Healthy Business.

HEALTHY BUSINESS

Dippankar Halder, CEO, Spinach talks about the retail chain’s practice of hiring vendors and making them partners in the business’s growth.

Q: IS THE GLOBAL RETAIL FORMAT CONDUCIVE TO THE INDIA SCENARIO?

As a culture, the retail business in India has been flourishing for four thousand years. Commodities are bought and sold here in a certain way and we’re all used to that. The indigenous Indian retail format is much easier and better than firang models. Its not just about putting goods on a shelf, you need ongoing dialogue with the customer, humility and great domain knowledge.

Q: HOW DID THE IDEA OF HIRING PEOPLE FROM THE UNORGANISED SEGMENT AND ABSORBING THEM INTO YOUR BUSINESS COME ABOUT?

At the very inception, we thought that we could hire veterans from the unorganised food sector (fruit, vegetable and fish vendors), and transform them to heads of departments, since nothing can replace the warmth and familiarity of your neighbourhood vendor. But these vendors don’t have great communication skills or aren’t able to manage their environment well enough. So we have hired about a hundred local kiranawalas, trained them in billing, product knowledge, and soft skills and made them responsible for various roles such as distribution, quality control and front-end co-ordination.

Q: WHAT WERE THE CHALLENGES ASSOCIATED WITH THIS?

From the beginning, outsiders raised many questions about the viability of this strategy; they raised questions about sales and customer acceptability issues. There were some integration troubles initially because of technology and documentation issues and emphasis on certain aspects of customer interaction. There was also resistance from the other employees as they were unsure as to how they would get along with the ex-vendors. But their passion and honesty helped alleviate problems and today our staff and the former vendors exchange knowledge and get along freely.

Q: HOW HAS THIS PRACTICE TRANSLATED INTO PROFITS FOR YOUR BUSINESS? DO YOU PLAN TO HIRE MORE VENDORS IN THE FUTURE?

Because the people we take in have extensive domain experience and on-ground experience, they are very good at their work. People like Sheikh Nadir Ali and Partha Mukherjee, who handle the fruits and vegetables and non-vegetarian categories respectively are invaluable to Spinach. And yes, we do plan to get in more people from the unorganised sector in the future.

Article Resource:
Author: Nikhil Menon is the Chief Editor in the The Economic Times, Mumbai and the article appeared in one of their successful columns on Entrepreneurship/Start-ups called "Starship Enterprise".