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- The Accelerator Conundrum
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Coke, Pepsi & the Indian Heartland
December 2004. We were traveling in India. As we waited for our train at a small railway station in Bolpur, a small town near Calcutta, we watched a boy of 10 or 12 arrange his merchandise in preparation for boarding the train to Calcutta. He stacked up hundreds of packets of chips, cookies, and snacks
Should Netflix own proprietary content?
Tiffany does. HBO does. Jewelry designer Paloma Picasso designs exclusive pieces for Tiffany. It gives consumers a reason to come to Tiffany and only to Tiffany to buy designer jewelry by Paloma Picasso, Elsa Peretti and others. Roger McNamee writes: “If you are a content owner, proliferating distribution offers lots of opportunity for incremental profits.
Tourism in India: Huge Opportunity
We were traveling in North India during the holidays last December. We focused mainly on Rajasthan and Varanasi, and our flight to Khajuraho was cancelled. Rajasthan is one of the most popular tourist destinations in India, perhaps second only to Agra and the Taj Mahal. It has enormous and spectacular forts like Amber in Jaipur,
Disney and Globalization
The Media and Entertainment Industry is already going through a huge overhaul, and will continue to do so over the next decade, as Broadband finally becomes mainstream and ubiquitous, and other disruptive technology forces like Video-on-Demand (VOD), Blogs, Online Advertising, etc. start to establish stronger foothold. In this section, I would like to discuss issues
Looking to create a signature as a fashion designer?
I used to work with a small New York Designer called Lafayette 148 in the 1999-2000 timeframe. It was (and still is) a beautiful designer that wanted to use the highest quality fabrics but make the clothes available at relatively lower prices. [In the fashion business, the terminology would be Designer merchandise at Bridge prices.]
Sick of Campbell soups?
India is a paradise for delicious candies and other edibles: sweets, snacks, pickles … Trader Joe’s has made Mochi ice-creams now a household name in North America. The women in the villages almost always cook, and many of them could put the fanciest chefs in top restaurants worldwide to test. In Bengali cuisine, one of
How big is the global candle business?
But is it only the distribution channels for CPG categories that offer opportunities for such micro-entrepreneurship? I don’t think so. Most lifestyle retailers today sell candles. And one of their major business challenges is gross margin. If Federated focuses on putting in a supply chain that taps into the 4 Billion potential suppliers, and offers
Tupperware Party around the Village Pond
Avon and Mary Kay developed the model of home-based product representatives for their cosmetics. Then there were the Tupperware parties. The village women are also target markets for detergents, hair oil, and myriad of other products that MNCs want to sell. At the time of the 2001 census, there were 638,000 villages in India, and
