Local wala Love
Doing Business in HyperLocal
Proud to share the official teaser of latest Telugu Movie Souls featuring Bhavana Sagi (IBS Hyd MBA2020) as lead actor. Go watch the teaser and show some love.
Congratulations Bhavana for believing in your dreams and working hard towards them. More Power to you. Eagerly waiting for the full feature film. Stay Blessed.
DTW
During the Week, we were glad to receive a small token of love and appreciation from our friends in the hyper-local community commerce platform TRICE.
Even in the era of hyper-globalisation, we crave for local connections. Location based platforms can help in finding the connections from your proximity. For example, Happn helps users find matches with people who are located nearby and thus seems more organic but surely can not beat Tinder which simply displays distance between users.
With q-commerce becoming more than a fad, more players are playing attention to hyper-local demand and supply. This plays through location, assortment and of course cheap capital.
Location, Location and Location.Thats how retailing succeeded in the pre-internet era and then it went for the toss when we had frameworks like “World is Flat“ and “Death of Distance“. Of course, one company defied this logic even at the height of online revolution in electronics commerce led by likes of DELL.
Apple revolutionised computer retailing by opening stores when everybody else was shutting down or going bankrupt. And if you are wondering who buys electronics in store, please do watch this report on remodelled NYC store in 2019.
This press release by Apple in 2019 highlights the importance of location for building an incredible brand.
Steve Jobs opened the store in 2006 and personally welcomed the first customers to enter the cube. Since then, Apple Fifth Avenue has had over 57 million visitors, more annually than the Statue of Liberty or Empire State Building.It remains the only Apple retail location open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Local deliveries are made possible by platforms who enable Coordination across Modes and Geography. Platforms also make it possible to have point to point deliveries in certain geographies and then aggregating them across modes thereby saving cost and time. Many intermediaries platforms have sprung up to facilitate handover at intermediate points and thereby reducing the burden for the manufacturer and logistics partner. In the true asset light model for platforms, Crowdsourcing of Assets unlocks extraordinary value for both suppliers and buyers. Retail Operations especially for the D2C brands have been extraordinarily helped by last mile delivery partners like ShadowFax. Some of them also provide warehousing, payment collection and reverse logistics. Read more in an earlier newsletter-
Like I have written earlier, I went through school and college in pre-platform era and we only had access to in-person interactions for building relationships. Of course, the breadth was much lesser but I managed to develop relationships with great depth. Most of the times, it was just being in proximity of interesting people that I could learn some of life’s greatest lessons.
'कबिरा संगत साधु की, ज्यों गंधी का बास।
जो कुछ गंधी दे नहीं, तो भी बास सुवास'
Proximity is still that I inherently cherish for developing a relationship though nurturing can be even from a distance. All our relationship stories were literally handcrafted across a desk or at sitting on floor at homes and are now being strengthened through various platforms.
If you are still struck with the newsletter headline, you can read an earlier piece on Love and Platforms & another one on Platforms and Relationships.
OTW
Over the Weekend, I was part of the admissions process for MBA2024 at IBS Hyderabad. Like every year for the past decade, it is enriching to be part of a 10-day process for interacting with applicants for the various programs in Icfai Business School. I look forward to this serendipitous interactions every year and look for interesting conversations with fellow panelists and candidates. Till now, I would have interacted with about 50 candidates which included fitness enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, Swiftie, bloggers, even a second runner-up in Miss India competition among many others with bright smiles and often lofty aspirations. I am so glad to see many content creators amongst the applicants leading to interesting conversations. It is always an enriching experience talking to young people especially when they are in transition. Just a piece of old folksy advice- Do Not Lie. It is a small world and you may never know about the life experiences of the person on other side of the table/screen.
During my weekend long runs, I also caught up on an interesting podcast on Taylor Swift by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal aptly tilted — Taylor Swift (Acquired Version). They do a deep dive into the incredible business story of- the TSwift empire- and document her rise as a change agent for music and music industry.
And when you are young,
they assume you know nothing
She has been an extraordinarily gifted musician and an even more prodigious business person. And rather BOLD. She went against the first family of the Instagram and sort of come out of it with still over 200 million followers.
Let me leave you with this wonderful song that I mentioned earlier.
And when I felt like I was an old cardigan
Under someone's bed
You put me on and said I was your favorite
I Love You
Shailendra
PS- Show some love and share this newsletter on your social media handles.
If you are reading for the first time, please subscribe for a weekly email discussing Running Platform Marketing Life and share your feedback on this newsletter if you have not done it yet.
Do share your thoughts on this newsletter by clicking on the link below.
You can read an earlier piece on Music and Platform in the following link
In this ever-growing maze of platforms, it becomes difficult to build and maintain relationships. While D2C companies start off on the right foot, it does become complex with scale. However, here at Bangalore every time I order from a eatery, Chaiyos through Zomato, I receive nicely-packed food along with a handwritten sticky note. Anything handwritten for relics like me is a pleasant surprise. Will this eatery continue to do this as it grows in scale is the question?
I liked the mention of Taylor Swift and her rise in the industry this week. Personally, I like the effort in her live shows. At the same time, she being born with a silver spoon helped her launch into the industry. While the rest of us pray for Lady Luck...Thanks. Loved reading.