Local businesses, local mindset

The South of India boasts of restaurants as brands. There is MTR, Maiyas, Adigas, Saravana Bhavan and lots more. What drives them to be what they are?

Bengaluru

Nagappa avare , restaurant brands are big all over the world. In the space of South Indian restaurants, all the brands you mention are big, and I would add Sagar Ratna in the north as well. It’s a dominant player in this space.

I do believe restaurant businesses are taste-run businesses. You have to run every restaurant of yours as a restaurant. You cannot run this business with a centralised kitchen that supplies food to every outlet and still maintain quality and freshness that is the USP of the restaurant business. People in this space have also realised that this is not a business you can franchise. Every restaurant is a local business that has to be run with a local mindset.

Many in this business have moved into the packaged foods space as well. Take Maiyas, for instance. The company has shed the skin of the basic restaurant business and has decided to package food and beverage offerings for a taste-at-home experience. The logic is simple. If you cannot come to my restaurant, my restaurant will come to you. In a packaged form.

Out here in its packaged foods and businesses avatar, Maiyas offers items which are ready to eat, ready to drink, ready to cook, and totally ready snacks and foods. And more. This is an FMCG play that can reach every nook and corner of the country and beyond.

I want to be a business writer. Is this a space to be in?

Mumbai

Jayesh, India is a happening place to be a business writer today. The biggest opportunity for business writers and publishers in India is the fact that India is the flavour of the decade ahead. This is really India’s business era. The business of India is being keenly watched not only by the insider, but by the outsider as well. An outside-in view of India is seeking to enrich itself from an inside-out view of the country and its business. This is restricted not only to the business of the country, but to the entire consumer ecosystem at large. It is about everything that affects the Indian as a consumer. It is equally about Indians as people in business. This is also about Indian business and thinking processes. Take for instance frugal innovation and jugaad !

This big opportunity is all about a big bunch of business writers emanating from this land of ours. Business writers who will have the world reading them for a change. In the old days, if you published in India, you remained in India. Not anymore.

Would you recommend a good life-altering book for a budding marketer of the future?

Mumbai

Shonali, this is an easy one. The one big book of my life is the Eckhart Tolle tome, The Power of Now .

It is a life-defining book. When I read it, I could grudgingly emote with every line and every thought. It seemed totally centric to my very DNA.

I adopted it hook, line and sinker. For the last decade and more, this book has defined my way of life. Today is important. And within today it is this very moment that is critical. Imagine literally that it is all that you have. Today is to that extent the only reality. Don’t fret and fume about yesterday, and equally don’t fantasise about the tomorrow. There may just be none. Just don’t gloat in the successes of yesterday. It’s over and gone. You are only as good as your today. If you really implement it in the world of marketing tomorrow, you will win. Try it for size.

Harish Bijoor is a brand strategy expert and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. Mail your queries to cat.a.lyst@thehindu.co.in

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