India's retail industry: Bachat Times

You might be wondering on the title of the blog . It was a long and boring weekend for me. No power at my place on saturday from 3PM to 8PM and life sucked. I was just sitting on edge of my 6th floor apartment and enjoying the cool blowing breeze. Also had time to visit "Pune Central", part of Pantloon group's supermakret. I love the place, it not just because of good babes in there, its just for the fact that its a ONE STOP SHOP for clothing .

Coming back to my title ,"Bachat Times" was a four page suppliment which every Puneite received with Sunday Times. It was an advertising gimmick by Subhiksha, India's retail/supermarket chain. There were about 12-15 articles and each targetted different domains or areas of retailing. I spent almost 2 hours to read between the lines , but for someone like me who knows in and out of retailing(thanks to Trolley Wars), there was nothing special. The pages have tried to hit on each segment of society and all the age levels.
Below are few of snippets from article(in italics) and each is followed by my comments.

Subhiksha,now India's largest supermarket chain . It has over 650 stores spread across many cities(45 in Bangalore and 25 in Pune). I have travelled lenght and breadth of Pune in last 8 months and havent seen a single Subhiksha shop. Also was discussing with my brother yesterday about situation in Bangalore and he said the nearest one is like 5Kms from my house. I dont understand where are those 44 others located :) ! Most stores have opened in last few months and more opening every day.Most other supermarkets have less than 100 stores accross country. No matter where you are , Subhiksha store is close to you. I dont see any Subhiksha store close to me in 4Km radius. The next few months will see addition of 400 more stores accross country . Guys , do you have any plan for second rung cities ? It is where the retail gonna be a hit !

Finest quality daals, rice and wheat . Subhiksha attempts to source the best quality of grains directly from where they are produced. What ! you do that everyday ? Our experienced buyers pick the best quality . Oops, experienced buyers ? I believe retailing is still naive in India. How come experienced buyers ? May be those from Kiraana stores ! Dont tell me that you have hired MBA grads to do that :)) .

Lowest price, best quality . God ! I read these words 50 times in 4 pages. With no quality competition, they are in their honeymoon period. Let the game begin, you can wait and watch !

Now no compromise when you buy . In recent survery in a few cities it was found that 90% local grocers cheated/misled customers. This is a dig at out neighbourhood stores. Hope they will learn some lesson and dont continue cheating !

Aren't the ads of many supermarket misleading you ? The entire article targetted BIG BAZAAR. Cos once in a while we see full page ad,as also mentioned in article, of Big Bazaar mentioning some 50-60 items and discounts over them and other hooplah hullah .

There were few good articles like "Low prices at subhiksha, the inside story". This explained more of reason why the products are at lower prices compared to other stores. Points like large volume purchase, no high street stores, no fancy building etc. I also like the way it is trying to getin more customers in other ways like - Unconditional cash refund, telephone orders, exchange any defective product etc.