Is the location, best for your business

What is in a location, when I have a great concept and people will flock, where ever I am, this can be a killer thought, literally. Where your business is located is going to be a very crucial.

Having worked with a Brand which was in to franchising of spoken English classes, the need to locate the centres at the right place was always dwelled by me to the people who were getting the franchisees on board. We had few very successful centres, each one of them ideally located. One near the Bus terminus & Suburban station in Chennai, Near Dadar Station in Mumbai, One at the busy SR Nagar bus stop in Hyderabad and another at Maitri Vanam in Ameerpet, Hyderabad.

First two being closer to the railway stations, the centre was easily accessible to the learners, SR Nagar is a busy location and a centre close to the Bus stop was just the place. Maitri Vanam was where hundreds of training institutes were located and what better place to be. You may be located at the 2^nd or 3^rd floor of a building without a lift, students will still come, same thing cannot be said if your target client is elderly, they will simply stay away.

All these places you would get lot of walk ins without much publicity. This fact has to be remembered depending on the business we select. Today in T. Nagar Chennai, you start a textile shop or a gold souk, you are sure to get business, simply because the place got recognised for these two. Similarly the various Khao Gallis in various cities, start a cart or a shop in this location to serve any variety food, you are sure to find business. It is unfortunate, our governments don’t try to encourage Khao gallis or food courts like the Singapore government did.

I have a case study of two confectionery outlets which started setting up their outlets about the same time in Chennai. One went boldly and started choosing locations which are on prominent roads, with parking and the other started where ever they could get a place irrespective of the fact whether the outlet is visible n accessible. I am sure you would have known the result the one which didn’t go for proper location had to shut shop soon, in spite of serving better variety.

It is also important how you position yourself. There was this place on Ormes road, Chennai, where many a restaurant was started and soon shut shop. Then came Murugan Idly who opened in this so called 'Jinxed' place and today they are going strong in that location, simply because, they were a best option for many a vegetarian household (north Indian community) in that locality and it is doing well. This had prompted many fresh Vegetarian only outlets to come up in the vicinity, all doing well.

One famous garment brand opened an outlet near a flyover in the second floor of a building in T. Nagar, with an entrance which needs to be searched, soon they had to shift out and start it on the main road, wonder why in the first place the franchise owners allowed them to open the outlet in the first location.

Sometimes your brand or offering might get you crowd where ever you are located but, being better located can get your more business, unless you are someone, who makes only 50 dosas in a day and sell them each at Rs.250 a pc and still be happy (Avenue Road, Bangalore)

Today biggest problem in the cities and towns is the parking, however much you have perfect valet system in place, people would be mindful, if you have sufficient parking, based on which they would like to visit your outlet.

Keeping this fact in mind, many an outlet is being set-up in malls, simply because there is plenty of parking available. Walk-ins are assured, but how do you convert the crowd in to business is up to what you have to offer. UB city, Bangalore, is an exclusive place for up market brands, however their restaurants are flocked by youngsters, who are wanting a good time. In this place one should not get carried away by seeing the crowd and start an outlet, as the restaurant going crowd is most unlikely be the buyers for your offerings.

What can be concluded from all this is, you have to have an ideal location for your kind of business, for this, it will be very worth while to spend time understanding your clientele and how best to reach them.

You want help in choosing a good location for your business, call 9840429384

(Copyright of the pictures used in this blog rests with the respective owners)

Persistence pays off

 While I wouldn’t call my self a good practitioner of what I am going to write about being persistent, it is a lesson that I have learnt over the years and had to rue many a hasty decision. It is very important that one pursues what they are confident of achieving.

In every business there are going to be hard times only those who are finding a way out within the business can have long term success. Many of us give up or start looking at greener pastures elsewhere, this inevitably leads us to look at greenfield businesses or something we are new for. I have a couple of case studies which i could share.

This is a story of two business people who are in real estate development business in Chennai. Around the same time both started putting up apartments in early 80's. One started with his brother and another with a set of partners. Both later became independent owners of their respective businesses after parting with their erstwhile partners.

Person 1, had a successful business in promoting residential apartment buildings, he was very much successful in the JV route and continued to build apartments each building having about 6-8 apartments mostly.

Person 2 also chose the JV route and started getting good offers and was into buildings with 10-20 apartments per building.

P1 continued to leave his brand on many buildings with his property owners getting him more JV partners due to timely delivery, with low inventory to sell, he was able to accomplish more finished projects and more goodwill.

P2 decided to go public and get his company listed, for this purpose he signed up few mega projects. He managed to get his public issue subscribed and he had money to develop the projects, he wanted. Unfortunately few bad apples upset his plans and his plans started going haywire. More over the property market went into a recession mode. Most of the big projects got struck with unsold inventory. Forcing P2 to start looking at other means to shore up his revenues.

Meanwhile P1 continued with his build small model and was able to whether the recession and was smiling all the way to the bank when most of his peers were struggling with unsold inventory.

What tells us here is persistence to the business and finding a niche can help the business person weather the short term bad times in the business, in this period if we start looking at other ways to ensure revenues or become too ambitious, then the result will be like the person 2.

Similarly there is another story of continuation which paid off in the case of one and how it affected the other in Liquor wholesale business in Bangalore.

Businessman 1 who was a first generation entrepreneur, managed to come close to the management of a Liquor concessionary in Bangalore and was able to get a good patronage, he built a house for himself and started seeing good cash flows.

Businessman 2 who was an employee in a liquor wholesale, took up an agency from the same concessionary and started establishing his business, he used to even accompany the consignments and ensure prompt delivery.

Suddenly the concessionary changed hands from one business house to another. Both the persons referred above were able to build bridges with the new concessionary and continued with their business. B1 was bit by a bug and wanted to start a steel re-rolling business, which looked very profitable at that point of time (Mid 90's). He went about establishing the same along with a technocrat. When the technocrat left in the midway, our man started focusing on this new venture more. Leaving the liquor wholesale to his trusted boys back at Bangalore. While B2 with focused approach was able to increase the volumes and was able to earn more profits. B1 with cash flows from liquor business getting diverted to the steel business naturally lost favour with the concessionary and was given less preference in terms of supplies.

B2 built a house, bought more properties established his brother in IT business. B1 languished with the jolt given by P Chidambaram as the FM to the steel re-rolling industry in the United front govt and lost both the liquor business and in steel business.

Both are real stories, which goes to show how one could flourish even in adverse situations if they stick to their core business and what will happen when we start thinking of riding two horses at a time.

While we could ape Dhirubhai or his son Mukesh in thinking about expansion or backward or froward integration, we have to remember, there has to be a scale to think and also one business which can give us the stable revenues to pursue the new businesses. This is more important in the case of Indian businesses, since our thinking is in terms of our kids running the show or ethical values being what they are, Only when systems and values and accountability rule the roost,

One has to be very careful about expansions and diversification's, it might be just good to stick to what you are good at.

(Copyright of the images used rests with the respective owners)

ATM Protection

With the recent attack on a female customer of a bank, lot of noise is being made about lack of security at the ATM's. No amount of security can actually prevent these attacks with each mode having it's own lacunae.

While it might be impossible to bring in a total fool proof system for protecting the customers using the ATM, i have few thoughts which might help deter the potential attackers.

Shutter Lock system: A simple method is to create a mechanism to lock the shutter when it is open so that it cannot be pulled down the way it was done by the attacker in the recent incident at Bangalore. A slightly advanced method could be as follows.

Each shutter would be fixed with anti pull down mechanism either on one side or on both sides of the shutter. These would be something like number locks, which will lock or unlock only with authorised persons pressing the required combination to either lock or unlock. Authorised person are Bank Employee, Cash handling company or security company supervisor. Only these people will be given the password either to lock or unlock. A internal system of changing the combination periodically once in 15/30 days can be devised.

This devise is fitted in such a way that a retractable obstacle would open once the device is locked and this device would be placed at a height where the shutter could comfortably be stopped without creating obstacle for movement of people to-fro to the ATM. Either one or two units on either side of the shutter can be positioned. This locking device could have a inbuilt Alarm mechanism. In the event any forceful attempts are being made (more than 3 times) this device will trigger a Siren which can start belching and further additions can be considered like sending an alert to the nearest Police station with a GSM chip inserted in it.

This is being suggested with an assumption that no bank would like to pull down its ATM shutters and would like to function 24/7. In the event they need to fill cash carryout maintenance etc then the authorised person have the password to use the same to pull the shutter half drawn.

Panic Button: One could consider placing a panic button at a height of about 5 feet (to prevent children from fooling around) somewhere in the ATM room or to the machine itself. In case of an attack the person under attack can press the button which will set out a 'Siren' and or a alert to the nearest Police station. Location of the Panic button can be highlighted with a board clearly mentioning the purpose.

Location of the ATM: It is important that all ATM's should be in such places where there is proper lighting, crowd movement. They should not be permitted to be opened in bi lanes just to ensure visibility and access. Any higher rent paid by the bank for locating the ATM on a main road can be recovered in terms of advertisement mileage they get with their bill board.

Either the locking system or the Panic button may not cost more than one month wages of a security person.

Lets hope something in these lines will be done. If there are better methods, then they should be initiated and implemented.

Are airlines no longer worried about customer service

jet-airways which operates the #Jetkonnect airline gave its passengers an experience which they would like to grudgingly forget.
9W 2735 flight on 9th November 2012 was scheduled to depart by 6AM, unusually they started boarding the passengers by 5-15AM and all of us were in the flight by almost 5-40AM. Then about 6AM an announcement comes from the first officer that the visibility at Bengaluru airport was poor and they will get their next weather update at 6.30 and asked us to bear with it.
at 6.30 the commander himself made an announcement that whether has not improved and next announcement at 7AM. again at 7 AM we were told thre is slight improvement and not enough for flight to takeoff.
In the meanwhile crew started selling breakfast to those hungry passengers, since most or all of us reached the airport by 5AM (meaning a wake up of about 3 or 3.30 AM depending where you live), suddenly by about 7.10 the main steward came and informed the cr

ew which were selling breakfast that we are rolling as weather has improved and the crew stopped selling and were getting ready for the takeoff.
An announcement was made over the PA that we are set to takeoff, that is when the drama started. Suddenly instead of closing the doors, we see passengers walking in, this drama continued till all the vacant seats got filled up.
What it meant was a flight was to leave at 8.45 and Jet decided to fill this aircraft empty seats with those who came in early. from what we understand there was no prior info that 8.45 flight was cancelled but those who came early were told that flight was cancelled and made to fly in this aircraft.
In the process our flight was delayed till about 8AM, naturally provoking angry protests form the passengers who were seated since about 5.30AM for a 40 minute flight in the aircraft.
Interesting thing was only the junior stewards were apologetic and helpless, neither the Chief steward nor the commander had any apologies to offer for those who have been patiently waiting for their flight to take off n reach them to their destination.
Jetairways probably was either reducing their loss by packing in as many passengers in to the earlier flight flight which was anyway delayed or they had over bookings for the next flight and wanted to make best of the situation.
But not even considering apologising to the passengers for this herding of next flight passengers into a already delayed flight which was scheduled for a 6AM depaprture.

This only goes to show what happens when there is not enough competition to any business to put it on its toes

Play Grounds, Lung spaces where are they

We keep reading about 70’s & 80’s where children could play in the open and how world has changed since then. Yes technology might have made it difficult to move a child out of the home, but most importantly our own will to demand things is the main cause for the present state of affairs.

Other than roads, where are the open spaces for the children to paly, today’s schools do not have play grounds but we are so keen to admit our children ina particular school because of its academics but never demand to ask if they have a play area for the kids which is a requirement at that age for a proper growth.

Except for some noted schools which have not succumbed to the commercial interests, some play area is still available, but most of the new gen schools don’t even have space for parking of vehicles of the staff, leave alone play areas.

When it comes to public spaces where children can go and play we have very minimal availability, except in the old planned development areas like Anna Nagar, CIT colony, Ghandinagar etc we could find some parks but otherwise nothing much. In the name of development even that space is usurped and we are only silent spectators for these whole tamasha. In Bengaluru in addition to the two major lung spaces in the heart of the city Cubbon Park & lal Bagh most of the new layouts have got parks and also have enough space in the land earmarked for setting up schools for play areas.

Today we are planning Greater Chennai, we have innumerable legal illegal layouts all around the city with 20’ roads and no public spaces and these are going to be part of the future of Chennai. Even the regulated OSR space can be purchased by the developer by paying a premium, so where is that we are going to see some green space in future.

Our city is reported to have about 4000 public & private schools and I can wager a bet that not even 10% will have play areas. When will the planners of the city have the forethought to plan ahead. Some of the present day developers are actually showing the way. To market their properties they are asking city schools to set up branches in their project land. While this could ensure some play areas in those schools, it is time city planners take some drastic steps.

·         There should be minimum guidelines for starting a school with stipulation for play areas.

·         Existing schools to be made to comply with the rules

·         If schools have to go to suburbs to comply with rules, so be it.

·         There is anyway RTE act to ensure admission for all classes of children in such schools which are in city and are complying with rules.

No doubt it will hurt us because we have to either shift our homes to the suburbs or send our children on a long commute every day, if it is all for, our own family members health why not, we have to make these sacrifices.

This will actually help de-congest the city and ensure healthy growth of the suburbs, even the city planners can plan for infra keeping the commuting requirement of the population of the city and people living in suburbs.

Disclaimer: All the pictures used in this blog are  properties of the respective copy right owners and have been used only to depict the plight of the Indian child