Sales, Strategy

Next wave of Growth for Banks – Retailer Credit Card

Farmers in India are offered Kisan Credit Cards to provide adequate and timely support from the banking system to the farmers for their short-term credit needs. The banking industry can take a clue from this and introduce a retailer credit card for exclusive use by small-time retailers to pay to their suppliers.  The idea:  Banks to offer small retailers a Retailer Credit Card with a minimum credit limit of 10000 INR.  This offer will also come with the credit card swiping machine which the retailer has to use in his retail counter. The rent will be waived off if the retailer does a minimum […]

Business Model

Business Model Innovation: Learning from the peers

CISCO has been talking about Smart + Connected Communities which have a single intelligent common network backbone on which multiple services can be built and provided thereby increasing efficiencies and effectiveness of the services.  They have been promoting this service for a reasonably long time now with some moderate success. When you think of the different challenges that CISCO has with regards to S+CC is very similar to the challenges that Sun Edison faced a few years ago.  A little about Sun Edison: They were an organization in the business of installing and maintenance of solar power systems for large organizations. They had considerable expertise in installing […]

Business Model

Zero Inventory Retail Business Model

I recently came across a company, CornerStone which has implemented a unique retail business model where the physical stores do not hold any inventory at all. All the inventory is maintained at the central warehouse from where all shipments are made. I think they should go one step further and tailor the garment only upon the receipt of an order. They also provide an online store from where you can purchase. The business model is unique in the industry as it combines the best and worst of the virtual and real world models. Low or zero inventory at the retail […]

Customer Engagement

Choosing your customers

Today, I read a post by Seth Godin with the same title and was struck with just one thought – How many times do sales people see this point-of-view. My take is that this is a blindspot for most of us. I would like to re-iterate the questions again: How much does this type of customer need you?  How difficult is this sort of person to find… How difficult to reach How valuable is a customer like this one… How demanding? If we are able to build our sales strategy based on the answers to these questions, selling would become […]

Business Model, Ideas, Sales

Go-to-market strategies that can kill innovations

I think we can learn a lot from our own failures and also from how others around us fail. I would like to take a trip down my memory lane. Early in 2001, there was an interesting organization called iNabling Technologies founded in 1997 by John Aravamuthan. It also got a funding of  $3 million (B V Jagadeesh, Infinity Technology Investments, ICICI) Making e-mail access affordable was the mission of Bangalore-based iNabling Technologies. The indigenously developed iStation was a low-cost e-mail device loaded with Engati software, which allows multiple language usage. The iNablers (as they call themselves) had also designed […]