Insights success The 10 Fastest Growing Retail Companies 2016

The way of business solutions 

THE 

10 

Fastest Growing 

Retail 

Companies 2016 

Hari Menon 

Co-founder & CEO 

www.insightssuccess.in 

SEPTEMBER 2016 

Leader’s Thought 

Beware How We Treat Our 

Employees during 

a Slowdown . . 

Employees have 

Elephant Memory . . 

Executive Talk 

Emerging Technologies 

and where do we stand 

as a Start-up Nation in 

Global Market… 

BigBasket: 

India's Largest Online Grocery Store 

Peaks & Valleys Behind the Scenes 

Trends that are 

Driving e-Commerce 

in India 

Challenges Retail Industry 

is Facing in India 

#Hashtag 

Bricks and Mortar Stores 

Redefining Online 

Retailing

Editorial 

s retail market is not uniform in India, especially in terms of 

Afulfilling needs when it comes to give preference to luxury. 

Also Indian market is less mature than European market 

where consumers seek fulfillment through experience. The needs of 

the Indian luxury consumers are fulfilled by very few players. Huge 

potential is lying in this segment as the market is still untapped. 

Hence, in order to target them better, it becomes very important to 

delineate the needs of the Indian consumer. 

Luxury Retail is the 

Darling of 

High Spenders 

In India, to be a successful retailer, it is necessary to gauge the 

mindset of the luxury consumer and their financial potential. To tap 

the huge potential of the diverse market, localization of luxury 

global brands is mandatory. Understanding the characteristics of 

luxury product market and accordingly developing the brands is the 

prime goal. And it has been seen in India, limited accessibility to 

luxury is a barrier to its growth and acceptability. 

For high-end merchandise, an insatiable appetite is fueling a boom 

in luxury spending. From expeditious cares to extravagant shoes, 

companies are cashing in on the new business of bling. 

Flabbergasting new shopping trends and unpredicted gender twists 

are propelling big luxury brands to newer heights. A new class of big 

spenders is out in full force, where women are spending like men 

and men are shopping like ladies. Beyond this role reversal, there is 

also a new class of shoppers who spend a lot and are setting the 

luxury world on fire. Now, consumers are demanding and getting 

extraordinary service from premium brands which are flocking the 

high streets. 

In a nut shell, based on convenience and customization, luxury 

products can be marketed more rather than the product itself. The 

marketer needs to focus more on selling larger quantity for mass 

products. And it can only be done through better pricing, larger 

channels of communication, multi-channel distribution and through 

attractive offers. 

Charlie Gupta

Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal 

Managing Editor Charlie Gupta 

Co-Editors 

Abhijeet Parade 

Sonal Burghate 

Musna Mony 

Art & Design Director Rashmi Borkar 

Co-designer Mayur Khapekar 

Picture Editor Alex Noel 

Art Editor Amol Kamble 

Visualiser Harmeet Singh Ramgharia 

Business Development Manager Manisha Priya 

Marketing Manager Karishma Joshi 

Business Development Executive 

Savitri, Pooja, Ketan, 

Gopi, Akansha, Ankush 

Research Analyst David 

Circulation Manager Swapnil 

Database Management Sharad 

Technology Consultant Vishal More 

sales@insightssuccess.com 

September, 2016 

Corporate Ofces: 

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For Subscription: Visit www.insightssuccess.in For Subscription: Visit www.insightssuccess.com 

6 

,

Content Page 

Cover Story 

8 

32 

Behind the Scenes 

Challenges Retail Industry 

is Facing in India 

#Hashtag 


Redefining Online Retailing 

28 

Big Basket: India’s Largest 

Online Grocery Store 

20 

Peaks & Valleys 

Trends that are Driving 

e-Commerce in India 

CXO Standpoint 

22 

38 

Beware How We Treat Our Employees during a 

Slowdown . . .Employees have Elephant Memory . . 

Emerging Technologies and where do we 

stand as a Start-up Nation in Global Market…

18 

24 

Channelplay: India’s Leading 

Channel Management Company 

C-SQUARE: Controlling Your 

Business Anytime, Anywhere 

26 

30 

Discover Dollar: A Revolutionary Technology 

for Stopping Leakages and Overpayment 

iStreet Bazaar: 

Re-Engineering Retail 

34 

36 

LOGIC ERP: Scaling Up 

Your Retail Business 

NextOrbit: Mitigating 

Your Retail Out of Stock

Hari Menon 


BigBasket

BIG Basket: 

L A RG EST 

India’s 

Online Grocery 

Store 

Every entrepreneur’s journey, when retold with the benefit of hindsight, can throw up valuable lessons 

on several aspects of managing a business. However, many such stories often tend to simplify the 

hardship that is entrepreneurship. The journey is often seen as a set of events that shaped up the 

venture to what it is today; but in reality, it is much more complex than that. There are several 

unexplained events, day-to-day challenges that often get left out in such narratives and most 

importantly, the role played by the team members in executing a strategy is often overlooked. 

The Journey of a Maverick 

Having said that, when an entrepreneur looks back at his or her own journey and asks the question “what could I have 

done better?” it gives a whole new perspective to the narrative. One such story to share here is that of a serial 

entrepreneur, Hari Menon, Co-founder & CEO of BigBasket. 

Born in 1963, Hari is an alumnus of BITS-Pilani and started his career with ORG Systems, subsequently moving on 

to work with many of the best and respected names in the country. Prior to starting BigBasket, Hari along with the 

founding team of BigBasket had co-founded Fabmart, one of the pioneers in the e-commerce in India and its physical 

extension, Fabmall. And before venturing out with BigBasket and Fabmart, Hari was the CEO of ‘Indiaskills’, the 

Vocational Education Joint Venture between the Manipal Group and City & Guilds (UK), as well. A lesser known fact 

is that Hari had also served as the Country Head at ‘Planetasia’ which was one of the first Internet services businesses 

in India, and had begun his career with ‘Wipro’ as a Business Head in the Infotech business. 

Pitching the Idea 

In December 2011, Hari co-founded BigBasket with a vision of setting up India’s largest and finest online food and 

grocery company. BigBasket is owned and operated by ‘Supermarket Grocery Supplies Pvt. Ltd.’ with operations

Our objective is to provide our 

customers with the nest possible 

grocery shopping experience. It has 

always been our endeavour to deliver 

to you a complete range “products with high availability and at 

competitive prices 

“ 

of great quality 

having commenced in 25 cities in India. It delivers the 

entire range of groceries, fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh 

meat, dairy products, breads, processed foods, toiletries, 

personal care products, gourmet foods and a wide range of 

household products. Their range has about 18,000 products, 

which includes a wide range of private labels sold under the 

BigBasket brand like Royal, Fresho, Happy Chef, etc. As 

of now, BigBasket is a purely internet based company and 

does not have any brick and mortar stores. 

Indelible Moment 

Hari got a call in July 2011 from his colleague and cofounder, 

Sudhakar, thanks to K. Ganesh reaching out to him 

on a potential opportunity in the online grocery space. It 

took exactly 2 to 3 minutes for him to say yes. The sheer 

joy of having to do a startup again, together with the same 

friends from the earlier journey and in the same grocery 

space was fantastic. And that was the beginning of many 

memorable experiences that followed. 

Ideology of BigBasket 

BigBasket allows you to walk away from the drudgery of 

grocery shopping and welcome an easy relaxed way of 

browsing and shopping for groceries. Discover new 

products and shop for all your food and grocery needs from 

the comfort of your home or office. No more getting stuck 

in traffic jams, paying for parking, standing in long queues 

and carrying heavy bags- get everything you need, when 

you need, right at your doorstep. Food shopping online is 

now easy as every product on your monthly shopping list, 

is now available online at bigbasket.com. 

They are India’s best online food and grocery store. With 

over 25,000 products and over a 1000 brands in their 

catalogue, you will find everything you are looking for. 

Right from fresh Fruits and Vegetables, Rice and Dals, 

Spices and Seasonings to Packaged products, Beverages, 

Personal care products, Meats- they have it all. One can 

choose from a wide range of options in every category, 

exclusively handpicked to help you find the best quality 

available at the lowest prices. 

Approaching the Latest Trends 

The online grocery business is fast becoming a mainstream 

retail channel. And in the next 4/5 years, one will find at 

least two or three large multi-billion dollar companies in 

the country. As the leader of the company, Hari is pretty 

sure that big basket will be one of them. He also believes 

that the largest online grocery companies will be as large as 

the physical retailers that they have today. This is 

happening rapidly because for one, customers are adopting 

it as a mainstream channel. They are already seeing it as 

their market shares are as high as physical grocery retailers 

in the top metros. And that trend will take an even stronger 

foot over the next few years.

Green Basket 

Being green is part of the culture at BigBasket. An offline 

grocery store requires stocks to move from a regional 

distribution centre to the individual stores, and then 

someone from each family has to make multiple trips to the 

store to do their shopping. 

Supermarkets consume a lot of energy for lighting, airconditioning 

and powering their refrigerators and freezers. 

They bypass these, bringing products to you straight from 

the wholesaler to your doorstep which cuts down on a lot of 

carbon emissions generated by the traditional supply chain 

and also reduces the number of cars on their roads. 

BigBasket minimizes the use of paper and plastic bags 

while delivering their products, rather all products are 

delivered in crates which are taken back and reused. Their 

fruit and vegetable trays are recyclable and they request 

their customers to return them so that they can reuse them. 

Crossing the Hurdles with Confidence 

One thing that hasn’t changed much is the inefficiencies in 

the supply chain. However, this is a universal challenge; 

there are three specific challenges that are unique to the 

e-format: 

People: 70% of their employees are blue collar workers. 

Getting the right people at the right time is obviously an 

ongoing problem; in addition, retaining them is also 

becoming a tricky problem. As the catchment dries up, they 

now go to smaller cities to hire them and provide them with 

affordable housing in the city of operations. This helps a lot 

in retention. 

Perishable Items: Sourcing, storing and handling fresh 

produce is one end of the problem; the other end is that 

fresh produce comes with an inherent problem of lower 

shelf life leading to high wastage. As a Co-founder, Hari 

thinks that they are one of the few in the world who are 

doing this well, with only 3% overall wastage. Their main 

focus has been on reducing the time between harvest and 

consumption. They are also committed to build a 

sustainable organic F&V and staples ecosystem. 

Perception: An online grocery is relatively new to the 

customer-inducing trial especially for perishables is a 

challenge. They have learnt that offering guarantees such as 

a no questions asked return guarantee on any product

educes the risk perception in customer’s minds and makes 

it easier to induce trial. The other lesson that they have 

learnt is that customer’s response to a well-designed 

product - in the case of grocery delivery this means offering 

a wide range of products, offering convenient delivery 

options, offering competitive pricing and providing a 

consistent user experience. 

Main Triggers of Growth 

In 2016, BigBasket is currently at 40,000 orders a day. The 

main triggers for them would be customer’s need for 

convenience and superior service, technology, digital 

connectivity and a more cohesive e-ecosystem. 

orders on time. As a result, over the next one week, one 

may see that slots are not available next day. And also find 

that some products may be out of stock during this 

transition period. They expect to stabilize their entire 

process within the week and to resolve all issues related to 

availability and also increase their capacity by then. 

Delivery Areas 

BigBasket currently offers their services in Bangalore, 

Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Delhi-Noida, Mysore, 

Madurai, Coimbatore, Vijayawada-Guntur, Kolkata, 

Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar, Nashik, Lucknow-Kanpur, 

Gurgaon, Vadodara, Visakhapatnam, Surat, Nagpur, Patna, 

Indore and Chandigarh Tricity city limits. 

The Customer Base 

To enhance the customer experience, BigBasket is in the 

process of making a transition to a larger warehouse, one 

which will allow them to stock a much larger range, thus 

improving availability and also allow them to move 

towards offering you same day delivery anywhere in the 

city. In addition, they are enhancing their technology backend 

to do a fully automated picking process linked to realtime 

stock availability. This will allow them to make their 

order pick process error free. 

Roadmap to Flourishing Future 

In the coming years, it is believed that the largest online 

grocery companies will be as large as the physical retailers 

that they have today. This is happening rapidly because for 

one, customers are adopting it as a mainstream channel. 

They are already seeing it as their market shares are as high 

as physical grocery retailers in the top metros and that trend 

will take an even stronger foot over the next few years. 

During this transition period, BigBasket is consciously 

reducing their capacity to handle orders to ensure that they 

do not fall short of their commitment to deliver all their

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The 10 Fastest 

Growing 

Retail Companies 


Bringing Retailing 

to the Fore 

n today’s evolving consumer centric environment and burgeoning competitive market, it is imperative for 

Imarketers to adopt a highly customised communication strategy where the channel medium is determined on the 

basis of the product and its demand. 

To swim through the tide and reach the other side, it is necessary for retailers, in fact for any industry to adopt a 

customized marketing channel strategy specifically for both luxury and mass products. The marketing for both the 

segments are like parallel streams originating from the same river, as they are different in terms of their brand identity, 

positioning, attributes, target market, and brand building process. 

In this issue of Insights Success Magazine, be sure to check out the cover story where ‘BigBasket’ allows you to walk 

away from the drudgery of grocery shopping and welcome an easy relaxed way of browsing and shopping for 

groceries. Discover new products and shop for all your food and grocery needs from the comfort of your home or 

office. No more getting stuck in traffic jams, paying for parking, standing in long queues and carrying heavy bags-get 

everything you need, when you need, right at your doorstep. 

Furthermore, while flipping the pages of Insights Success Magazine, look at the gigantic aura and the brand universe 

associated with the retail industry where companies are contributing in making a name for themselves right next to 

behemoths. BHAWAR GROUP, C-Square Info Solutions, ChannelPlay, Discover Dollar, Ezzego1, iStreet Network, 

LOGIC ERP, Next Orbit, Vinculum Solutions are the companies which have been catalogued in the Insights Success 

Magazine endeavour to deliver a complete range of great quality products with high availability and at competitive 

prices. 

Insights Success Magazine has collated the above list of fastest growing retail companies, certainly having marketing 

strategy for luxury products which needs to be highly customised as per the individual so that sense of brand universe 

is paramount. 

Insights Success Magazine has covered and presents you ‘The Fastest Growing Retail Companies 2016’, after 

shortlisting a long list of retail service provider companies where mass consumer products are manufactured with the 

purpose of selling huge quantity, hence they have all the basic concepts of marketing involved so that the reach is 

greater.





Company Name 

Management 

Brief 

BHAWAR GROUP 

bhawar.com 

Sanjay Bhawar Lunked 

Founder & Director 

Bhawar is one of the largest distribution house, DST & logistics 

provider for fast moving consumer goods in India. 

Big Basket 

bigbasket.com 

Hari Menon 


BigBasket (Innovative Retail Concepts Private Limited) is 

India’s largest online food and grocery store. 

C-Square 

csquare.in 

Sripal Bachawat & 

Sajith Thattalath 

Directors 

C-Square is the leading solution provider of enterprise-resourceplanning 

(ERP) software & business intelligence (BI) tool for the 

pharmaceutical industry in India. 

Channelplay 

channelplay.in 

Sundeep Holani 


Channelplay is a leading Sales Force Automation, Shopper 

Marketing & Channel Management company in India. 

Discover Dollar 

discoverdollar.com 

Subrahmanya Rao 

Founder & CEO 

Discover Dollar helps retailers to discover hidden profits & 

capture overpayments by analyzing all data sources. 

Ezeego1 

ezeego1.com 

Neelu Singh 

CEO & Director 

Ezeegol is your online travel agent that offers you a one stop 

travel shop for cheap flight bookings, online hotel reservations, 

holidays & package tours, car rentals, bus tickets, cruises & 

more. 

iStreet Bazaar 

istreetnetwork.com 

istreetbazaar.com 

Pradeep Malu & 

Lakshya Malu 

Founders 

iStreet Network Ltd. is an Internet and Retail Catalogue 

company. 

LOGIC ERP 

logicerp.com 

Swarndeep Singh 

MD 

LOGIC ERP is providing robust & comprehensive solution for 

distribution chain and this is powerful solution for Inventory, 

Scheme & Discount, Claim Settlement, Batch Controlling, 

Pricing, Taxation Account & Finance etc. 

NextOrbit 

nextorbit.com 

Kishore Rajgopal 

Founder & CEO 

NextOrbit is a cloud-based product that uses data sciences driven 

recommendations to Predict and Mitigate Retail Out-of-Stock. 

Vinculum Solutions 

vinculumgroup.com 

Venkat Nott 

CEO & Founder 

Vinculum is a software company enabling the eCommerce 

ecosystem with powerful SaaS based products for Multi Channel 

retailing.





Channelplay: 

India’s Leading 

Channel Management 

Company 

In the retail marketing industry, there is no clear leader 

and no great company. Companies that have not done 

focused evaluations of the vendors in this industry will 

increasingly do it because the spending share on this 

segment will become big. When that starts happening, the 

good companies will see more growth while the smaller 

ones will have to either get better or disappear. And this 

industry will see more organization and some clear leaders 

will emerge. Channelplay is one of them. 

Channelplay’s Raison D’etre 

Selling..... Everyone seems to hate it. People hate being 

sold to, and most sellers also only seem to do it grudgingly. 

Yet, every single person in the world makes a living 

because things get sold. It might be done in a better way. 

Channelplay exists to help people sell better. When people 

sell better, customers have pleasant experiences, sellers 

have better careers, their companies have richer 

shareholders, economies do better and countries progress. 

Channelplay is a retail marketing company that helps its 

clients sell more effectively. Within four years of existence, 

it has become one of India’s leading retail marketing 

companies and currently serves the world’s top mobile and 

PC brands. It is a leading Sales Force Automation, Shopper 

Marketing & Channel Management company in India. 

Managing over 5000 field staff, and working with over 60 

clients in diverse industries, they’ve learnt from the 

challenges of delivering high-performance solutions. 

Inception Story 

It was in the year 2006 that the terrific trio squad of 

Sundeep Holani-CEO & Co-founder, Tushar-Co-founder 

and Suhas-Co-founder incorporated Channelplay Limited. 

These three did their MBA from IIM Calcutta. They always 

wanted to start a business together.Sundeep had around 4 

years of retail IT consulting experience and have spent most 

of his time in the US and China where he got to learn how 

retail works and how IT is implemented in retail. 

Suhas and Tushar had worked for some of the biggest 

names in consumer products and services in India. While 

this trio took jobs from campus, they frequently shared 

business plans and discussed opportunities. Of all the plans 

discussed, Channelplay took off! 

Services Proffered by Channelplay 

Channelplay has 5 verticals within which they operate. In 

the first one, they do Advocacy directly, for this they have a 

large team of sales representatives who represent brands 

and position themselves inside the stores; these can vary 

from big brands like Croma, Reliance Digital etc. to small 

mom & pop stores in markets across the city. 

18 || September 2016





Sundeep Holani 

Co-founder and CEO 

We aim to be one of 

India’s best 

channel management 

companies 

so that we can 

provide meaningful 

work experiences and 

growth opportunities 

to our people, 

and deliver great 

value to our clients 

““ 

Another service that drives advocacy 

in a way is their Training and 

Development service; in this 

Channelplay provides extensive 

training to the employees recruited by 

the retailers themselves. They ensure 

that they are capable enough of dealing 

and selling off their brand’s products. 

Thirdly, they provide Visual 

Merchandising (VM), already catering 

to around 15000 stores in the country, 

their team of VM experts visit the store 

and ensure that maximum brand 

visibility is attained. This can be done 

by ensuring the proper arrangement of 

stock, deployment of collateral in the 

form of posters, danglers etc. 

The fourth thing Channelplay does is 

Mystery Shopping & Audit. They have 

their Retail Intelligence Vertical, in 

which they do retail audits, mystery 

shopping, wherein a person would go 

to these outlets, announced or 

unannounced, like a shadow-customer. 

This enables Channelplay to analyze 

their shortcomings and performance. 

Lastly, it is Experiential Marketing, 

where they do activations, events, 

promotions etc., making the brand 

visible outside the store environment, 

enabling the foot-falls to raise which in 

turn becomes the fulcrum for the other 

4 services. 

Uniqueness of Channelplay 

Channelplay is one of the few 

professionally managed companies in 

the space. Its large footprint of over 

5000 employees, revenue of around 

150 crores in various cities across India 

gives their 60 clients unparalleled 

reach. Channelplay is also at the 

leading edge of technology 

implementation to drive efficiency and 

transparency in its services. 

Channelplay can be rated as among the 

best in the world in technology 

implementation. 

Future Outlook 

Channelplay is focused on the Indian 

market, at least for the next couple of 

years. There is a lot more they want to 

do to bring operational and process 

excellence before they increase their 

geographical footprint. On the revenue 

side, things are growing satisfactorily, 

and they would like to keep the 

momentum. The long-term plan is to 

be India’s best and biggest, and to be 

listed on the NSE. 

www.channelplay.in 

September 2016 || 19


Trends that are 

Driving e-Commerce 

in India 

Indians are known for their ‘street smart’ economic 

mindset that enables them to find solutions to 

impregnable challenges despite the constraints. 

This is the similar ‘innovative mindset’ which is making 

Indian entrepreneurs embrace analytics, digitisation, and 

technology to develop platforms and deliver services and 

products to the end customer creating a new online buying 

behavior. 

In the context, India’s retail opportunity is substantial and 

affected by several factors such as the rising standards of 

living, hyper-connected young population, upwardly mobile 

middle class, the explosion of social media platforms, 

deeper internet penetration, and increased smartphone 

penetration. So, a significant growth of e-Commerce is 

expected in the next two years. 

Gaining Momentum of Government Initiatives 

The Government of India has been active in leveraging and 

embracing e-Commerce digital platforms to transform and 

organize traditional offline markets such as those of 

agricultural product. The Government has launched an e- 

commerce platform to link the farmers with the vegetable 

markets of various states to sell the agro commodities. Also, 

flagship initiatives such as Start-up India, Digital India, 

Skill India, and Innovation Fund are contributing to the 

growth of the e-Commerce industry. 

Increase in the Internet Penetration 

The e-commerce industry in India has been growing with 

the rise in the internet penetration due to major 

improvements in the telecom infrastructure. While the 3G 

and 4G services are making a way into India along with 

declining data tariffs, internet data spend is growing 

significantly. Even when India ranks the lowest in Asia in 



internet speed, the data rates in India are 3 times cheaper 

than in the US and 2 times cheaper than in China. 

Government schemes such as a National Optical Fiber 

Network (NOFN) can significantly increase the internet 

penetration in the rural communities as well as provide a 

means for e-Commerce companies to tap the huge market 

potential there. 

Growth in Smartphone Adoption 

Smartphone growth has been massive over the years and is 

expected to exhibit more growth in the coming years. The 

smartphone’s adoption in India is propelled by several 

factors such as low prices due to high competition, ease of 

accessibility to content, and prevalence of internet enabled 

services. According to a report, India has the highest share 

of globally 41% of mobile based e-Commerce sales. Almost 

70-75% of the online traffic of e-Commerce sites come 

from mobile phones, the leading e-Commerce companies 

stated and thus higher revenues are coming from mobile 

applications like 50% for Flipkart while 70% for Quikr. 

Evolution of New Payment Solutions 

Cash on Delivery (CoD) has been the most popular mode of 

payment for Indian e-Commerce transactions. Cash 

transactions result in high administration cost even for the 

e-commerce companies. Hence, to address these challenges, 

new digital payment solutions are evolving. Further, the 

Indian government’s initiative has extended banking 

facilities through the ‘Jan Dhan Yojana’ scheme which has 

added over 110 million debit cards thereby providing these 

customers access to electronic payments. The electronic 

wallets have been launched and also digital payment 

products from traditional banks for faster transactions to 

ease the payment process in e-Commerce. 

Partnerships of Logistics Space with Hyper-local 

Companies and India Post 

Customers are getting next-day delivery of products. Due to 

the challenges in terms of return orders, higher standards of 

customer service, and handling huge volumes of delivery, 

the industry has seen the rise of several third-party logistics 

service providers that handles last-mile deliveries. There is 

an increasing number of partnerships of e-Commerce 

companies with the third-party logistics service providers in 

order to reach mainly in tier two and three cities. Also 

leading e-Commerce players have their own logistics arms 

for enhanced customer experience and for greater control 

on deliveries. 

GST to Enhance the Growth of e-Commerce 

GST is expected to enforce a single comprehensive indirect 

tax regime that will be applicable across on the supply of 

goods and services across all states. The implementation of 

GST is expected to include the service tax, central excise 

duty, and additional customs duty at the central level and 

CST, VAT, and entry tax at the state level. It will enhance an 

operational efficiency of the e-Commerce industry in the 

many ways like the transparency and simplification of taxes 

across the borders in India, elimination of the incidence of 

double-taxation, and improvement in the efficiency of the 

supply chain. 

The e-Commerce is changing the lives of millions, but there 

are also a number of people who prefer offline shopping. If 

e-Commerce is to make a huge impact in the coming years 

then these trends will definitely affect the business. 



Beware How We Treat Our 

Employees during a Slowdown . . . 

Employees have Elephant Memory . . 

s kids, we were always curious to know ‘do 

Aelephants really have a strong memory’ and ‘do 

they really remember / recall their experiences 

throughout their life?’; many of us believe it’s a YES 

because we have witnessed how the ‘Chain around their 

legs’ makes them domesticated. 

Humans are also no different from them, we grow up to be 

what we are based on our past experiences. 

The last 18 -24 months hasn’t been easy for either the 

employers or the employees as the organizations have 

initiated quite a few steps to cope with these tiring times. 

While some of them are quite justifiable & ethical but at the 

same time quite a few of them are irrational which have 

caused more damage than doing any good. 

Nobody debates on the ‘tough calls’ as they are the need of 

the hour but I guess most of us would agree that the 

approach adopted to get these done are something which 

could have been more sensitive and careful. For arguments 

sake, how do we pass an unpopular decision’s information 

(Organization or through someone else) or who passes the 

information (Leadership or someone unknown) etc. 

For example, it would probably be easy for an employee to 

go back to the families and share sensitive news like losing 

jobs, pay cuts, freeze of bonuses, no perks etc. in a planned 

& proactive manner at his / her pace, rather than reading it 

through newspapers first and thereby not being ably 

equipped to answer family and friends when probed. 

If we have to summarize Employees experiences, they 

would range from ‘shocked’, ‘disbelief’, ‘feeling cheated’ 

to ‘feeling completely helpless’ etc. None of the above 

experiences are something which anyone would like to 

recall or cherish. So what has triggered these experiences, 

predominantly we can consolidate into three reasons. 

Leadership Vacuum 

Employees have always believed that their leaders would 

lead from the front, in normal times or in crisis. But many 

of them woke to rude reality that these leaders were either 

too shy to discuss these matters in open or be available to 

clarify on the actions initiated as the crisis grew. 

‘Leadership based on convenience’ is something which has 

never been and will never be popular among employees. 

Lack of Maturity in Policy Management 

To add to this confusion & chaos was the HR outlook 

towards People Policies. For example, what is rational to 

have all those weekend ‘Biryani’ parties when times were 

good or take away something precious & critical like late 

night dropping by ‘taxi’ in name of cost rationalizations. 

The Way We Communicate, Matters 

When we can communicate in an open-hearted one to one 

discussions why do we take the route of emails which are of 

non-Personal mode. We all have experienced that nonpersonal 

communication only heightens the crisis and don't 

act as softener because invariably they leave the 

interpretation of message to the reader and don't give an 

option of clarifying. 

Cut Cost, NOT CONVERSATIONS 

Cutting cost is a vital component of survival and there is no 

denial to it. But cutting conversations is something which 

we all can avoid for sure. Now is the time for more ‘Open 

Houses’ and ‘Town Halls’ than ever. Now is the time for 

Open Hearted Discussions and Confessions. Now is the 

time for investing TIME rather than divesting time away 

from employees. 

Where is the WAR CRY? 

Critical times lead to confusion and chaos and the best way 



to resolve them is to build momentum and singular focus 

among all the employees. The best way to do so would be 

by identifying one Big Target / Goal and build a war cry 

towards it. 

Lead by Listening 

Leadership across the broad from the CEO to Managers 

have to spend time with the employees not so much in 

explaining the rationale behind the decisions but in listening 

to them and clarifying the apprehensions and 

misconceptions they may have. 

It is important & critical to note that the anger is not so 

much about ‘what’s happening’ but ‘the way’ it is being 

handled. The anger may subside if we only agree to be 

transparent to them and treat our employee as ‘rational & 

matured adults’ and not with kid gloves. 

Believing that they have ‘short memory’ and they will 

forget and forgive us as soon as we announce the next 

biryani weekend party is definitely a bad idea. 

About The Author 

K Srinivas Rao, Chief Strategist and Partner, is a human 

capital strategist with the expertise of 23 years across 

Human Capital Value Chain. Prior to The Strategist, he was 

heading Strategy - HR at Satyam Computer Services. 

Formerly, he held management roles at various levels in 

CATS (Computer Associates-TCG), Baan Info Systems, 

Ernst & Young, Videocon International. 

An avid writer and guest speaker on the subject of Change 

Management and Human Capital, he wrote 5 books under 

the “101 Smart Ideas Series” published in 2015, “Managing 

HR Issues in a Merger” - published in the Handbook of 

Business Strategy 2002,“Whispers of a Devil in an 

Angel”,“Principles and Practices of Management”. He also 

co-authored a book titled ‘Unconscious Leadership 

Conspiracy’ and has published more than a dozen articles in 

International & National Publications. 

Mr. Rao holds dual Masters’ degrees and attended Indore 

School of Social Work, where he topped the class of '93 and 

later pursued Masters in Military Sciences. Currently, he is 

a Research Scholar at XLRI Jamshedpur and a visiting 

faculty at ISB and IIM Indore. He was awarded “HR 

Leadership Award” in 2008-09 by Employer Branding 

Institute and Super Achiever as HR Professional in 2006 by 

Indira Group and Fun & Joy Institute. 

K Srinivas Rao 

Chief Strategist & Partner 

The Strategist 






C-SQUARE: 

Controlling Your Business 

Anytime, Anywhere 

C-Square with its ability to create advance 

technology solutions, which bridge the requirement 

gaps, has emerged as the leading solution provider 

of Enterprise-Resource-Planning (ERP) software & 

business intelligence (BI) tool for the pharmaceutical 

industry in India. 

Artisans behind C-Square 

Sripal Bachawat & Sajith Thattalath, Directors of C- 

Square come from a pharma background. Sripal started his 

career as an Operations Manager in a Pharmaceutical 

Distribution company which gave him the deep knowledge 

of the demand side business of Pharmaceuticals in India. 

Sajith, being the technical person has been providing 

Pharma solutions for the past 26 years. The synergy of both 

these founders has resulted in solutions tailor-made to the 

requirements of the Pharma industry in India. 

Their first solution was PharmAssist, which is positioned 

for Pharma Wholesalers. The major concern for Pharma 

wholesalers in 2002, when they started C-Square, was 

exercising process control on a distribution business where 

the volumes are high due to the high number of brands in 

each company's portfolio. This added a dynamic situation 

every time as the number of batches in circulation kept 

increasing. Reverse logistics was another area where they 

ensured clean process discipline. The process adherence 

was essential keeping in mind the tenets of the Drug Rules 

in India. 

Exclusive Services Proffered 

Go Green SFA (GGSFA) is the cloud-based sales force 

automation tool designed to improve the effectiveness of 

the medical field force with access on the go with both 

mobile and web interfaces. The solution has been designed 

specifically for the medical field force in India, giving them 

easy to use data capturing pages, ensuring higher 

acceptance levels and thereby enabling the decision makers 

to take proactive measures in the very competitive and 

fragmented Pharma sales and marketing industry in India. 

GGSFA is currently having more than 25,000 users and 

trusted by over 60 companies. 

Go For Plus (Go4+) enables stakeholders, internal 

customers to access the required information at a click of a 

button. It streamlines and integrates multiple functions and 

systems into one solution and gives total visibility and 

control of operations. Simple yet powerful, Go4+ serves as 

your primary business management application. No more 

duplication, inefficient data entry, and reconciliation 

bottlenecks. Go4+ is used in over 430 C&Fs across India. 

PharmAssist(PA) is their oldest and most mature 

application for the distributor segment of the Pharma supply 

chain. In volume driven revenue seen in distribution, 

ultimate control at all the employee touch points in the 

work flow is the hallmark of a mature specific business 

application. PharmAssist not only offers all this but also 

removes human intervention in reports and statutory 

returns. C-Square has more than 500 PA customer base 

across India. 

Pharmsoft is the widely accepted and copied solution for 

the standalone pharmacies. It offers ease of use and also a 

360o view of the customer eco system. It also incorporates 

the digital CIMS which helps the user to get a deep dive 

view of the myriad brands in the Indian Pharma market. 

They have more than 3600 installations across the country 

for Pharmsoft. 






Our biggest 

marketers are our 

own customers. 

They speak for us 

and we consider 

ourselves as their 

partners 

in progress 

““ 

Eco Green is the flagship brand for the 

retail chains and also functions as an e- 

commerce engine. Eco Green is an 

ERP which can be deployed for 

distributed enterprises and has a depth 

of user profiles which encompasses the 

front end POS user to the warehouse 

manager and the picker. It also has a 

fully functional accounts and finance 

functionality. 

The Clientele 

C-Square is attaining new heights of 

success and transforming their dreams 

into reality and satisfying their 

customers by providing solutions 

which act as force multipliers to the 

Pharma demand side business players. 

Secondly, focus on sales with 

concentrated actions and concerted 

response consistent with the need of 

the market. And lastly, provides 

solutions which are customer centric 

and scalable with the needs of the 

business. 

Future Perspective 

C-Square is making big strides in the 

e-commerce segment with apps for 

both the B2B and B2C. Pharma 

Industry is a brand driven market with 

over 70000 brands. This results in 

inappropriate stocking, making the 

journey of shoppers quite complex. 

Besides, the insufficient stocking of the 

key fast moving brands creates friction 

of non-availability of essential drugs. 

This raises the need for creation of 

advanced technology solutions to 

bridge the requirement gaps. 

Offering an e-commerce ordering 

platform (B2B) that gives the stock 

positions of the supplier in real time is 

what is going to set them apart. Other 

than this C-Square is actively involved 

in apps to ensure patient adherence to 

the drug regimen. This is another area 

where more activity will be seen as 

health care providers have realized the 

power of the mobile as an aide. 

Sripal Bachawat & Sajith Thattalath 

Directors 






Discover Dollar: 

A Revolutionary Technology for 

Stopping Leakages 

and Overpayment 

Retail Industry is mostly affected by leakages and 

over-payment. This has been absolute nightmare 

for merchandise managers and management where 

significant portion of Gross Margins were lost due to overpayment 

and under receipts. But Bangalore based fast 

growing startup Discover Dollar Technologies Pvt. Ltd 

have developed cutting edge technological solution to 

effectively overcome problems of over-payment and 

provide real-time analytics. 

Discover More with Discover Dollar 

Discover Dollar helps retailers to detect and resolve 

overpayments, missed discounts and un-recovered vendor 

incomes. Their powerful algorithms can scan through all 

available data sources including unstructured data like 

emails and contracts and notify relevant people in 

organization about potential overpayment and resolve it by 

just a click of a button. 

Backbone of Discover Dollar 

Subrahmanya Rao (Subu), Founder & CEO of Discover 

Dollar Technologies is a dynamic young professional with 

extensive knowledge in Retail, Merchandise and Recovery 

Audit Industry. Prior to Discover Dollar, Subu had startup 

in Education space and worked for Atlanta based company 

where he was involved in recovering multi-million dollar 

over-payments made by Retailers. He also has an MBA 

from SDM-IMD in 2010 and student entrepreneur during 

his graduation. 

Subu was the only delegate representative chosen from 

India for prestigious TiECon 2015 in Silicon Valley. He was 

also a part of NASSCOM's “Innotrek” delegation to Silicon 

Valley, where brightest Indian startups with global ambition 

are taken to San Francisco to meet the best startups, 

founders and investors of Silicon Valley. 

As a founder of the company, Subu has developed a breakthrough 

solution which can detect & resolve over-payments 

made by retailers in real-time. Over the period of his career, 

he wore many hats as a Founder, Analyst, Auditor, 

Developer, Architect, Marketer, Manager, Mentor and 

Strategist. Subu is also very keen on learning new 

technology & trends. As a result, he has ability to solve 

complex problems by applying concepts from multidisciplines. 

As an Individual, Subu is highly motivated, 

creative and quick learner. He not only has big ideas, but 

also has passion & ability to execute. Subu always look 

forward for challenging assignments where he can apply his 

skills and learn new things. 

Services Proffered by Discover Dollar 

The dynamics of retail is changing at a very fast pace. The 

change is demanding new way of looking at old problem. 

Discover Dollar is here to help their clients in gaining new 

insights to client's merchandise operation. With Discover 

Dollar solutions their clients will be able to see Vendor 

Profitability, Margin distribution across categories, Vendor 

Compliance, Spike Report, Target GP to Actual GP, Margin 

Shrinkage Report, Bill Back Allowance Report etc. And 

with this analytics successful retailers will drive value and 

enhance profit in sustainable fashion. Their services 

include: 

Recovery Analytics: They recover overpaid amount to 

vendors due to various reasons like system error, process 

error, human error, policy change and more. They get into 

deeper insights to achieve sustainable profits. 






Subrahmanya Rao 

Founder & CEO 

$1 Million 

is lost 

for every 

$1 Billion in 

Sales by 

Retailers 

““ 

Merchandise Analytics: They help 

retailers with their valuable insights 

into retailer's merchandise 

procurement, profitability and margin 

analysis, vendor performance and 

many more custom reports. This will 

essentially help their customers to 

make better negotiations and deals 

with the vendors. 

The Customer Base 

Discover Dollar (D$) had built robust 

revenue leakage capturing product but 

had difficulty reaching out to large 

customers especially Fortune 500s. 

Target provided an opportunity to D$ 

to validate their product through its 

accelerator program. D$ got its first 

customer and now reached out by 

multiple Fortune 500 for implementing 

solution. 

Discover Dollar helps corporations 

discover more profits and cash flows 

by identifying revenue leakages and 

overpayments by analyzing various 

data sources includes emails & 

contracts. 

Discover Dollar’s product was 

validated during Target Accelerator 

Program and is now used by Fortune 

500 retailers to capture multi-million 

dollar revenue leakages including 

Target Corporation which is second 

largest discount store in United States 

after Walmart. Discover Dollar has 

helped to save more than $50M of 

revenue leakage to be captur 

ed in right time which is 

commendable. 

Awards and Recognition 

Discover Dollar’s solution was 

awarded globally “Top 5 Most 

Innovative Solution” by SAP in 

Florida. Their solution is sought by 

Fortune 500 Companies with multibillion 

dollar revenue. They were part 

of Target Accelerator and have Mr. 

Shibulal (ex-CEO Infosys) and Mr. 

Lalit Ahuja (ex-CEO Target India) as 

mentors. Also, they were part of 

Wharton Business School’s Case study 

“Technology & Entrepreneurship in 

India”. Brightest undergrads from 

Wharton Business School and IIM 

Bangalore have interned with them for 

consecutive two years. Discover Dollar 

is featured among ‘Emerging 20 Retail 

Software Companies by CIO Review 

2015’. 


#Hashtag 


Redefining Online Retailing 

rop in a profit of retail, closure of stores, the 

Demptiness of the malls are proclaimed that the 

internet is taking down another industry yet. In 

contrast with the past, Brick and mortar stores are appearing 

in the yellow pages. Recently, the Census Bureau delivered 

a data report showing that online retail sales surged 15.2 

percent between the first quarter of 2015 and the first 

quarter of 2016. The data report shows that only 0.8 percent 

of retail sales transformed from offline to online between 

the beginning of 2015 and 2016. 

In the past decade, some online companies in the US have 

announced its physical existence to better market their 

products, increase online traffic and sales, and forge closer 

customer relations. At the same time, Amazon includes 

specialty and clothing stores like Casper Warby, Birchbox, 

Parker, and Bonobos. 

This movement also shines back the broader industry 

essentials over the multi-channel retailing, where Retailers’ 

prime focus was just to provide the products to their 

customers with a seamless experience be it online shopping 

through a desktop or at a traditional retail store. 

For an instance, Macy’s and Nordstrom, invest an estimated 

$6.4m and $4m in paid search records for the highest 

thousand attire related keywords in the first quarter of 2015, 

as per the study from L2 Inc, a research firm, tracks digital 

brands. 

As per the L2 report, Clicking on an online site is not 

appropriate to the highest-placed search ads, with little 

room for differentiation. Which ultimately means, the ads 

which have been running for a long time, have high 

rankings, and a high impression share in highly competitive 

markets. The report describes “evolved retailers”, online 

merchants that have opened brick and mortar storefronts. 

What was the reason to do this? Actually, they want to 

create awareness among the customers and make them safe 

in the area of retail marketing. Also, for its vendors and 

personal products like jewelry, clothing, and eyewear 

selling the material as per the request of their customers’ 

needs. 

Many of the offline forays have come up with a trail attempt 

shop just before announcing their new innovative stores 

especially in high-profile shopping areas such as SoHo 

neighborhood in New York, Michigan Avenue in Chicago. 

And, as per the response they have enlarged their stores 

rapidly. 

“The big benefit of the flagship stores is that they’re terrific 

marketing vehicles,” opined Jason Goldberg, who is the 

Senior Vice-President of Commerce and Content at digital 

agency Razorfish. “Not only do those stores tend to be 

economically successful on their own but they generate a 

huge lift in incremental shopping to the online store.” 

Even talking about Warby Parker, they have built a popular 

brand by selling fashionable, elegant eyewear frames for 


#Hashtag 

just under $100. In 2010, three years later, they have started 

their online flagship Soho and today, the company has 

twenty stores countrywide, also aiming to plan twenty more 

to add in this year. 

Dave Gilboa, Co-founder and Co-chief Executive of Warby 

Parker stated the company stores which have been open at 

least two years are already profitable. “We also see a halo 

effect where stores themselves become a great generator of 

awareness for our brand and drive a lot of traffic to our 

website, as well and accelerate our e-commerce sales,” he 

further added. 

At the same time, other e-tailers have started their 

showrooms which are emphasized on the basic essentials. 

This technique enables customers to size and sample 

products while lessening real estate and other traditional 

retail value. Bonobos, one of the best-known brands for 

menswear, adopts this technique, and its 20 other stores 

allow its customers try on clothing while orders are 

available online with the home delivery option. Also, one 

point because men agreed with it, while shopping at the 

store they were unnecessary compelled by the shopping 

bags. 

“This supported our idea of using Bonobos.com as the 

place to fulfill orders, so we didn't have to worry about 

stocking inventory in a location and we could focus more 

on the customer experience,” stated Erin Ersenkal, 

Bonobos’ Chief Revenue Officer. 

And the result was Bonobos’ stores gained twice profit just 

because of its online approach. 

Island. As per Harvey Kanter, CEO of Blue Nile, 

Consumers are denying to buy online just because they are 

not being able to see and touch and feel the product. 

As compared with other e-retailers categories, jewelry still 

has less penetration online, stated Kanter. Venturing offline 

is a way to motivate the vendors for its higher growth. 

Since June, Blue Nile has seen a rise in traffic and sales in 

the area around its first Long Island location. Now, they 

plan to open their other three to four Webrooms in this year. 

However, Claude de Jocas, research shows on the L2 study, 

stated the advantages of economies of scale could result 

into some more locations added. “Some are also beefing up 

their physical retail teams with senior-level hires, 

suggesting aggressive expansion plans are in the works,” 

she added. 

If talking about Amazon bookstore, this is linked to its site 

closely. In Amazon books there is a list of titles displayed if 

the customer wishes to select books in a particular field. 

These books are detailed with the users’ reviews and 

ratings. Each and every book is displayed face-out with a 

barcode to look at the price using its app. Also, the outlet 

allows people test drive its devices such as the Kindle e- 

reader and Fire tablets. 

Today, Retail is evolving with great products and services. 

In other words, flexibility is the key by which retailers can 

follow their customers and improve their products as per 

their requirements. In coming decades, let see how the 

shopping and buying experience will changed in each retail 

category. 

Likewise, Blue Nile, a jewelry e-tailer, has opened its first 

standalone outpost in the Roosevelt Field mall on Long 






iStreet Bazaar: 

Re-Engineering 

Retail 

Technology is transforming business world over. 

However, its India story is a bit different. India is 

the second most populous country in the world and 

still e-commerce (non-travel) has touched ~3 percent of the 

population and less than ONE percent of Retail. India just 

doesn’t adopt technologies and processes the way they 

operate elsewhere around the world. Few inherent reasons 

like a reach, education (know-how), trust etc. prompted us 

to innovate and adapt the eCommerce process for India 

India and we created iStreet Bazaar” says Lakshya Malu, 

co-founder of iStreet Bazaar. 

The Trailblazers 

Pradeep Malu and Lakshya Malu are the Co-founders of 

iStreet Bazar. They have been selling products from clip to 

car ONLINE since 2007. And their biggest online 

consumer auction of selling a car for over Rs. 30 lacs is still 

a benchmark in India. 

Pradeep is an Entrepreneur and a Chartered Accountant, 

received several recognition for his work and recently he is 

a recipient of ‘Business Leader of the Year 2015’ award 

from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. 

Lakshya graduated as a Mechanical Engineer from Boston 

University, USA. After graduating he returned to India and 

has been working on various eCommerce projects since last 

5 years. He conceptualized and executed the concept of 

Internet Retail in India which has now taken a shape and 

called ‘iStreet Bazaar’. His mission was to build 

technology and process whereby common people of India 

can benefit from the same. He has worked on several 

projects at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New 

York, Cyber Materials LLC, Boston etc. 

The Journey 

While narrating the inception story of iStreet Bazaar, 

Pradeep accentuates, “Few years back, when my office 

assistant Yadav asked me an advance of Rs. 2,000 to buy a 

mobile handset. He said he liked a particular handset and 

that was available in the nearby mobile shop for Rs. 1,900 

as against the MRP of Rs. 2200.” 

“I suggested him to wait for one more day to get a better 

deal.” 

“I searched the model online and to my surprise, the same 

model was available on one of the websites for Rs. 1,250. I 

bought him that and saved huge money for him,” says 

Pradeep. 

“Yadav was very happy as he was able to buy a mobile 

handset which he liked the most and saved Rs. 650. And a 

couple of more such instances made me think, how the 

benefit of technology can reach 100 crore common people 

of India,” opines Pradeep. 

Lakshya heard this story and suggested to build a 

technology and a process to be able to take this benefit to 

the common people of India. They created a concept of 

Internet Retail store, which is a fusion of online-offline and 

would re-engineer the existing Retail formats like Mom & 

Pop store, Modern Retail and eCommerce. 






Our objective is to 

enable every common 

person to buy what 

he/she wants with ease 

and at great online 

prices so that they 

save money – paise 

bachao, life banao 

““ 

Pradeep Malu & Lakshya Malu 

Founders 

Pitching the Idea 

iStreet business model is a fusion of 

online (eCommerce) and offline retail. 

The objective of iStreet Bazaar is to 

use technology to empower the local 

store or the local entrepreneur and in 

turn give access to huge product & 

service choice to every common 

person of Bharat. 

They are setting up ‘iStreet Bazaar’- 

India’s first Internet Retail Store Chain 

across India to take benefit of 

eCommerce to smaller towns and 

villages and even to common people of 

metro cities. It would give the common 

man the benefits, comfort and joy of 

shopping thru the Internet. iStreet 

Bazaar through its world class platform 

and network stores offers thousands of 

products and hundreds of brands at 

extremely competitive prices so that 

customers in smaller towns and 

villages can easily buy products which 

otherwise won’t be available in their 

area. iStreet Bazaar eliminates 

payment related issues that arise when 

transacting online. 

In Trend- Buying ‘Online’ in a trend 

which brings in geo & price parity. 

They evolved ‘iStreet Bazaar’ where 

anyone, literally anyone, can buy 

products of their choice at the best 

price. The objective of iStreet Bazaar is 

to enable every common person to buy 

what he / she wants with ease and at 

great online prices. iStreet Bazaar also 

puts a face to the online transaction 

since the customers will be transacting 

at a store with a person behind the 

counter. This increases the level of 

trust that is necessary for any online 

purchase. 

In the Indian scenario, this definitely 

becomes a big advantage for the stores 

since trust is one of the key factors in 

the adoption of eCommerce. They 

started the project in January 2014 and 

in just 30 months, they have created 

over 5700 stores across Western India 

with over 1.8 million transactions 

nd 

during its 2 year from just ~40,000 

transactions in the first year registered 

a growth of over 4500%. It’s growing 

and its one of the top 10 fastest Retail 

companies in India. 

Certainly, it is a great Indian story. It’s 

a true Indian project impacting every 

India-especially, common people of 

India. It is one of the top 10 fastest 

Retail company which not only 

growing but also Re-Engineering 

Indian Retail. In time to come, when 

fusion retail or Internet Retail is talked 

about globally, iStreet Bazaar shall be 

the first name which has been able to 

simplify eCommerce for the common 

people of India. 


Behind the Scenes 

Challenges 

RETAIL 

INDUSTRY 

is Facing in 

INDIA 

The Indian Retail industry is one 

of the top five retail industries 

in the world and has emerged 

as the most dynamic and fast-paced 

industry. It accounts for over 8 percent 

employment and around 10 percent of 

India’s GDP. 

The Indian Retail Market is expected 

to nearly double by 2020 from 2015. 

But there are some challenges the retail 

industry is facing in India. 

Indian Consumer 

A decade ago, the Indian consumer 

used to save most of his income and 

purchase the bare necessities. The 

Indian consumer was satisfied with 

only necessary requirements. There 

was no place for unnecessary needs 

and luxuries. 

But that time has gone. The Indian 

consumer has gone through a 

remarkable transformation. And now 

the consumer is armed with higher 

income, credit cards, desire to improve 

the standard of living and exposure to 

the shopping culture of the west. 

Multiple malls, supermarkets and 

organized retail with a variety of 

products are fueling the needs of the 

Indian Consumer. 

Young Shoppers 

India has a young population and it’s 

very large in number. The internet and 

television have made an impact on the 

mentality of young consumers. The 

generation is earning money at a very 

young age, and it is a lot, big thanks to 

BPO and other avenues of employment 

that cater to students in college and 

schools. As a result, they are ready to 

spend most of their income on apparel, 

electronics, and accessories. 

Higher Incomes 

A number of employment opportunities 

have emerged due to liberalization. Job 

prospects in the country are looking up 

because of the expansion of domestic 

corporations and entry of a number of 

multinationals. As a result, 

consumption and income are projected 

to increase quickly over the upcoming 

year that sets the stage for promising 

and exciting retail market in the future 

in the country. 

Urbanization 

Growing urbanization in the country is 

also responsible for the changing 

consumer mentality. The local 

population gets converted from net 

savers to the net spenders, as 

urbanization is spreading beyond the 

major cities which are consistent in the 

both developed countries like USA, 

UK and developing countries like 

Thailand and Malaysia. 

No Money, No Problem 

A huge expansion has been taken in the 

financial sector. Credit cards and shortterm 

loans were difficult to access a 

decade ago. But the scenario is no 

longer the same. Short-term loans and 

credit cards have become easily 

accessible. 

Flexible financing options, credit card 

reward schemes and all other common 

lures are tempting the Indian consumer 

to shop. From a home to an 

automobile, the loans are freely 

available. The big-ticket items that 

were previously within the reach of 

consumer only after the years of saying 

are easier to buy. 

Several international retailers are 

trying to invest in India to leverage the 

strong demand of Indian consumers. In 

the coming years will evolve as a 

mature and larger market, but to 

happen so, investors need to consider 

all the challenges which retail 

marketing is facing. 






LOGIC ERP: 

Scaling Up Your 

Retail Business 

Today, it is mandatory for any retailer looking to 

scale up business to know their customer, know 

their market, and work out the back-end first and to 

have the right people in the right place. Retailers face the 

unenviable task of operating in a fragmented market. And to 

top it, they have to deal with other operational challenges 

such as poor supply chain infrastructure, restrictive foreign 

direct investment policies and complex tax regimes. Thus 

said, having seen the positive impact that organized retail 

has on its economy, India is making more room for the 

industry to grow. 

Surely, organized retail is not at its infancy anymore and it 

is now time for players to take their business to the next 

level by scaling up their operations. And, for a successful 

scale up of operations, it is essential for the retailer to make 

sure that there are certain checks that they run like 

understanding consumer needs, determining objective and 

assessing capability to build a strong back-end. 

Company That Understands the Market 

Before plotting an expansion plan, a retailer must assess his 

market opportunities with maturity. Headquartered in 

Mohali, Punjab, LOGIC ERP Solutions is one such pioneer 

in this industry providing the best solutions in the form of 

ERPs and Vertical-specific Software & Applications that 

bridges the gap between stores & headquarters, thereby 

making it easier to access real-time data & information 

across various stages. Equipped with a fleet of 

exceptionally skilled and qualified hands of professionals, 

the company has its own operational facility, branch offices 

and associated partners in every metropolitan cities of 

India. 

Flamboyant behind LOGIC ERP 

Swarndeep Singh, MD of LOGIC ERP Solutions Pvt. Ltd. 

is the trailblazer behind the company’s growth. Swarndeep 

post graduated from Ajmer University. Since the inception 

of LOGIC ERP in 1993, he guided the company’s expertise 

in providing integrated ERP Software, Retail & POS 

Software to thousands of customers till date, helping them 

to meet their business goals. 

Solutions LOGIC ERP Proffers 

LOGIC ERP’s assorted range of software is developed for 

diversified laterals and fields in a business. Instead of a 

generic one-size-fits all solutions, their portfolio includes 

Industry-specific, Vertical-specific and Module-specific 

ERP Software applications that are comprehensively 

available under an array of LOGIC Solutions. 

ERP solutions developed by LOGIC are characterized for 

its flexibility and scalability to aide in business growth of 

the customers in the time ahead. Cost-effective solutions 

that are designed for specific needs and verticals, help midsized 

to large business ventures to address issues, review 

business performances and assist in making strategic 

decisions to thrive in the markets. 

LOGIC ERP’s Mantra 

Justifying the LOGIC Mantra, the solutions and services are 

focused to Inspire Markets and Aspire Businesses. Over the 

span of twenty progressive years, LOGIC ERP, as a 

company, carved the forte of best in industry with at-par 

business solutions for their customers. They take pride in 

establishing the trust of esteemed clients and partners and 

share the joy of success and achievements with the entire 






Mr. Swarndeep Singh 

MD 

We focus on our 

core products 

Web POS & 

Distribution, Omni 

Channel Retailing, 

Merchandise Financial 

Planning & 

Assortment 

Analysis and 

Auto Replenishment 

““ 

fraternity associated with LOGIC ERP. 

The Client Base 

Innovatively, the company is rendering 

its expertise to most of the big players, 

commercial houses and top business 

brands of Retail, Apparel & Footwear, 

Pharmaceutical, FMCG, Electronics & 

Telecommunication, and many other 

verticals. One of their striking stories 

speaks about their zest to accomplish 

that has never been achieved before. 

Kewal Kiran Clothing Ltd. has huge 

network of over 350 POS in multiple 

locations across India. They needed to 

be technologically supported for dayto-day 

technical & functional 

problems. 

Additionally, they wanted transactions 

of all PoS to reflect at head office for 

MIS, maximum or less than an hour 

old transactions of retail stores. They 

implemented LOGIC’s Online 

Reporting Solutions and Auto Report 

Mailer to manage their warehouse and 

head office operations and 

conveniently warded-off the worries of 

sales team that needed sales & target 

reports and ledger of franchisee & 

channel partners on the move. 

LOGIC ERP has successfully resolved 

concerns of other retail clients like 

Killer, Gini & Jony, Portico, Red Tape, 

Red Chief, Numero Uno and many 

more. 

Other concern addressed is the 

requirement of both books of accounts, 

i.e., Indian accounting format and 

foreign books, which was successfully 

implemented to their clients ‘Calvin 

Klein’ and ‘French Connection’. Their 

in-house workforce of professionally 

experienced teams always aim towards 

result-driven practices, attention to 

needs and real-time communication. 

Trustworthily, LOGIC has never 

ignored the security of the most 

important asset of their client i.e., 

‘Data’. The servers are robust and 

coupled with the best security software 

to ascertain intrusion-proof protection. 

However, for ERP on Cloud, company 

strictly adheres to non-disclosure 

policy. Advancing with their ‘On 

Premises Model’, the data will now be 

available at the customer’s end. 

Moreover, the company is all set to roll 

out a new dimension in data security, 

where, every customer will have their 

own admin panel to manage their data 

and password policy. 






NextOrbit: 

Mitigating Your Retail 

Out of Stock 

Founded in 2014, NextOrbit is a cloud platform to 

predict and mitigate Out-of-Stock in Retail. This 

platform produces on-demand, daily and weekly 

predictions of SKUs which will be going out-of-stock by 

store location, date, and time. It provides alerts about the 

quantity by which the store ordering needs to be updated. 

NextOrbit is headquartered in Frisco TX with its product 

development center in Bangalore, India. 

Services Proffered by NextOrbit 

The NextOrbit platform enhances the operational 

effectiveness of a Retailer’s merchandising and planning. 

This platform helps discover and service latent demand. 

The primary feature of NextOrbit is a granular 

understanding of out-of-stock of each item, at each store 

every day. 

NextOrbit predicts out-of-stock enabling a Retailer to take 

proactive action before losing sales and impacting the 

customer experience. The store allocations created by 

NextOrbit enables right-stocking of products to meet full 

price customer demand, no more and no less. 

The demand forecasts created by NextOrbit, especially for 

the fashion industry, enable procurement/manufacturing of 

the right quantity of each product to maximize full price sell 

through, and minimize markdowns. The early warning 

signals of their fashion platform enable the Retailers to 

understand how a new product is behaving. Their OOS 

(out-of-stock) alerts enable store staff to effectively 

replenish store shelves in a way to meet customer demand. 

The Transformation Artist 

Kishore Rajgopal, Founder & CEO of NextOrbit, 

represents the spirit of enthusiasm, perseverance, and 

inspirational leadership to build startups that impact 

businesses and society. 

Kishore holds a master’s degree in Industrial Management 

and a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering both 

from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India. 

Kishore understood the power of Data Sciences and 

Predictive Analytics to transform the way businesses run. 

He saw the endemic problem of out-of-stock in the Retail 

Industry. As retailing is all about creating the “moment of 

truth” so all the efforts in creating the moment of truth are 

of no use if the product is not available on the shelf or on 

the website when the customer needs it. Kishore and the 

team crafted the algorithms and models to predict when an 

item will go out-of-stock. This enables retailers to be 

proactive in merchandising their products on their shelves 

or their websites. 

Understanding and addressing a lost opportunity and latent 

demand is critical for retailers, now more than ever. Kishore 

believes that retailers can enhance same-store-sales by 4- 

10% by mitigating out-of-stock. The opportunity for 

fashion and apparel Retail is even larger. Critical to the 

NextOrbit is the cloud platform that crunches not only data 

from the retailer, but also external variables such as local 

events, holidays, weather, and growth of the local economy. 

Kishore sees NextOrbit growing like a bamboo tree. The 

company wants to build foundations that too rock solid 


““ 





Kishore Rajgopal 

Founder and CEO 

Our goal is to infuse 

enormous intelligence 

and data-driven into 

demand planning, 

merchandising, 

allocation, 

and shelving 

operations 

platform with successful onboard 

clients. The company wants to obtain 

testimonials. And according to 

Kishore, a typical testimonial will be 

like: 

“Because of NextOrbit and a 

supportive team we have improved 

same store sales by 12% and enhanced 

full price sell through to 90%. Their 

diagnostic helps us to understand the 

extent of the lost opportunity we were 

sitting on. Their OOS alerts make us 

get the store shelves with fewer staff. 

Yes. It is not as if US retailers have less 

staff. It is just that they do not have 

data-driven tools to help them in the 

job of replenishing shelves-a boring 

but most important work”. 

Once the foundations are building, 

Kishore just wants to see the company 

growing and scaling rapidly. 

Strength and Forte 

NextOrbit is headed to creating a 

unique category. They believe that the 

genre of the product they are 

envisioning does not exist today. 

Creating a category requires leading 

with thought leadership, working 

closely with academia, creating a 

global brand and a brand that creates 

pull demand. They see themselves 

creating IP, being written about in 

well-known publications and obtaining 

patents. 

The Clientele 

Most Retailer systems focus on 

transaction execution. The intelligence 

element is often weak. The biggest 

benefit that NextOrbit’s clients see is 

improved customer experience and 

loyalty. Clients often see a same-storesales 

improvement of between 4 to 

10% and store inventory reduction of 

5-10%. And on a continuous basis, 

NextOrbit ensure optimal operations 

and foundations for scaling Retailer 

operations. 

Future Perspective 

As the CEO of NextOrbit, Kishore sees 

NextOrbit becoming a cloud system of 

record for most Retailers worldwide. 

The synergy arising from such a 

situation will be tremendous, and the 

value created will be shared by all 

parties-Retailers, CP brands and others. 

Kishore created the change by leading 

from the front, constantly in touch with 

clients, understand true client needs, 

ensuring that it gets baked into the 

platform and most of all are to hire and 

inspire a good team. 



Emerging Technologies and 

where do we stand as a Start-up 

Nation in Global Market… 

The entire human history and anthropology is full of 

evidences as to how intelligent human beings have 

given rise to new technology and how they utilized 

that new technology to further our chances of survival. The 

technological development has reached such a phase now 

where human survival is something which is taken for 

granted. The enormous size of human population is a 

testimony to that fact. If it wasn’t for the newer drugs and 

equipments and procedures we would have still been dying 

of minor diseases like diarrhea. This is just one example as 

to how deep an impact the new inventions and 

technological developments have had on human life at 

large. 

Technology, of its own accord, cannot reach the millions 

and millions of human beings. It needs some assistance 

from another aspect of human interaction i.e. Economy. In 

today’s parlance Economy and Market go hand in hand. 

The Market forces have been instrumental in the spread of 

newer technologies to the grass roots. The combination of 

these two factors has had a humongous impact on our 

individual, social, political and personal lives. 

But this wasn’t the case if you travel only a few hundred 

years back. The current phase of technological and 

economical development could be traced back to the period 

which is famously known as ‘Industrial Revolution’. It 

started in the late 18th century Britain and spread to the 

various parts of the world. The parts of the world which 

could garner these forces in their favor are currently known 

as ‘Developed Countries’. The so called “West” with capital 

‘W’ is the single word to describe them. Honestly speaking 

the rest of the world is still catching up with them. 

So where does India stand in all of this? We are a 

developing country and currently among the emerging 

economies of the world. The tag of “Developing country” 

means we are among those who are still catching up with 

the developed world. But the tag of ‘Emerging Economy’ 

gives that much of a positive outlook about our future 

prospects. 

Now keeping this larger picture in mind we can now 

discuss as to how Indian entrepreneurs can make it big in 

the Global arena. Last year was hailed as a year of Start-ups 

for India. With the change of political guard and a new 

found optimism of “Achchhe Din” young Indians have 

indeed come forward with their skills and courage in the 

business arena. It would be a bit too early to reach a 

judgement about the viability and success that these start- 



ups will have in the long run. We need 

to give them some time before they can 

establish themselves in the market, 

domestic as well as global! 

However there is this undeniable trend 

among these start-ups that not many 

among them are based on Inventions or 

something Substantially New. What I 

mean by ‘Substantially New’ is 

something which can have a Global 

impact. Something which might 

fundamentally change the way we do 

things. The period of Industrial 

Revolution is abound with such 

examples. For example, Telephone 

completely changed the way we 

communicate with people. And if 

telephone seems to be an example 

from the distant past then we can 

consider Internet and Mobile 

technology which has further 

fundamentally changed the way we do 

things. None of the Start-ups that have 

come up in the last year in India show 

such a promise. Unfortunately most of 

Suneet B Sabale 

Owner & CEO, 

Brainiac IP Solutions. 

our Start-ups are kind of Imitation 

ventures. For example, online 

shopping websites like Flipkart, 

Snapdeal. They are the ideal 

representatives of the Indian start-ups 

although they are more than a few 

years old now. There are limitations to 

such ventures because as soon as 

domestic market is opened up to 

similar players in the global arena (e.g. 

Amazon) there is always a chance that 

our smaller fishes will be swallowed 

up by the bigger ones. 

To be fare to our young generation of 

entrepreneurs they do have all the skill 

sets and leadership qualities to make a 

huge impact in the global arena. Our 

young minds are fed with the same 

knowledge about how to run a business 

as do those in the West. Our business 

schools are imparting quality 

knowledge to its students which can 

help them become great business 

persons of the future. So problem of 

Indian Start-ups does not lie in the 

qualities that the individual 

entrepreneurs possess but in lack of an 

organized effort at a national level to 

do well in the extremely competitive 

global economy. 

An organized effort at national level 

means a synchronized, complementary 

and harmonious movement of the 

major players in the country’s 

economy i.e. the Political will, 

Research and Development efforts and 

the Market forces. Research and 

Development should give our young 

creative minds enough incentives to 

explore and come up with new 

inventions rather than make do with 

‘The Jugad’ method which is a 

buzzword of today’s young generation. 

These new technological inventions 

will then require the assistance of 

market forces in order to penetrate the 

grass roots of our domestic as well as 

global market. The abundance of 

political will in last couple of years has 

been a major advantage that the young 

entrepreneurs can make the most of. 

In absence of this organized effort our 

Indian start ups are facing competition 

from an organized research and 

development industry of the Western 

world which is well supplied with 

finances from the transnational private 

players which are hungry for more and 

more profits. The already established 

industrial giants have the capacity to 

eat our young start ups in absence of 

new inventions. No matter how good 

the managerial skills and leadership 

qualities the individual might have, 

there are limits to what they can do 

alone. 

This opinion may smell of an IP 

professionals bias towards Research 

and Development but if we turn some 

pages of history then this bias might 

well be justified.

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