Hariyali Kisan Bazaar: Green revolution part two?

On July 16 this year, a new store opened for business at the 31st milestone towards Lucknow from Shahjahanpur. Occupying 10,000 sq ft on a 2.5-acre plot of land, the store-branded Hariyali Kisan Bazaar-stocks 300 SKUs, ranging from fertiliser to pesticides to farm implements to animal feed. The idea, says its promoter Ajay Shriram, Chairman of DCM Shriram Consolidated Ltd (DSCL), is to bring quality, trust, and professionalism to agricultural retail. Results from the first month-and-a-half of the Rs 75 lakh experiment? An average footfall of 300 and bill size of Rs 400.

But this is no front-end for DSCL's own fertiliser and sugar. Hariyali has been conceived as an independent retail diversification, which won't just sell inputs to farmers but also offer companies like Pepsi a channel to buy their produce. DSCL is close to roping in ICICI Bank to offer credit to farmers through the store, which maintains computerised records of the 60,000-odd farmers who supply sugarcane to the company's mill next door. Says Rajiv Sinha, Deputy Managing Director, DSCL: ''We have had a long relationship with farmers, and now want to leverage that to create an input-to-output loop.''

The project-for which Accenture did the initial research, KSA Technopak developed the model, and Shunu Sen's Quadra worked on the brand and its positioning-will next be taken to Ferozpur (Punjab) and then extended to different parts of the country. Already, a clutch of consumer companies have expressed interest in pumping the products through Hariyali. Looks like DSCL is on to something big here.

-R. Sridharan

EXECUTIVE TRACKING
Careers@Reliance Infocomm
With its launch due, the Ambanis' TELCO is on a recruitment overdrive.

Harish Bijoor: Joined the Reliance bandwagon

If you aren't worth being poached, you aren't worth being hired. Or so seems to think Reliance Infocomm, which-BT learns-is making its head hunters, including Tarun Sheth's Shilputsi, work overtime. Predictably, that strategy is working. Harish Bijoor, the Chief Operating Officer of Zip Telecom, who recently put in his papers after a year's stint at the pay-phone booth company, is rumoured to have caught the bait, and is moving to Reliance Infocomm as the chief marketing officer. Bijoor, who could not be reached for comment, has nearly 16 years of experience in marketing and management with two of the biggest consumer marketers, Hindustan Lever Ltd and Tata Coffee. His marketing expertise is something the integrated TELCO will need as it goes about launching its wireless-in-local-loop (WiLL)-based fixed mobility phone service and, thereafter, domestic and international long distance services.

But like we hinted earlier, Bijoor isn't the only one getting poached. The grapevine has it that Venkatesh Valluri, CIO with ge Plastics in Europe, is joining Infocomm on the enterprise side. Viney Singh, head of business development in HLL's foods division, will likely join as circle head, and the same goes for B.V. Raman, ex-head of egurukul.com. Then, there's Ashok Ghose, VP (Marketing) at Grasim, who-a little bird says-could be joining on Infocomm's consumer side. Other names believed to be on the poacher's list: Naresh Hosangdy, currently 3m's head for business development; Amitabh Jaipuria, VP (Sales and Marketing) at GE, and Geeta Choudhary, formerly co-founder and coo of dotcom Khuljasimsim. Bharti and Co., beware.

-Seema Shukla

BIG PICTURE
It Moves, Doesn't It?
Actually, we meant the pictures. But as we found out, sales of B&W TVs too fit the bill.

A hundred quid says you didn't know this: Of the 80 million households in India that own a television, a staggering 50 million still make do with a Black & White TV. Consider this: Of every five TVs sold in the country, two are still B&W-never mind that the first CTV hit the market way back in 1982. So, just who's buying B&W TVs? According to the Consumer Electronics & TV Manufacturers Association (CETMA), 90 per cent of the demand comes from rural India. Explains Suresh Khanna, Secretary General, CETMA: ''B&W sets continue to remain the natural choice for first-time buyers in deep rural, sub-rural, and slum areas who are just coming above the poverty line.''

Price, then, is the single-biggest reason for B&W TV's survival. The cheapest CTV at Rs 5,500 is more than thrice as expensive as the cheapest B&W TV (Rs 1,600). But in a trend that's indicative of India's growing prosperity-and to an extent CTV makers' price aggression-the poor man's telly is losing its grip. Sales dropped from 5.9 million units in 1998 to 3.9 million units in 2001, an annual decline of 20 per cent. Quips Khanna: ''We are writing an obituary of this industry.'' B&W sets may be dinosaurs, but in a largely poor country like India, they may still have a few years of life left.

-Ankur Sabharwal