fact, I was reading a report claiming to be based on MIT Research; we humans are creating 2.5 Quintilian bytes of data every day on internet itself. So, completely agree with what you are saying….

Gaurav Bahl: True…..now just imagine how tough it has become for Brand Managers to cut the clutter and make a way for their communication. Here comes the Creative Communication in picture to play its crucial role.

For me, simplicity of the idea and its communication is of paramount importance. That’s what most of the iconic brands have been doing and that’s what has made their communication stick with their target audience. The more you make your audience stretch the limits of their brain, the more they will avoid your brand communication.

Most of the brand communication fails because they try to tell a lot in 30 seconds. Please understand that this time period is too short to tell your entire story. So, one should tell exactly what is needed to be told effectively during that time span. The approach of ‘make them understand’ or ‘confuse them’ strategy rarely works. The main objective of any brand communication is to sell a product or service. Someone who is paying for that product or service may get fooled once but not always. Moreover, in the case of confusion, he may choose not to buy as well.

If you remember the Vodafone advertisement of a small boy being followed by a cute pug……what message it had???? “Wherever you go….our network follows”. What is expected from a telecom operator???...... Network……and it was saying just that…..and in cutest way!!!

If you see a failed or bad brand communication, please understand that other than the creative lead, everyone else has contributed in it and creative lead has failed to take his/her idea forward. Everyone thinks he/she is creative and takes pride in creating something and wants it to be appreciated. A hoarding, a banner, a poster or a TV ad or a radio jingle all works....... I am not saying it is completely wrong to have a creative streak. Sometimes a creative lead gets different perspective at the discussion table itself. But, all of them would agree to this one point……….All of the ideas one puts forward on the discussion table can’t go in one single communication…..and if it is made to go, then it will only create confusion.

Review Board: Creativity is one of the key pillars of success. How can one become and remain creative in communication in daily personal and professional life?

Gaurav Bahl: We have already discussed that every person in this world is flooded with too much of information in the form of news, advertisements, inputs for his own work requirements at personal and professional front and many things more. All these information further become the basis of many information and ideas in their mind, which keeps looking for an outlet. Everyone wants to talk and take his ideas to the top, but that doesn’t happen all the time with everyone. Something which happens very rarely is called either ‘luck’ in most prevalent term or ‘fluke’ in crude term.

To take any idea to the top one has to remain patient and committed towards it. Now, how will this happen if someone is always willing to talk and let everything out.

So, what works for me and I think it should work for others as well; be observant of what others are doing or talking about, be patient with other’s ideas, be receptive to other’s opinion and master the art of listening. All of it will give you lots of clues, experiences and answers to your problems and challenges. All of it will automatically help you in prioritizing your work and improve your focus on the solution of problems or challenges you would be looking for.

Apart from that, though I am not much into it, following extra-curricular activities like outdoor sports, or music or travelling etc. can help your mind to relax and avoid overdose of information processing. I listen to music, watch movies and play; some people find cooking therapeutic…..and of course, Yoga is an all time favorite of many……..Your brain consumes more energy than any other part of your body and as your body’s energy saps, mind starts slowing down, it starts jumping to conclusions because it wants to work less and it starts priming. So, it is very important to look after your brain….

Fundamentals of creativity can be summed up under the following points:
-Observe people and situations around you.
-Listen to what people around you say
-Be patient; don’t jump to conclusion and become an answering machine
-Be receptive to other’s ideas and opinions and respect them.
-Prioritize your work
-Focus on what you are looking for
-Relax your mind; do something which can help you to enjoy life and take your focus away from finding solutions and being creative all the time.

Review Board: What are the other factors one should keep in mind while creating his/her own personal brand?

Gaurav Bahl: Your personal brand can’t be built in air. There has to be some substance in it. So, for a person who has some experience in his industry, his achievements, his educational qualifications, his soft skills, his accreditations, his credentials in the eyes of his business associates like colleagues, peers, seniors, suppliers etc. will form the founding stones of his personal brand. There has to be some meat in the plate to eat, otherwise your guests will remain hungry.

Now if you bring the answers of previous two questions and merge it, then you will have the complete picture. Put all your substance together which I just mentioned. Listen to people around you, observe what they are doing, be patient and respectful to their opinion, focus on their need and then create simple and neat communication for them. You will have to see that communication has to be consistent without being overbearing. Building brand is not a one time effort, so you will have to be consistent with your communication and at the same time you will have to see the product remains same, what is being promised.

The formula is applicable to newcomers as well….in fact for everyone.

Review Board: Thanks a lot Gaurav for taking your precious time out and talking to us.

Gaurav Bahl: Pleasure is all mine.

According to Department of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, Private Final expenditure of India on Food and non-alcoholic drinks was Rs, 18,21,510 Crore in 2014-15. If we factor in the population growth and rate of inflation, we get the estimated expenditure in 2017-18. If we add to this Rs.18,000 Crore spent on alcoholic drinks, tobacco and narcotics, which finds its origin in Agri sector, then this expenditure will be close to Rs. 20 Lakh Crore. So, it is safe to say that the total Indian market size of agricultural produce is around Rs. 20 Lakh Crore. If we add the size of agriculture input, then it will be even bigger. 

A market of this size is bound to have complexities and that too in a country as diverse and complex as India, where a large section of the population is dependent on it for employment. There are many questions regarding agriculture in India and each one can have different perspective. We also had many questions for Mr. Amit Mishra, Founder- Director of Agrius India Private Limited and Founder of Ambrocia Seeds Producer Company Limited. Mr. Mishra is an Agriculture Graduate from Jawahar Lal Nehru Krishi Vishwavidyalaya, Jabalpur and PGDM-Marketing from VAMNICOM. Prior to taking up the challenging route of entrepreneurship, he has worked with GCMMF, Perfetti Van Melle, Pepsico India-Tropicana, Commodity Futures Exchange MCX and News Distribution Company Thomson Reuters. So let’s start: 

Review Board: You are an Agriculture graduate and a M.B.A and have worked with some of India’s top companies as well as a Commodity Exchange and news Distribution Company. You started your entrepreneurial journey two years back and are pretty well settled. What difference do you find in the business process of both the sectors? What can Agricultural Input Marketing learn from FMCG Food marketing of the big players?

Amit Mishra: In my opinion, the first difference is in the product itself. If we look at the flow of taking a product to the market, it looks like         Product > Targeted consumer> Marketing & Communication> Distribution network 

….the agricultural items are distributor or channel driven product while FMCG are consumer driven products. Consumer demands the brand or the kind of product he/she wants if it is FMCG product but distributor normally takes the demand in the case of agriculture product.

Review Board: Is it so? Tell us more? 

Amit Mishra: Yes, the education level of users and involved technical details of the agricultural product make it more of a channel driven product. It is very difficult for most of the farmers to understand the product detail, so, they depend on the advice of distributors. Whereas consumers are well aware of the FMCG products they want to buy. Marketing communication of FMCG products have been done so since the very beginning. 

For FMCG products, people are the primary as well as ultimate consumers as against agriculture inputs whose primary consumers are trees and plants. FMCG products, whether food or non-food, are procured on only two premises: need and aspiration. A product has either to fulfill its consumer’s need or provide aspirational value. There is not much innovation and experimentation in these products, because they are directly consumed and there are many checks and balances which need to be adhered to. Innovations are mostly focused to help make the product natural and safe for human consumption. 

As against that, Agricultural input procurement goes through four stages…  

First types of buyers are innovators; they are always on the lookout for new technology, new variety of seeds etc. to boost their produce. They enthusiastically support and participate in any kind of technological advancements. Around 0.5% of farmers in India will fall into the category. Second types of buyers are early adopters. These buyers are at the footsteps of innovators and adopt any new technology or variety immediately after confirmation of its success. They normally adopts a new technology within 1 to 3 years. They constitute roughly 4-5% of total farmers in India. Third types of buyers are late adopters. These buyers are good 3-5 years behind the innovators and early adopters. So, to them the technology is no more a new technology as it is already there for long. They constitute 50 to 55% of total farming population of India. Fourth and the last type of buyers are laggards. These buyers look for anything which has been around for long or may be there for a good 5-10 years. Surprisingly a good 40-45% of farming population of our country falls into this category. So, you can very well imagine how difficult it is for a company producing agricultural input to directly reach out to the end consumers, i.e., buyers or design a common marketing communication for them. That’s the reason why they target distribution channels and work closely with their channel partners to not only sell their products but disseminate product information. 

Though marketing efforts may be same for both the categories, but marketing communication channels and their target groups are different. Dissemination of information of agricultural input is like medicine. You don’t start consuming a medicine just because you have seen its advertisement; you get it prescribed by a Doctor. Similarly, on the basis soil type, crop etc., Agrochemicals are suggested by Distributors, backed by information provided by Agricultural Scientists as well as by the government. If anything goes wrong, then all the effort of the last six months will go waste and so will the expected income. This however is not the case with FMCG products. You see an advertisement of a chocolate; you go and buy it from a nearby store. Since there are checks and balances in place for making the product safe for human consumption, you may not like the chocolate or find it not as you assumed it to be after seeing the advertisement. But in the case of an Agricultural Input, a farmer runs a lot of risk on his investment and his future income depends on it too. That’s why he prefers to be sure before buying it and the retailer or distributor from whom he buys, works as an expert, guide and an assurance. 

One more factor that plays an important role in his buying decision is “personal acquaintance”. Since a number of farmers fall in the category of laggards and late adopters, personal acquaintance with the retailer or distributor works as a guarantee for them.

So, all of this boils down to two things: 1) Level of education; and 2) Personal touch

….. And these two things have been mastered by FMCG companies and the Agriculture Input companies can learn from them. Though it is very difficult and time consuming, but a step a day can move mountains.

What we have started doing with our business despite the fact that our resources are limited is that we have started educating our end consumers about different aspects of farming along with the products we are selling. It is addressing both the above mentioned challenges of agricultural input business. However, we know that this is a tedious task and requires lots of resources and effort. But we as a team believe that if we focus on education and training, then the late adopters can become early adopters and laggards can become late adopters thereby increasing our sales and boosting our productivity with our research work. We are planning to adopt a village pretty soon to experiment with our idea and make farmers of that village educated and aware about every aspect of farming and its business. In my opinion if business houses along with entrepreneurs like us backed by government take up this challenge, then a decade is enough to change everything, especially in a time when smartphone penetration is very high, data price is at its cheapest in the world and both of them put together is rapidly changing the human behavior. 

Review Board: So far, we have talked about Agriculture Input category vis-à-vis FMCG products. Could you please expand this discussion to include Final Produce Segment like rice, pulses, wheat as well?

Amit Mishra: Final Produce segment also carries a different behavior pattern from FMCG products. Other than Atta (Grinded wheat) and grinded spices known as C(Chili) T(Turmeric) C (Coriander), mix grinded spices known as ATC spices, other produces have not seen much success as far as branding is concerned. I have travelled extensively in urban as well as rural areas and have seen the change in pattern of packed Atta consumption. Demand of packed Atta is growing in rural areas as well; even in normal packing. But same is not reflected in pulses or rice, because packing material only adds price and not the value. Basmati rice is considered a luxury and is not consumed daily. People are consuming more of Pusa Basmati rice rather than original basmati rice. Organic foods are also in the luxury product segment, because health benefits, as promised depends on other aspects of lifestyle like complete food habit, nutrition intake, exercise routine etc. So, paying double the price than what is to be paid for normal agriculture produce is something Indian customers have not been able to make peace with.

Brand helps you to command premium, but how much and for what? You will have to show value…And in the case of commodities, it is purely transactional value. If you are changing the shape and form of the produce, then branding seems possible as you can see in the case of packed Atta or grinded mix spices and consumers are willing to pay little bit extra……. But if you are packing the whole produce, then there is no value addition.. 

So, the message is loud and clear; as the life of Indians are rapidly moving towards urban centers and rural life is following the urban life, agriculture produce marketing needs to change; it needs to change the shape of produce. If we go for processing and bringing in innovation in that, then not only will it increase the life and value of the product, but will give more money in the pocket of the farmers.

Review Board: I always felt that the biggest challenge Indian agriculture sector is facing is integration of produce and products with the market. While consumers are paying but farmers are not getting the right price. What should be done to address this problem? 

Amit Mishra: This is a very difficult question and the answer is very unpleasant for many. On the effort part, there are many steps which have been taken by the government. Many farmer-producer companies were formed in places like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka etc., Rytu Bazaars were opened to facilitate farmers to sell their produce directly to the consumers and their are thousands of cooperative marketing societies……Despite all of this, problems are still there and their has been no change in the last seventy years. Some of it has done well, but overall if we look at the collective magnitude of challenges, they remain the same as they were after independence. Now why it has remained same…….because individual interest has always taken precedence over collective interest. If you look at the structure of these cooperative marketing societies or farmer producer companies………….you will find that these are normally led by big farmers or local politicians, who serve their interest first and member’s interest later or may be never!! 

It seems to me that the government doesn’t look interested in addressing this issue because wherever there is a poor person, there is politics involved. If things becomes better, then what will you change? If despite so many programmes, projects and billions of dollars spent on agriculture, why post harvest losses are still huge? Why are farmers still battling for loan waiver, better seeds and better price? Along with asking for these issues to be addressed, farmers also need to ask questions to politicians that if these issues have been vital in every budget and election, then why there is no improvement? Why, even after seventy years of independence, farmers are committing suicide? Self sufficiency in crucial items like pulses and edible oils are still missing by a huge margin????

There are many such questions….. Am I disillusioned??? May be yes….may be no……but the way opportunities are getting wasted for personal and political gains, problems will take such a huge proportion that solutions will be impossible!! 

But you have asked me for solutions….. And they are: 1) Educating farmers and innovation in food processing needs to be very urgently done. What is dragging farmers behind is their knowledge of different aspects of farming which includes food processing and marketing. 2)While there are rapid advances in technology supporting farming, but its real users are somewhat still disconnected with that. We as entrepreneurs will have to take lead and make farmers understand the use of technology and its integration in every aspect of farming business. 3) Hold the policy makers and politicians, who have spent the nation’s wealth in the name farmers and agriculture, accountable. They must answer us about the money spent and give us the productivity report. 4) Forget personal interest for some time and work for collective interest. 5) Along with seeking money, seek answers regularly from policy makers and policy implementers.  

These are the main solutions to problems in agriculture sector in India. On paper, there is nothing which has not been tried……but there is no account of what has been achieved vis-à-vis money spent on it. 

Review Board: Can technology help in solving the problem of integration of agricultural produce to its market? And what role entrepreneurs, private business houses and farmers themselves can play in it?

Amit Mishra: This question is connected to your previous question, so, a large part of it is already covered. Technology as required to assist the agriculture production and agriculture produce marketing is already available……And innovator entrepreneurs are playing their role…..But the size of complexity and the challenges are so huge and efforts required are of such gigantic magnitude that solo efforts of entrepreneurs will be lost. Government will have to stop thinking of it as a milch cow and work towards solving all the challenges once and for all. Otherwise solutions will be there, but in bits and pieces, as provided by entrepreneurs at a local level. 

Review Board: True. Neither have we done our bit nor have asked the right questions to our policy makers and policy implementers. Thanks a lot for taking your precious time out and talking to us….

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”- Benjamin Franklin

“I made a killing in the stock market; my broker lost all my money, so I killed him.” –Jim Loy

First quote holds the forte of truth everywhere and more so in financial investment and wealth management, probably with greater importance.

Second quote, though on a lighter note is another aspect of the stock market; if you don’t invest in educating yourself about fundamentals, probabilities, permutation and combination, you will lose whatever you have earned and much more.

Internet has made all the information available to us on our fingertips, but unless and until the information is vetted by a person of authority, they are meaningless. That’s why; we decided to cut the clutter and take you away from routine and bring you the wisdom of someone who has been in this industry for close to two decades.

Mr. Sameer Kapoor, CEO of Elite Wealth Advisors Ltd. has close to two decades of experience in the Financial Market. He has worked as Senior Vice President with Religare Ltd, VP – Online Business with HSBC InvestDirect (India) Ltd., ILFS, Mansukh Securities and Mefcom. For majority of the time he was building up and growing the Online Business on pan India basis.

His LinkedIn Bio reads,”Blogger by choice, Finance Enthusiast, Speaker”, and believe us, he excels in everything that he has written. But what he modestly didn’t mention in his profile is that he is an astute and avid inbound marker, helping the information to spread and businesses to grow. His two blogs www.simplypaisa.com and www.mysharebazar.com provides great insight of the financial market and handholds the end users in the process of intelligent investing. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) from ICFAI, Masters of Financial Management from Pondicherry University and B.Com from Delhi University.

Let’s learn together from his knowledge and experience….

Review Board: Journey of investment sentiment in India starts from greed and reaches indifference travelling via fear and despair. Is it the scenario only in India or also in the rest of the world? Has intelligent investing ever been a pattern or will it ever be the pattern in future and if yes, then what does it look like?

Sameer Kapoor: Any investment that makes decent returns can be considered as intelligent investing and if I guess it right, Indians have always made decent money whether it is in Stock Markets or with Real Estate. The only difference of opinion comes when you actually wish to evaluate your decision.

The invested capital in couple of days may be giving different returns in terms of IRR as compared to that of couple of years. So it is important for investors to define the tenure of investment before investing.

Upcoming breed of Wealth Management businesses are very well articulating these things and will surely redefine the perception.

Review Board: What advice would you give to small investors for intelligent investing?

Sameer Kapoor: A small investor looking to invest should clearly define and most importantly correlate Risk, Return expectation and Tenure. Any uneven proposition giving very high returns may not be recurring or may not be true also.

I haven’t seen Super Heroes in my entire career so only capabilities seemingly true for a human should be trusted upon.

Review Board: Mess in the Indian financial system and the mistrust of common man in the people running this market is largely of their own doing. Their greed has definitely done a huge damage. What are the short and long term steps that need to be taken to restore the faith of common man and strengthen the structure of financial system once again?

Sameer Kapoor: Greed of little better returns brings everyone to these markets so nothing bad in this. Difficult part is that very few people with limited capital exposure and practically no discipline in their investing approach tries to represent the very large mass of small and big investors. Increasing market capitalization with more and more IPOs/Public issues getting over subscribed reflects confidence of people only. Historically, we have seen returns of people invested in businesses through stock markets have outperformed that of any other financial asset class like FDs or Gold.

SEBI always keeps bringing measures to bring more and more confidence of investors and is doing a great job.

Review Board: Whatever happened in 2007-08 due to US Subprime crisis is nothing when we compare to something like China, US and Global debt scenario. Chinese total debt crossed $33 Trillion few years ago, which is three times more than their GDP. Global debt stands at more than $217 Billion against the Global GDP of around $65 Trillion. What is your opinion on that? How long will this bubble sustain? What is your advice to common man to safeguard himself from any such eventuality?

Sameer Kapoor: I guess Global debt figures are in Trillions and I think it stood at $237Tn for Q3 2017. See, high debt figures are always alarming and creates a risk of afloat.

A major component of this debt comes from Governments who borrow money to fund social schemes. Here you will find few which will have extremely high debt and few with very manageable debt.

As an investor, I would like to be in a place which are producing growth and using debt to manage that growth. Others which are using debt just to fund their facilities are bound to see a bad day in future times. This may be very high depreciation in currency or extreme inflation or total economic fiasco. However, few hard workers will sustain their growth and come with some amazing numbers.

I would certainly be on the side of these hard working borrowers rather than crying on few lethargic borrowers. Similar to this, investing in such companies always yield good returns as their management understand how to sail through difficult times and grow business.

Review Board: Under the current Market scenario when SEBI has been proactively tightening the rules and regulations for Market Operators reducing the maneuverability, how do you see it impacting the Brokers?

Sameer Kapoor: Definitely, it is going to impact the complete broking business. I feel broking business is going through a big change.

It is getting primarily divided among investors and traders. While Traders are getting more focuses on derivatives and automated trading. Investors are trying to outsource their direct interaction with markets to Portfolio Managers and Investment advisors. Both sides are witnessing a big growth and newer technological advancement.

A traditional way of calling and servicing clients is slowly getting outdated and speedily getting replaced with self service or completely outsourced approach.

Review Board: In this digital era, customers are educated and informed. It has made customer acquisition easy and tough, both at the same time. Easy, because sales team is not required to spend good amount of time on educating the customer about the product or services and tough, because customer is already informed and has multiple choices. So, what would be your advice to anyone looking to acquire new customer?

Sameer Kapoor: Business never gets tough with customer education rather one needs to find a way to service this educated customer in a most cost efficient way and reduce cost associated to such customer education.

Online has come up as a most preferred way for individual investors as it brings convenience to access and operate, freedom to choose own investing method and cost efficiency with reduced pricing models. It is now a proven fact that Online is not only better than in Brick and Mortar model in Acquisition but also in Servicing.

Businesses now see a lot of competition on online space also but the smarter one still find their niche and create acquisition spree. Within Online, now there are multiple ways to generate opportunities but cost efficiency is the name of the game.

Online Marketing is not like what it used to be 10 years back but has changed shape. My three key advices would be

• Never hire any person for Online marketing who do not understand the Industry.
• Maintain your online reputation as the recourse from bad reputation in online space is very difficult.
• Never rely on business model which depends on customer ignorance as awareness spreads very fast online and will eventually destroy your business.

We had great time talking to Mr. Kapoor and few things which came out prominently from our discussion were:

• Educate yourself about the battle you are getting into.
• Whoever you are; evaluate the risk, reward and time frame.
• Stick to the normal, expect what is humanly possible. -
• Little bit greed is good, because that’s what brings you to the market, but overstretching is not only bad for you but the market as well.
• Online marketing has changed what it used to be ten years back.
• Keep a close eye on your online reputation. A small mistake and lethargy can cost you the reputation built over years of hard work.
• Never rely on the business model which depends on consumer ignorance because awareness increases faster in online domain and anything wrong can destroy your business.

As we enjoyed our discussion and learnt from his experience, we are also sure that you will find it informative and valuable.

Note: To read more insights from professionals working in different field, keep visiting www.reviewboard.in . You can ask us about our services at mukul.bhartiya@reviewboard.in and sales@teamrecruiters.in. 

Growth strategy of any business organization should keep following points in special consideration; budget for customer acquisition, cost per customer acquisition, merchandize value per customer, margin per customer, natural churn (a segment of fleeting customer who will never be yours. They keep experimenting and pricing is their key nudge to buy any product or services) and cost of customer retention. If the cost of successive customer acquisition is lower than retention of a loyal customer, then going all out aggressively for customer acquisition makes more sense ignoring the complaints of existing customers for sometime than staying conservative to build the business. By doing so, you will still have more customer despite natural churn and exit of few disgruntled customers than your conservative growth strategy.

If you remain focused on providing value to each and every customer (Though this should be your ultimate goal) before moving ahead, then you will be stuck at very small scale; low sales and low margin making your interest in the business dwindle. If you leave your target customer unattended, then someone else will come and make them their customer. It will make customer acquisition more difficult.

If your customer’s gross merchandise value is very high and they are very sensitive towards being served with full attention, then aggressive growth strategy will kill your business. For obvious reason, a customer spending big amount of money on buying a segment of merchandize on the regular basis will be high net worth Individual with the circle of similar customer base. If you lose attention on any of them, then you will lose business of many of them.

By a rough estimate, India produces paddy, wheat and whole pulses together worth Rs.5, 34, 020 Crore, calculated at MSP for paddy and wheat and bulk price of pulses in whole form. If we take the data of public consumer expenditure for the year 2014-15 made available by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation in public domain and extrapolate the impact of inflation every successive year, India’s private final expenditure on food and non-alcoholic drinks may stand around Rs.18.9 Lakh Crore. It gives a glimpse of scope of business opportunity it provides.

Mr. Nitin Kumar, Company Secretary by qualification and investment and start up expert by profession has worn many hats; but when this time when he told me about his new venture Bishanpur Natural Foods Pvt. Ltd., I would be lying if I say I was not surprised. Since beginning of his professional career, he has been through and through finance professional helping his clients to make money in stock and/or real estate market or investing in general merchandise, education or health start ups. But this time, he not only invested but has been successfully running the business of speciality flours, fox nuts and flax seed. After talking to him I could understand his passion of bringing healthy food which our previous generations used to eat and has disappeared from our plates with changing time. But why was I surprised; because sales of food items demand combined of physical and mental hustle than the just mental one required in financial or real estate market. But as Ann Landers had said “Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them”, he chose the hard work way and entered into this business. He is CEO of Bishanpur Natual Foods Pvt. Ltd. 

I asked him straight three questions to understand why is he in this business, what he has to offer, how it will benefit his consumers and where does he see his business in short and medium term. 

Mukul Bhartiya: You are finance professional by education and experience. What led you to venture into food processing, distribution and marketing business and that also, niche products like Chana Sattu, Makhana and Flax Seed?

Nitin Kumar: When I tell you the reason behind it, you will also empathise. Though I am from Bihar but I have lived better part of my life in Delhi and Gurgaon. Who better than person like me can understand the importance of healthy food and healthy life. For us, even pure air to breathe has become a scarce thing. You might have seen the images of hazardous foam emanating from River Yamuna during Chhath this year and let me tell you that this not something new as phenomena. This has been the scene for so many years and it is also open secret that most of vegetables coming to National Capital Territory market are grown in the river base of Yamuna. 

All the trappings of modern lifestyle has taken one thing from us; our time for ourselves. We are always in the rush to reach one place or another, barely taking time to breathe. In order to reach somewhere, we have moved as far away from the nature as possible. And look what it has done to us; it has not only taken us away from nature but has taken away our physical and mental health. 

Having lived a life with these trappings around, we have realized that answer of healthy life is to slow down, look back and find what we lost in the rush of reaching somewhere. Retracing healthy footprints are always good. Our older generations lived life closer to nature. There were no mechanized machines to grind the food; so, most of the nutrients were retained in the food for our consumption. We are making a genuine effort to dig deep, research and find out the natural food for you. We are reclaiming our past with pride, we are reclaiming our health back and we reclaiming our life and the battle start with food.

At Bishanpur Natural Foods Pvt. Ltd, we follow every process to retain the natural nutrients every food has to offer by cold press milling technique. Words become command, command becomes commitment and commitment sets the direction; and our commitment is to take our food habit closer to nature.

Mukul Bhartiya: Please tell our readers about your products and how they benefit from it?

Nitin Kumar: We are in constant search of food which are healthy, wholesome and queen of plates of older and previous generations. I am keen on that. Our first product is Chana Sattu. 

Though there is no specific mention about the origin of word ‘Sattu’, but looking at the nutritional values it provides, it must have come from Sanskrit word ‘Satvik’, which means ‘pure’, ‘complete’, ‘ontological’. No other cereal or pulses is as complete and wholesome as ‘Chana’ or ‘Hoarse Gram’, because it has right amount of Protein, Dietary Fiber, good Carbohydrates, low glycemic index and absolutely no unhealthy unsaturated fat. While almost all the cereals and pulses provide between 150-350 calorie per 100 gram with cereals providing extra carbohydrate and pulses providing extra protein, ‘Chana’ provides energy exceeding 400 calorie. These nutrients build your muscles, make your bone strong, help in preventing constipation and keep your stomach healthy, regulate fluids and blood pressure of the body, fights diabetes and give you the energy to stay active whole day. There are numerous benefits of Chana Sattu.

Some of them are as follows:

• You can drink and eat it both.

• It is high on calorie with good amount of whole carbohydrate, dietary fiber and protein.

• It is gluten free.

• Carbohydrate in Sattu is soluble and ingestible carbohydrate, which is very much required for energy. It is a fallacy that low carbohydrate diet is good. If you don’t get the energy, then how will you survive? Your food should have 45-50% whole carbohydrate to keep you alive and active. 

• It keeps your stomach healthy by preventing constipation. You may be aware that constipation is the cause of many bowel related ailments including gastrointestinal diseases, which has the capacity hurting other part of bodies as well. -It reduces the risk of coronary heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and obesity. 

• Zero saturated fat in Sattu makes it an ideal food and drink.

• Protein in Sattu makes your bones hold the muscles and keep your liver healthy. It makes you look healthy and young. 

Our second product is Makhana or Fox nut. ‘Makhana’ is amalgamation of two Sanskrit words: ‘Makha’ and ‘Anna’. ‘Makha’ in Sanskrit has two meanings ‘sacrificial oblation’ and ‘active/moving/to go/move’ and ‘Anna’ means ‘food’. So, one meaning of ‘Makhana’ is a food which is offered for sacrificial oblation or which is offered to god. Another meaning of ‘Makhana’ is the food which keeps you ‘active’ and on the move, which means it keeps you energetic. Makhana is rich source of protein, calcium, dietary fiber, good carbohydrate and absolutely zero saturated, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fat. With total 350 calorie per 100 Gm, it is good for your bones, muscles and gut and helps you fight diabetes and blood pressure.

Darbhanga, Madhubani and other parts of erstwhile Mithila Kingdom or present day Bihar produces ‘Makhana’ the most and has been consuming the most as well; now whole world has realized its importance.  

You can eat Makhana raw or after roasting or frying. You can also make different varieties of sweets and pudding from Makhana. 

Benefits of Makhana are many; few of them are as follows:

• Dietary fiber keeps your stomach free from constipation, helps to prevent coronary heart disease and reduces hypertension and chances of stroke.

• Protein helps your bones to hold muscles, makes your body fit, strong, healthy and young.

• It improves the health of your liver.

• Calcium makes your bones strong.

• It is fat free, full of whole carbohydrate, protein and dietary fiber, which makes it a super healthy food without the fear of adding fat in the body.

• Whole carbohydrate gives you energy to be active, fit and fine. 

• Right amount of sodium and potassium in Makhana helps to keep the blood pressure under control and keeps cellular function of your body up and running. 

Our third but not the last product is Flaxseed. Flaxseed is another super food, which should be part of our daily diet. It is very high on protein, carbohydrate, dietary fiber, calcium, Bitamin B-6, Iron and Magnesium. 

 ‘Chana Besan’ is the latest addition in our product portfolio.

Mukul Bhartiya: Tell us about your plans to take your products and idea behind them to wider consumer base? Please also tell us where do you see your business after five years?

Nitin Kumar: See, ours is the social enterprise. Though we can increase the production capacity by rapid mechanization, but our focus is not just providing healthy food options to our consumers but providing as many employment opportunities as possible in rural areas. When you increase the number of human hands at work then it is quite obvious that speed of work gets slowed down. 

In the first year itself, we have established our distribution network in many districts of Bihar and parts of National Capital Territory. In next five years, we will cover entire Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. We are aiming the turnover of Rs.50 Crore in next five years. 

If you want to take the distributorship of Bishanpur Natural Foods Pvt. Ltd., you can reach out to concerned persons at enquiry@villfood.in and + 91 7011 326 404, +91 8700 209 659.

This is the story of Tapasya, Meenakshi, Karan, Rajeev and Manish, caught in the web of complexities of life and emotions. Unfulfilled Love
Tapsaya and Meenakshi were two woman with completely different approach towards life, but their aspirations of life were same; "love".

While Tapasya could not fight her battle the way it should have been fought, Meenakshi fought her way to get whatever she wanted out of her life. Both of them couldn't take the decision on time when it needed to be and desired love which had all the markings of remaining unrequited due to being against the social norm. Both of them were ready to break the social norms, but Tapasya couldn't do so and Meenakshi did with all her strength.

In the end, Tapasya died a lonely death despite being surrounded by all her family members and Meenakshi lived a lonely life despite fighting and nearly getting what she wanted.

Love is complex. It has its own rules for everyone for every relationship. There is no template for love. One's story can't be repeated by other. Everyone has to fight his or her own battle, even for love. One has to decide what he or she wants out of this word 'love' and for what it is meant for one person and every other person of his or her life.

Manish thought he loved Meenakshi madly. But when he got engaged to her, he started missing his family members, who didn't accept Meenakshi in their family fold.

Rajeev loved Tapasya a lot, but he couldn't make Tapasya see what she meant to him. And when she realized and accepted, it was already too late and she just wanted her last wish to be fulfilled before closing her eyes.

Karan remained pragmatic in life but he had his own battles to fight.

In fact, life is complex and is has no template. Complexity and separate rules for everyone for everything is its only template.

COVID19 has reset the world order and new world order is booting. Since the new world order is booting, old world order is stuck in the throat of everyone; from the governments to businesses to common people.

Though I, like everyone know that every aspect of human life, businesses and governance is affected by this pandemic, I was curious to know how exactly it is impacting supply of essential items in India, which remain opened throughout this lockdown as it should have been. I talked to couple of my friends who have been leading the team selling essentials for their organizations and I am presenting their challenges as they are. They had some “Time to Survive (inventory in hand to cover the sudden eventuality)” but “Time to Recover (get into smooth operation mode with every function of supply chain working properly and optimally)” is still a long shot, despite some of the challenges I think might have been solved.

Here are the challenges they are facing in supplying staples and other essential items:

1)Logistics and Load factor: For smaller organizations or areas where order loads are small, Full Container Load (FCL) are not possible, transporters normally club the orders and deliver at destinations. Though Less than Container Load (LCL) is comparatively costly and less safe, Hundredweight freight method solves the purpose. During this period, as many small businesses remained closed, for small orders, LCL remained an impossible task and so, transporters increased the freight charges to cover the cost and incentive.

2)Credit: Credit helps in creating more liquidity, surplus fund, more customer engagement and increased risk taking appetite. But in this extremely challenging time, everyone’s risk appetite has decreased and wants to protect his/her fund liquidity. This has resulted in disappearance of credit from the market.

3)Stocks: Even for essentials, arranging stock has become challenge due to many factors and it has led to prices of many items increasing a lot. So, prices have become unrealistic as of now and whoever has the stock, charges more for it.

4)Timing Restrictions: Since timing restrictions are there in APMC market yard in metros like Mumbai, picking up and loading the stock itself takes time and in turn, supply is getting crippled. Problem gets even more complicated due to different timing restrictions for retail counters in different areas.

5)Labour challenges: Due to lockdown, there is huge shortfall in supply of labourers. To meet the demand of market, traders are trying to achieve the same throughput from workforce available, which is an impossible feat and can’t sustain for long. For migrant labourers, day and night work is resulting into heavy fatigue which can’t be repaired by money and they just want to leave for their hometown. This problem will only increase once interstate movement of labourers starts freely. A leading online grocer had to cancel around 20000 orders between Rs.30-35 Crore. There is no dearth of orders but there is scarcity of manpower to service those orders.

6)Lack of clarity about government notifications and nature of products at ground zero: Administrative staff i.e police and local administration at ground zero don’t have complete knowledge of food supply chain and so everyone is reading the same rule differently. Since no one wants to get caught at wrong foot during this pandemic, this challenge makes matter more complicated.

You are invited to add more challenges which are hampering the smooth operation of supply chain of essential items and what should be done in future if similar challenges arise? Automation, credibility based inter-trader credit system, AI based robotics, auto-driven transportation vehicles, delivery using drones are part of solution or they will complicate the employment problem of the country?

You will find following blogs on Covid19 useful:

1) Sanjiva Jha Founder CEO BroadArk Technologies on Reigniting the economy

2) Sanjiva Jha Founder CEO BroadArk Technologies on Covid19 Impact

Lockdown due to the fear of community spread of COVID19 has brought in unprecedented situation and it has led to unprecedented buying behaviour. Some of the examples are from my family itself. I reached back my native village to attend some urgent work before the lockdown. Here I am, staying with my sixty five years old mother in the village for last five months and no, my life is not difficult except I have to manage my work according to the situation of electricity supply.

As the lockdown was imposed on 24th of March and became effective from 25th March morning so to say, because by 12 of the night of 24th March, half of the nation must have fallen asleep anyway. Movement of even essential items were difficult initially because law enforcing agencies were not able to figure out difference between essential and non-essential items and they were not ready to take any chance to be called negligent of their duty. So, the vegetables grown in rural areas were not finding its way to urban and town market. Prices of vegetables fell drastically and we were able to buy things at around 35-40% of the earlier price. Though lockdown was dampening news, but not for my mother, for whom travel meant walking in our campus or on the road in front of our house. She was very happy to buy vegetables so cheap and she started buying it from everyone and anyone selling vegetables and I was emotionally manipulated to gorge on vegetables much beyond my capacity, otherwise she would have been forced to throw a big portion of it in the dustbin. For first two months, despite my cautious advice and sometime angry retort, she continued buying vegetables in huge quantity, because it was cheap. Something which was supposedly cheap cost us a lot during that period.

My elder brother living in Bengaluru got so panicked when lockdown was announced that he assumed he won’t get any vegetables to eat. So, he bought a year’s quota of salt thinking that if he doesn’t get vegetables then he will eat chapatti with salt.

Few days back I was talking to a friend, who is heading staples business of major retail chain about the news around impact of COVID19. I told him that I not very comfortable with the way news about miseries due to COVID19 fed to the entire world after locking them inside their houses and flats. They are regularly and without fail being fed with the news of death, despair and conflict. I also said that there is news of biscuits companies are doing roaring business, which means tea business must also be doing similarly good business. Upon hearing this, he said not only biscuit and tea, but savouries, mixtures, noodles etc. are also doing very excellent business.

COVID19 is having whatever impact it is having on all of us and it is visible, but what is not visible is the impact of continuous fear feeding by media after locking us inside our houses on our mind. Hypertension, stress, blood pressure, gas and acidity, arthritis, diabetes and many other lifestyle diseases will start demanding its share from our savings once this is over or there is some respite.

Another friend of mine who is with a retail start-up told me that his neighbourhood store in Thane, Maharashtra, which was unaffected by spurt in organizations dealing in online grocery retail is seeing more than 60% de-growth in customer walk in; many of them have shifted to online shopping due to the fear of the spread of COVID19.

These examples are very few among many. How can we forget the sight of couple of kilometres long queue outside grocery stores in US and European countries or people stocking years quota of toilet paper.

This period has brought out the extremes of human behaviour unlike before. COVID19 is not going away soon. There are many government administered nudge which will change the human behaviour permanently. I am sure many neuroscientists and behavioural scientists must be studying it, but retail organizations must not let this opportunity go away and they must test as many hypotheses as possible and figure out the change in human behaviour and decision making process while shopping. Analysing data may not be able to speak much after this pandemic is over. Once it is over, people won’t be able to recall the entire journey; they will remember the peak and end of the experience. This will lead to loss of many data points which can help the business in future. EEG, fMRI, Mobile EEG and eye tracking devices etc. may come to help for in-store study and placement of products on mobile, laptop and other digital devices real estate, nudges, priming and anchoring stimulus applied should be closely and critically analysed, because this phase will bring out the human decision making process which will be new normal.

Though using tools mentioned above to study human behaviour is the domain of experts from neuroscience, but we can offer our services in setting parameters and calculating outcomes free of human bias.

I can be reached at mukul.bhartiya@reviewboard.in. You can find the detail presentation on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Retail Analytics here. Interactive Retail Analytics Solution

Last month’s Tanishq ad for their “Ekatvam” range of products was much talked, due to the topic it chose to show and message it conveyed. As soon as the digital advertisement was released, #boycotttanishq started trending on social media sites. It immediately drew the line of confrontation among two groups; one group were claiming to be of Hindus and other group were claiming to be of seculars and liberals. The concept of an expecting Hindu girl married in a Muslim household being nervously surprised for their in-laws celebrating “God Bharai” ritual for her didn’t go down well with a section of Hindus and they vowed to boycott Tansihq’s products. Not only that, they even started voicing their displeasure on social media. When they started voicing their displeasure on social media, another section of people jumped in the defence of Tanishq.

But this is all about responses it got; let me examine the communication decision taken by the Brand and Marketing Manager of Tanishq. Was this a brand communication or a statement of corporate or product team’s ideology?

Let us understand what it presumably showed:
-Love beyond the boundaries of religion.
-Acceptance of each other’s culture.
-Different customs and importance of jewelry in it.

And what was construed by a section of people:

-It pressed the raw nerve of inter-religious marriage where girl is necessarily a Hindu. This is a very hot social and political topic and evokes a very strong response. For many, this is a historical, political and narrational wrong perpetrated against one community.
-Some criticized the nervous surprise at girl’s face, which they took it as otherwise non-acceptance of her customs by her husband’s family.

Marketing and brand communication can’t overlook the prevalent social fault lines and it also can’t overlook the sentiments of major target customer group, because it may affect the sales. Very next day, share prices of Tanishq dropped by around 2.5% which confirmed the sentiments of that group which was angry over this advertisement.

Now let us analyse few more facts mentioned below, which are important to establish that whether it was a well planned communication to increase the sales or an ideological statement either coming from the corporate team or brand team:

-The theme of advertisement is a very controversial topic which evokes even stronger response. I will not get into the details.
-The community who were angry, i.e., Hindus have the custom of buying gold ornaments during different festivals like “Akshay Tritiya” and “Dhanteras”. They even buy gold when enter the new house. And of course, marriage is a huge thing. Women folks in villages save money to buy jewelry whether they have daughters or son, because at the time of marriage, they have to give it to the daughter or daughter-in-law. So, for them, not only it is their personal choice but social and religious ritual as well.
-Jewelry is not just a woman thing among Hindus, men also wear them.
-Muslim community doesn’t have the social or religious ritual to buy ornaments; it is completely their personal choice.
-Men from Muslim community are forbidden by their religious edicts from wearing gold jewelry.
-Population ratio of Hindus to Muslims in India is 8:1.5, so without Hindus form the main market segment.

So, when odds were so firmly placed against this brand and marketing communication, then it was definitely a statement of ideology by the team at brand or corporate level then a communication designed to boost the sales. May be the team was experimenting with an idea of brand identity they want to create or maybe they had designed it for Pakistan and not India.

Note: I tried looking for the advertisement on Official Youtube channel of Tanishq Jewelry but it wasn’t available there.

First time I read any book on behavioural economics was “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Nobel award winning Psychologist Daniel Kanheman around six years back and I got blown over by it. Having spent better part of my life in food retail, understanding human behaviour through historical data collected through weekly or monthly sales was quite a task, because the element of biases, heuristics, noise etc. are something I had just assumptions but no authoritarial backing. Many a times, standing on the floor of the store, I could sense the consumer behaviour but could not call it a behavioural pattern of financial decision making due to not being exposed to psychology part of human decision making. Nature of the job was to achieve the sales numbers, so academic aspect of conclusions coming from data never became a topic of discussion among peers and colleagues.

As my curiosity increased in this subject, I pursued many online courses available across different platforms and read many books on it along with neuroeconomics, neuromarketing and neuro-consumer Science. In this pursuit, I recently found a book “Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics”, written by Richard H. Thaler and published in 2015. Mr. Thaler is known as father of Behavioural Economics and won Nobel Prize for Economics in 2017.

This books describes his journey of exploring, experimenting, understanding, consolidating and presenting the role of different human behaviour behind economic decision making more famously known as “biases and heuristics”, the names given by famous Daniel Kanheman and Amos Tversky.

Written in eight blocks (Beginnings, Mental Accounting, Self-Control, Interlude, Working with Danny, Engaging with the Economics Profession, Finance, Welcome to Chicago, Helping Out) divided in thirty three chapters, this book is a revealation of a completely new dynamics of human financial decision making and revelation to read for anyone who is even not conversant with the idea of either psychology or economics.

From Endowment Effect to The List to Value Theory to The Gauntlet to Bargains and Rip-Offs to Sunk Cost to Buckets and Budgets to The Willpower to The Planner and The Doer to Misbehaving in the Real World to What Seems Fair to Fairness games to end with Save Money Tomorrow, Going Public and Nudging in U.K, this book is the journey of Behavioural Economics with the father of very concept himself.

I simply love the concept of “Endowment Effect”. We overvalue what we have regardless to what is its market value. If we are asked to pay surcharge to facilitate credit card transaction cost, we frown over that, but if that surcharge is included in the product cost, we don’t mind because that’s not obvious to us. While two are one and the same thing, but not getting discount is just a lost opportunity cost for the consumers while paying extra for credit card transaction looks like direct cost. This is not only true for the economic decisions but for ideological view points as well. People value their opinion more over others and they go out in public just to confirm their opinion. “Endowment Effect” coupled with “confirmation bias” becomes “myside bias”, the reason behind big ideological divides.

Mental accounting is another topic which I find fascinating. Recently I bought a laptop for Rs.39.450/- for multitasking of a little lesser known brand. I got a Rs.1500/- instant discount due the tie-up between my credit card issuing bank and seller. Few days later, another Rs.1250/- cash back was credited to my wallet. Along with the features, company offered two years service warranty as against of one year given by other known brands and I got one year Microsoft 365 subscription free as well. I had done good two weeks research before buying the laptop and had seen umpteen videos and read thousands of reviews of different brands before making this decision. Laptop of known brands with similar features and warranty were at more than Rs.65,000/-. So when I made this decision, got this product, set up my device and Microsoft account, I found it very smooth in operation. It proved to be great bargain for me. After that whomsoever I told about the purchase, I not only explained the discount and cash back, but also the cost of one year Microsoft 365 Subscription, cost of 1 TB storage on cloud, and cost of one extra years’ warranty. Before that, I was against the idea of having cloud storage space, because I not only found it costly but leaving the responsibility of my data on someone else. Hard Drive Storage meant complete control over my data to me. But after getting it along with Few days back, I had almost made the decision to buy a laptop for Rs.61,000/- with the same features but somehow I ended up not buying it. So, my satisfaction level from making the purchase decision which I made is like absolute bargain.

This book is full of real life experiments and examples and is a must read for everyone who wants to know the science behind financial decision making.

You can buy the book following this link Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics