‘Govt entry into retail can disrupt the sector'

‘Amma’ brand of subsidised products launched by the late Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa had disrupted the retail sector in the state with the government marketing products, said Harish Bijoor, Brand Expert & Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Delivering the keynote address at the two-day 16th MMA All India Management Students’ Convention on the theme ‘Changing face of retailing’, Bijoor said Jayalalithaa’s government launched a diverse range of products, including water, pharmaceuticals and salt, under the Amma brand. “Who would have imagined that a government will be in marketing. Every time a government enters marketing, it decimates the local environment and competitors,” he said.

A government marketing products disrupts other players such as multinationals and Indian companies in the retail sector, said Bijoor. “I am involved with two other state governments to build marketing formats for government that will touch people,” he said without giving names of the two governments.

Bijoor said ever so often there is an ‘ism’ like communalism, fascism, capitalism, and 20 other ‘isms’ that exists and dominate people’s lives. “The next 100 years is the era of ‘digitalism,” he said.

The retail sector in future is about ‘digitalism influenced retail.’ No retail can remain only in physical form and needs to become digital retail as well. Digital disruption is all around us, he told the over 1,000 students attending the event.

An average Indian in a big city spends 2.21 hours on digital use. In rural India, it is 5.10 hours as they now have access to mobile phones and connectivity. “Digitalism is the new religion and you need to keep it in mind,” he told the students.

BusinessLine is the media partner for the event.

Suresh Narayanan, Chairman & Managing Director, Nestle India Ltd, delivering the inaugural address, told the students that with newer technologies like Internet of Things coming in, things have changed so dramatically that unless “you change yourself and retrain yourselves, you are going to find yourself extremely irrelevant.”

Retail formats are changing. The concept of the store remains, but the meaning of a store for a millennial is different from a baby boomer. “For people of my generation, the store is in a physical form while the store for you is virtual. Buying behaviours are changing dramatically,” he said.

For example, when Nestle relaunched Maggi two years ago in the online mode, around 60,000 boxes were picked up in less than five minutes. “The buzz we created because of one single act was probably worth a couple of months of advertising. That’s how the modes of delivery and consumers are behaving,” he said.