India transports thousand MTs of banana looms every day some 1500 to 2000 kms away to consumption areas from source of production though either rail or road.

Looms (for uninitiated) are banana bunches as they grow at the plantations, that is, clusters of bananas (technically called hands) with the inedible stalk portion (6 to 10% of loom weight).

At consumption centers, one has to pays to physically cut and remove the inedible portion till landfills – Obviously, one also pay avoidable shipping charges to transport this useless byproduct over a long distance.

Apparently, it would make more sense and value adding to use the stalk (read bio-mass) at the production source itself to be recycled as organic manure.

But is it a right solution? The answers become hazy when one starts calculating the direct, indirect and environmental cost of alternatives – use of CFB Cartons and plastic container etc.

Any suggestions to resolve this banana dilemma? Remember – banana is a poor man’s fruit across India.

Because their first customer touch points (stores associates) go an extra mile to communicate and connect with their customers.

Just 15 minutes back I was at a Delta Maxi store near my Hotel in Belgrade. I buy two pints of Jelen Pivo (an excellent Serbian beer, a brand and market leader – but that is besides the point) among other eatable stuff and some mineral water.

At check-out, the young lady goes an extra mile in communicating to me, a foreigner who did not understood Serbian at all, that if I return back the empty beer bottles I’ll get back 30 Serbian Dinars. How she communicated is a separate story and no need to retell here – that is not important.

That she communicated well with a foreigner, despite the language barrier, is the fundamental point here. Someone had really taken care to drill down that work ethics.

Thank you young lady and Delta Maxi – you really made my day today.

“Want to find freshness of fruits and vegetables? Just use your ears. It’s not fresh till you hear a delicious frrrunch”

Surprisingly, this advertisement is by Samsung to promote their refrigerators. I am amazed to see use of fruit and vegetables in advertising in India. Just try to count ads for cosmetics, shampoos, wellness drugs, sports goods, stationery items, even men underwear ha! ha! (remember Amul Macho, monkeys and those silly bananas). It is not only in India – I saw similar trend lately in last few months elsewhere also in as diverse countries like Serbia, Oman and Turkey.

Power of fruit and vegetables to connote freshness anywhere is really astounding. It is universal. Period.

Why no Indian retailer is now advertising fresh produce except to communicate their so called cheap prices with God know comparative with what which incidentally is always called “Market” with a capital M.

Last advertisement recorded (to my knowledge) to promote fruit and vegetables and retailer as a brand in India was perhaps released on telly ten years back by one of the companies I proudly served. Who from that era does not still remember stalwarts of their times like T.N.Seshan, Kiran Bedi etc promoting the humble fruit and vegetables for their own sake. But as cliché goes – those were the times….or as Bob Dylan would have said …The Times They Are a-Changin’

It was 7.40 pm y’day. My Nokia was about to buzz and push a short message (sms) from a prominent Delhi fresh produce retailer announcing prices for important fruit vegetables.

Behold – the message arrived with a celestial certainty. This has been a 7.40 pm ritual for a while. And I am beginning to relish it – not because I shall go run and hunt bargain but because it has given me some food, or shall I say some f+v for thought.

You may say fresh produce retail and this particular retailer has come of digital age in India. Not the least – this sms strategy could have been a smart idea had it marched past my critical mind. Many questions were hammering my mind since the day I got first message.

Q1 – Why this message at 7.40 pm when the retailer has the least stock and most of the display has already gone awry under discerning customers’ hands. A relook at the message corrected my oversight – the message was meant for next day.

Q2 – Why this message is being sent to me – not to my wife who is not a regular but sometime buys from this retailer during stock-out situation. She could have been a smart target for such a message.

Q3 – Where from this retailer got my mobile number. It could not be from a loyalty card info I passed to them as this retailer has never run such a program. Despite being the largest fresh produce retailer with widest reach in Delhi and surrounding region they have never tried (or shall I say cared) to build such a customer database. (In fact this retailer does not pick the point of scale customer data as all POS scales are stand-alone equipment -not linked with their central server).

More on this in store next day – Many of rates mentioned in the message didn’t match the rates at my neighborhood store. As I was aware that at this retailer all stores were grouped to location specific demographic profile – I check another store – same story – few rates did not match.

Some inferences are very obvious – like

• My cell number was randomly picked from either my service provider – who sold it without my consent or some scammer picked my number from either Internet or elsewhere and sold to company as a prospective customer. Either way – SMS did not come to me as a well thought of strategy
• Someone at the company did not either care to proofread the messages or do the pricing as per sent messages. Will it affect sale – Obviously a customer will feel cheated if actual prices are more and if lesser than s(he) will never bother to read the message. Counterproductive either way.
• My biggest worry was some competitor picking up this retailer’s next day prices and improving same at their own stores in this retailer’s vicinity. In fact I used this tactics many year’s back for one of the early organized retailer in Delhi. But at that time I had to depute a person during every night and use social engineering to get insider price advantage. If with crude network I was able to do change prices twice daily at 20 odd competing stores, now with sophisticated software and bandwidth, changing prices at a store, any time of the day, is a cake walk.

Technology can be counterproductive if not used in a right way without applying mind.

I’m dead sure that every supplier worth his vegetables at Azadpur must have suffered at the hands of buyers, institutional or plain vanilla retailers, forwarders or sub wholesalers who simply don’t pay back in a a gentlemen’s way. Bounced cheques, reduced payments, payments in installments, delayed payments, post dated cheques or simply zero payments are all part of this dirty game. Despite this, business has to move. My start-up also suffered this ignominy thrice during last six months. We suffered at the hands of a large retailer, a produce chain operator who incidentally drives an Audi (for just an amount of 12000/- bucks) and a very large fruit orchardist cum trader from hills. Is there a way out? Not that I know of. APMC law does not offer much respite.

History is full of incidents where bad experiences eventually yielded something positive. I believe Arathshastra was also written after Chanakya, the Indian Machiavelli, getting angry over King’s mismanagement of State.  

Well, my bad experience has also inspired me in a minor way to develop a net based application that should automatically check a buyer’s credit score and present sellers with different payment options and flagging based on that score. I could not find anything that come close to this for an individual’s credit score. The closest I could find was a paid application that was meant for checking a business’ credit score and not an individual’s.

Freelancing developers who want to make money with a social cause are welcome to join hands.

Thanks in advance!