How emerging technologies are redrawing the ground rules of biz

Indian entrepreneurs are upturning the ground rules of business and are coming up with a lot of personalisation for local needs.

Take the example of Godrej Consumer Products, which is looking at various strategies to target its customers in a diverse country like India. Common management principles talk about having a common strategy for the brand or a product regardless of the market it is present in. Going against the grain, Nisa Godrej, Chairperson, Godrej Consumer Products, is using data not only relating to the company’s customers but also the weather to customise products. Godrej Consumer makes products such as mosquito repellent(Good Knight) and cockroach repellent (Hit).

Using data on weather, Godrej is looking to figure out how temperature variations impact insect infestations in say, Delhi or Madurai. This works better than assumptions on where the products will sell. “We can work backwards and plan everything from production to distribution,” said Godrej at the Nasscom Technology and Leadership Forum.

In India, most of the AI deployment is at the conceptual stage and the use cases are mostly plain and straightforward. But with test cases like Godrej’s, the AI adoption will have greater validity.

DeMo and cash crunch

Former State Bank of India Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya gave an example of the usage of PoS machines immediately after demonetisation. “Our people suggested the use of PoS machines through which cash could be withdrawn. Now, this is not in any regulatory ambit, but we went ahead with that as there was a cash crunch,” she said.

During Jammu and Kashmir floods, SBI changed the way the PoS machine works to help farmers get access to money when they refused to take cheques. Normally, when a person uses a debit card, his account gets debited and money is credited to the merchant.

However, in this case, SBI changed the way the system worked. So, when the farmer swiped his card on the PoS machine, instead of money getting debited from his bank account, it got credited to his bank account through the intermediary.

This personalisation, which in its earlier avataar used to be called jugaad , has now gone a step forward. Vivek Biyani, Director, Future Group, pointed out that Big Bazaar also saw the Indian market through a different lens.

“In India, the aisles are designed to be narrow as we believe that it needs to mimic the experience that a person gets in a bazaar,” he said.

This is contrary to the practice adopted by big-box retailers like Walmart, who have elaborate aisle space in their shops.