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360 million. That's how many pizzas Dave Brandon sold last year. As the CEO of the $3.7-billion Domino's Pizza Company, Brandon is aiming for a bigger slice of the three-billion-pizzas-a-year market in the US, and of the nascent, but growing, markets elsewhere. In India recently, Brandon-whose empire spans 7,000 stores in 63 countries-spoke to BT's Ranju Sarkar about Domino's in India and elsewhere. Excerpts: Q. It's been a relatively quick rise to the top for Domino's in India. What do you think did the trick? A. The wonderful thing about our product is that even though it is fundamentally the same around the world, it can be easily modified to suit local tastes. Our basic philosophy is to choose great partners, who have both the operational and financial capacity to build a substantial business, and we teach them the Domino's operating model.
What's the hardest thing about in pushing growth in your business? There are many markets where our growth is being constrained by our ability to find the labour that we need at a quality level required to run pizza stores. What I have been absolutely impressed with is the quality of people here. That's something you can truly build a future on. Domino's has been pretty successful with its localisation efforts. Is that chance or a well-thought out plan? Pizza is a local business. The connection the manager has to his local community is really important. So, many of our managers would do things like find out activities that are happening in their communities where there are large numbers of people who are going to be hungry and who would contact those organisations. Whether they are schools, civic organisations, or sporting events. How critical is technology in the seemingly mundane business of pizza? We are constantly trying to figure out how to take labour out of the store, how to make a more consistent product, and how to deliver it more quickly and safely. And technology is a big help. We believe that a pizza in the future is not going to be ordered by regular telephone; there will be orders from a cellphone, from a hand-held computing device, from a pc or a laptop, it could be potentially ordered over TV through interactive cable. Have you begun work on this? We have a test going on right now in the US. This is on a very small scale, where you can be sitting in the most comfortable chair in your home, with your remote control device in your hand, watching the Domino's commercial on TV. You can use the remote device to order a pizza without ever leaving your chair. We know the foods industry is almost recession-proof, but what's the outlook for the pizza business globally? There's tremendous growth in just about everywhere you can measure. Even though we are the leaders, we still have substantial amount of marketshares we can build. And, of course, we are always measuring our ability to make our stores grow within their community, to build more customers, and more sales. So, there's tremendous number of leverage points where we can drive growth. Where does Domino's India go from here? One thing I have learnt from this visit is that there's a human resource pool here that can be imported to our brand worldwide. The other thing is the growth opportunity in terms of store growth. So, I am very excited and impressed with what I have seen, but also I see tremendous potential in the future. OFF-BEAT It has no air-conditioning, no TV, and if you want to be popular at The Green Hotel, you'd better use herbal toothpowder. Ayala Gill Fischer can't think of living anywhere else in Mysore. For the last three months, the British tourist has made a plebeian palace-turned-hotel her home. There is no air-conditioning system, the only source of illumination is solar lamps, there is no laundry in the hotel, and the staff comes from the nearby slum. So, why on earth would Fischer-who's in India to learn Yoga-want to hole up in a place like The Green Hotel? In a sentence, because the hotel isn't just fantastically environmentally friendly, but it also works for a cause. If you hadn't heard about it until now, it's for good reason. The Green Hotel is tucked away from the busy city of Mysore, and rarely advertises. That is the hotel's way of making sure that only the serious-minded guests come to stay at its expansive property. ''We want to provide tourists a home, and not a hotel,'' says Stan Thekaekara, a Director at the hotel. Six years ago, when Charities Aid Foundation of the UK-which runs the hotel-started 'the experiment', it did so with three objectives in mind: one, it wanted to preserve a historical monument, and the Chittaranjan Palace, home to a former princess of the Mysore royal family, seemed like a perfect rescue candidate; two, the Foundation wanted to generate employment among the local poor; and, three, provide a unique, environment-friendly experience to tourists. ''The Palace provides us an opportunity to combine all three,'' says Thekaekara. True to its name, The Green Hotel is extremely eco-friendly. Energy consumption is kept to a bare minimum. It heats water using solar energy, and traditional washermen do all the laundry. All rooms have energy-saving CFL lamps and in times of power cuts, solar-energy charged lamps are used. Better still, all the vegetables used in cooking are organically grown. Says Erika Schmidt, a German tourist staying at the hotel: ''In terms of India experience, this place is more authentic. One of the staff even had me over at her place for dinner.'' Last year, the money generated from the hotel was used to fund health clinics for tribals in Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu. This year, the foundation plans use profits for improving the living conditions in slums in and around Mysore. Wonder what Don Henley might say about this hotel? -Venkatesha Babu HOME TRADE The e-financial services firm's high decibel campaign has got it the consumer's ear. Now it's a small matter of getting to his wallet.
A accuse Home Trade of anything, but not of being unambitious. The 30-month-old e-trader-born by the acquisition of Lloyds Brokerage-has just uncanned a high-profile ad campaign, shot at Fox Studios in Australia in a hectic 10-day schedule. The TV commercials feature top-dollar personalities, including Hrithik Roshan, Shahrukh Khan, and Sachin Tendulkar. Over this year, Home Trade will spend-don't be horrified dotcoms-a cool Rs 12 crore in marketing. Says Mike Shah, its Bangalore-based director: ''This is the first of our plans to create an immediate customer recall, specially with the man on the street.'' Fine, but what does Home Trade want to be? Apparently, India's best-known financial services company. Put simply, Home Trade is setting up infrastructure that will finally allow a customer to transact business across multiple platforms-be it in a shop, on the net or on a mobile phone. Along with all the technical hardware that'll make all this possible, Home Trade plans a string of investment centres; in other words, the classic 'clicks-and-bricks' model. By the end of this year, Home Trade wants to have 150 outlets in 15 cities. Says Hiren Gada, its Senior Vice-President: ''To become successful in the retail business, a physical presence is a must.'' While 30 of these will be stand-alone investment centres owned and run exclusively by Home Trade, the rest will be partner-managed. The company is joining hands with indiamarkets.com-a b2b portal-for e-biz centres across the country. These centres will provide advisory and transaction services. Shah reckons that the entire project will cost a whopping Rs 100 crore, of which-he says-half has already been invested. Who's paying the bills? A lot of it comes from Euro Discover Technology Ventures (EDTV)-a Mauritius-based venture capital fund-which has a 65 per cent stake in Home Trade. Strategic investors hold 10 per cent and the rest is with the public (the company is listed on the Bangalore stock exchange and was trading at Rs 149 in early April). But Home Trade's advertising blitz is frighteningly reminiscent of Icarus-like dotcoms that promised much in high-decibel advertising, only to fall flat a few months later as reality struck. But Sanjay Agarwal a director with the venture capitalist, EuroDiscover Technology Fund is confident that won't happen. Agarwal is also putting his money where his mouth is: ''We're don't expect Hometrade to break even before 2004 and we have commited our resources keeping this time frame in mind." And just in case there are doubts about the promoters looking for an exit, he adds: "The promoters are not looking at divesting their holding before this.'' But Home Trade's success will hinge on how successful its 'partnering' model is in India. Today, Home Trade relies heavily on its 100-odd partnerships with companies like Reuters, at Kearney, Standard & Poor's to provide everything from content, to products, to technology. Although the company claims to be getting 6 lakh hits on its website, it'll need to consistently churn out differentiated and value-added content if it wants to hook new subscribers, particularly since it only wants to take the subscription route. More important, in the crowded retail finance market, the company will have to compete with aggressive financial services companies like Kotak Mahindra and ICICI. Hope the stars (not the celluloid variety) are in its favour. -Abir Pal
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