The Big Billion Day and the Lessons learnt!

Hi Guys,

‘The Big Billion Day’ will remain a most spoken about term in the Indian E Commerce Space. There are lot of chances as to that a case study would be written about it and lot of analysis would be done as to what went wrong and how it could have been done correctly. Flipkart made a blunder with the sale and it not only backfired on them, but boosted Snapdeal and Amazon by a huge magnitude.

Flipkart claims that it achieved the target of a billion dollar sale, but no one can verify their claims from the outside. If it did achieve, then Flipkart grossly miscalculated the potential they had. This is one problem with most of the flash sales. Big Bazaar had the same problems with their sales during their starting stages. Flipkart already experienced backlash with the flash sales of Xiaomi mobile phones and still I’m not sure as to why they headed for a day sales. A week long sales like what Amazon is doing would have been a better deal.

Another question is as to whether Flipkart made an attempt to fool people with false sales and stock outs. If it did try, then it has done nothing but eroded the trust people had on Flipkart. If it was unintentional, then it is a wakeup call for Flipkart. What the day has done is leave a black mark on Flipkart, but I don’t think people would move out soon. But, if people face the same issue a few times, then surely its going to hit the sales of Flipkart.

Out of the whole issue, Snapdeal has been the biggest gainer. With the dramatic advertisement in Newspapers, Snapdeal just ambushed Flipkart’s advertisement. If claims are true, they had 15 times more visit than a normal day. Snapdeal’s problems lie in the backend. Many people are unhappy with their processing of orders. So, for Snapdeal to set itself up, it needs to correct its backend issues before focussing on Ambushing Flipkart and Amazon.

There are lot of questions hovering on internet as to what would be the impact on Flipkart? I feel that this incident in itself would have a very low impact. Particularly it was a good strategy by Flipkart to apologize to its customers. E Commerce is just booming in India and Customer Loyalty is virtually non-existent in this space. If Flipkart can offer better price than other major players, surely people are going to choose Flipkart. But, as I said earlier, if Flipkart has two or three more incidents like this, it is going to take a hit on them.

The final question that arises in my mind is ‘what is the potential market size of E Commerce in India?’ From the way people flocked Flipkart and other E Commerce sites on Monday, it is humungous. With a country with a population of more than a billion and a country that gets more internet connectivity day by day, a country that gets more comfortable with online banking over time and gets comfortable with buying online every passing minute, it is difficult to predict the size. I think Flipkart created too much awareness on the sale beforehand and it boomeranged back.

It has created a small dent on the face of Flipkart. It is up to Flipkart to bring back its glory or fall back to a stage from recovery is difficult.  It is also a great lesson for other E Commerce players in India.

With Government announcing that it will look into trader’s interests, the space becomes more interesting. Lets see how this space develops over the next few months.

Happy Reading!

Jack: Straight from the Gut - Jack Welch - Book Review

Hi Guys,

I have always found it difficult to start an Autobiography and even more difficult to finish it. For the first time, I found an autobiography interesting and finished it very quickly. It all started with a case study for Strategic Management class. I was very impressed, borrowed the book from library and finished it in 3 days in my term break.

The book is more than a history of personal life. It provides a larger view on General Electric and how Jack Welch transformed GE with his leadership. He goes deep into many events and how he acted upon them and how he enabled people to perform better.

The book starts from his younger age and how his mother was his role model. He says his mother taught him an important lesson that if you can’t lose, you can’t win. Then he goes on into this education and how he joined GE in its Chemical Department in 1960s. The interesting fact is that Jack disliked GE and wanted to get out of it due to the bureaucracy. But, he stayed on selling himself to go into higher positions and went into the corporate office pretty soon.

He gives the full account of how the race to CEO was and how difficult it was for the candidates and how he made it. After becoming the CEO, he wants to move GE from the position of a ‘Giant Tank’ to ‘Agile Speed boat’. He describes about his Neutron Jack years, where he sacked many employees, sold many businesses and acquired many.

Then he moves on to how he improved the people side of the firm with Crotonville centre, stock options and so on. He moves on to describe how he continued to learn and introduced ‘Boundaryless’ term in the firm that enabled ideas to flow across. He continues to describe the main strategies that GE took in his years – Globalization, Services, Six Sigma and E-business. He says as a firm they have only 4 major transformation in the 20 years.

He says that it was people who did things, not strategy or machines. He writes, ‘In Manufacturing, we try to stamp out variance. With people, variance is everything’ He writes how he made good people stay back and poor people get out before worsening the system.

From the book, we know that Jack Welch is a guy who you won’t come across very often. He knew what he was doing. He didn’t wait, plan and do. He acted swiftly and he says that in the end he felt he waited a lot before getting into it. He understood business, he understood people and he enabled them. He is a great inspiration to all those people who want to run companies.

Many of the people focus on improving processes, reducing costs, building brands. But Jack says that it is people who matters most and it is an important lesson to all the young management grads. He writes in the end, ‘Great people, not great strategies, are what made it all work’

Happy Reading!

Things that crossed my way!

Hi Guys,

The past few days have been really busy. There were lot of works related with my studies and actually, it’s amazing that I am enjoying these days. I have never been a hard worker and the past few days have been different. More than that, I found some leadership qualities in myself which was something I never expected. I like the way things are going on and it gives me lot of pleasure. Thinking back, I can’t believe I have been working hard. Hope it continues in the future too.

The Toyota Way

I started to read the book ‘The Toyota Way’ and it is really an interesting book. It portrays how Toyota builds the car empire in the 1950s to become the world’s biggest manufacturer beating all the US competitors. The book focuses more on the 14 principles of Toyota (I don’t know why the number 14 is so common in all management principles) or the Toyota Production System (TPS). It was the first company to introduce Lean Manufacturing (an alteration of Ford’s Assembly Line).

Ford’s Line was concentrated on bulk manufacturing, but TPS focuses on more production with large varieties. The main principles are Kaizen (change for transformation in Japanese) and JIT (Just in Time). It was also interesting to know the story of the Toyota. It is a good book. But read this book, only if you know a little about management (we had Principles of management and now we have Total Quality Management) and so the book appears meaningful.

Mindhunters

I had not watched a movie during the past two weeks. So I was feeling a little awkward and so I decided to watch a movie from the huge unwatched collection I was having. I chose the movie Mindhunters which was a short movie (100 minutes). The movie was good thriller. A group of FBI trainees are left alone in an uninhabited navy island for a training mission. One by one, they start to die terribly. They find a watch which denotes the next murder time. They find one of them is the murderer, but who is it? It was a nerve tickling movie and the suspense lasted till the climax and that was the biggest plus.

That’s it for now.

Happy Reading!!!