The Great Ganesha

Picture Source

19th century bazaar in Calcutta

Today’s WSJ has an article about the Indian retail baron Kishore Biyani who founded Pantaloon Retail (currently the largest retailer in India, in terms of revenues) and owns the supermarket chains Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar. For the supermarkets, he initially tried to emulate the Western model of quiet, spacious aisles of products, and found that people would walk down those aisles, and walk out of the store empty-handed.

Americans and Europeans might like to shop in pristine and quiet stores where products are carefully arranged. But when Mr. Biyani tried that in Western-style supermarkets he opened in India six years ago, too many customers walked down the wide aisles, past neatly stocked shelves and out the door without buying. [link]

He then switched over to a more “traditional” style of the bazaar, where people had to walk down cramped aisles, squeezing past other people and products. And some of the produce was even defective (with spots, etc.) to let people think it came straight from the farm. He found the second model was much more effective for selling his wares.

They were more comfortable in the tiny, cramped stores — often filled with haggling customers — that typify Indian shopping. Most Indians buy their fresh produce from vendors who keep vegetables under burlap sacks. [link]

Well, hats off to Mr. Biyani. He was shunned initially, but he persisted in his vision of creating a pan-Indian retail store which wasn’t your average, neighborhood cheap Western knock-off. And boy, did he succeed. Pantaloon is now the top Indian retailer.

Su Kokila, aa sasta ma malse ke? (Translation: What ho Kokila!
Perchance, we shall acquire this cheaply?)

That said though, this is funny. We Indians actually prefer to be pushed and shoved around rather than preferring the peaceful solitude of the American shopping experience.

For the uninitiated, a word on the American shopping experience at its worst best: In the mid-west, for instance, the grocery stores are huge, measuring approximately one square mile. That’s around four full Manhattan avenue blocks. On the shelves, you will find practically every brand of potato chip, beer and bratwurst in existence. But (of course) there’s no garam masala or Hayward’s 5000.

There are days when you can wander in the store for hours searching, with only a handful of other people to keep you company in all that vastness. At the end of it, you find yourself muttering (perhaps a little too loudly) about how it’s impossible to find what you need.

But I digress. I suppose I can appreciate how I would like to shop in cramped spaces with haggling aunties on either side, jostling for the multitasking shopkeeper’s attention. Well, maybe it’s just my nostalgia, but there is a certain amiability and camaraderie in that environment. Then again, things back home always seem better from ten thousand miles away.

And you know what? I just realized – those people at the B.E.S.T. (the Bombay government-run transportation agency) are deliberately trying to create a more “Indian” transportation experience by packing us all into those buses. Right?

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