The Market Play

Few days back I was reading Mr. N. R. Narayana Murthy, it is really amazing to read his writings. Though every word of his writings give you a kind of dimension about his life, his work, his ethics but I was more curious to know about the pre economic reforms and post economic reforms journey of an Indian entrepreneur.

It was truly thrilling to know when a man had to apply for an application to import 150MB hard disk and wait for another six months to get application sanctioned. His writing gave me an idea how IT sector went viral after those economic reforms and how ventures got benefited from it like never before.Being an entrepreneur Mr. Murthy's every word was thanking that visionary thinking of India's former Prime Minister Mr. P.V. Narasimha Rao, which changed the structure of the country 360 degrees.

In a huge market like India, things go viral overnight. Sometimes even producer of the product can't believe that the product he made thriving the country. There are lots of instances where we can see how trivial things went viral and sore the sky and swept the market all together.

Those are the days I was even not born when India won its first ever cricket world cup in 1987, till then cricket became the undisputed religion of a secular country and with no doubt cricketers the God. It went viral then and there is no hope it will stop ever (at least in India). Those are the days back in my childhood, I can vaguely remind around 1997s when a weekly soap on television went viral. India's very first super hero Shaktiman. Kind of Superman fictional character, cashing ever high TRP for Indian government TV channel Doordarshan. I remember those days when our lives were completely guided by this character. Market in every sector also enjoyed it's share of pie. It was a time when garment manufactures were highly banking on the costumes of the Indian hero. For every kid the these costumes were the highly aspiring thing of his life and always remained at the top of his wishlist unlike Steve Jobs bitten apple now.

It was the time when a sweet chewing gum Boomer went viral. Many others eloquently followed this trend. This gum hardly had gone that viral after people knowing they were chewing sweet latex and it's harmful for their health if the company had not conceptualized free tattoos and stickers for kids. Those were the days when the meaning of  the word tattoo was that flexible body character, who can save your friends from any misshapen. Kids used to feel proud of having the bright and shining collection of those tattoos. Probably I feel those marbles were almost replaced by these tattoos and bets went more sophisticate. Really kids have been the unbeatable market strategy and panacea.

All these things are relatively viral till time but the only difference is the meanings has changed. Taste has changed so as those fictional characters. Lots of things went crazy in market whether it's small or large in this time period. Last year a real man, a singer, a composer, a so called viral marketing teacher Mr. Dhanush went viral on internet. The list is not exhaustive at all. It's said 'only thing which is constant in life is change', Indian market has been always an eyewitness of this. It was a time when mouse, cat, dogs used to rule the animation world but  now all these are replaced with human caricatures and are equally famous too. I have heard people commenting "why are there two nostrils in one nose ?" but being frugal is not always the right way to do business in India. People here need full value of their money, otherwise they will not embrace you very long.

cheers !

What's the secret ingredient ?

How much time it takes us to make things easy, from crappy, hazy idea to transform it into worthy information or does it really worth to consider about it ? There are lots of such questions often comes into one's mind. But condition applies, only when it's given a thought prior to move on. The Indian education system has evolved a lot from earlier time as I am being told by my father. But somewhere down the line we remained unable to erase the foot prints. So we can say we have improve our walking style but we still like to follow the engraved foot prints.

Someone has nicely said, "for gazelle every morning starts with a thought how much it should run fast so that it can save itself from the fastest of the fast lion and for a lion the same morning starts with a thought how to prey on the slowest of the slow gazelle so that it doesn't sleep hungry." Things are subjective indeed.

It's really important to express what we feel, but what is more important is that we have a healthy discussion over it. Conversation often makes things easy. What we can say about it is, it's a free service what can give you a lot. This time I am going to share similar sort of conversation with an army person who was also a victim of day to day increasing inflation like other common men and is ready to discuss about his air tight budget planning anytime with those whom he feels can understand what budget means. Though it was nothing related to family budget since he was a retired army person and I am a college student. According to him it's hard to understand the meaning of monthly budget for me.

I met the army person at a salon where he came to get his not so lengthy hair get trimmed. It was an interesting discussion going on between the person and the barber that in this inflation it's really hard to survive. According to him he can get 19-20k per month and in this salary he has to survive with his wife and children. He said for the people like him, not to talk about hotel food where it's hard to arrange pulses. It remind me the recent planning commission's report where it suggested Rs.32 per day earner is not a BPL !

His talk about hotel remind me a post I read sometime back where he says people come in restaurants because it's an occasion for them, he goes there because it's a requirement. Nice observation indeed ! But this time situation was different. For the army person it's neither requirement nor occasion but still he wants to visit hotels and restaurants. I find nothing wrong in this. Why would anyone find it wrong ? Don't we visit our neighbors without any reason ? Don't we go to amusement parks, movies without any reason ? He wants to go but can't because according to him it's the thing that only rich person afford not a common man. I was shocked it's the condition when we say in India we are enjoying ever high per capita income of around 60K !  Certainly we don't have equal distribution of money around. well...

We generally prefer home food than hotel or restaurant food for various reasons. Affordability is one of the reasons. But in India food is not the thing which can be taken for granted anytime. People have their own tastes, flavors and colors. It's not necessary that all these qualities can only be found in a restaurant food. How can we forget about Indian street food. These street vendors serve the same taste and flavor but yeah hygiene remains an issue most of the time. Here money comes into action. These street vendors have to arrange things in limited funds where they have to trade off between taste and ambiance. They choose ambiance most of the time.

I have no idea what a student is being taught in a hotel management institute. If they are feed with conventional knowledge or taught about above it, because we are always not sure about what we are taught in a B-school. Why can't we get a place where a person thinks first about what should he eat than to how much should be in his wallet to eat that ? After all we like pay for what we eat not like to eat what we can pay for. It's worth thinking about what can be the secret ingredient that can make one's food available for everyone prior to noticeable barriers.

Cheers !!