Get inspired and innovate with the latest retail strategies​

Depending on the terrain (the pulse of the market), it shows how each action for every product should be taken.

To keep your managers in the right line, retail intelligence lights up the entire distribution.

No matter how big is your task list, retail intelligence gets you covered to ensure you are always at the peak of your productivity.

By understanding the journey of the retailer, brands can plan schemes and trade promotions more effectively.

An intelligent swing that let’s you prompt each field salesman exactly what to sell when they visit a store.

Bizom Manager’s App helps to look into the right set of success metrics and make decisions accordingly.

True ownership doesn’t mean doing it yourself. It means to get it done no matter what it takes.

When the bleak sales numbers flash on screen during the team meeting, it screams only one thing.

To bend reality you gotta be extraordinary, and a visionary.

This technology enables sales leaders to optimize retail execution, ensure store compliance, and improve in-store sales and marketing ROI on a large scale.

Cows were the first to be branded. Shepherds used to stamp a symbol on their cows to identify them.

There are 86 billion of them living inside you, with the sole purpose of making you live to the fullest.

The decision of when to accelerate and when to brake, determines how the ride goes ahead.

There are two things in life, the more of which you do, you can just keep doing more. It’s sleeping and eating.

We understand the importance of achieving growth targets and driving success in today’s competitive market.

Use an intelligent tool like Trade Promotions Management tool to monitor the effectiveness of your schemes and discounts for each product, how successful which marketing campaigns are and how much ROI are you yielding everyday, in every market and every store.

Can you Optimize Retail Execution by 3x? Is Superman the alter ego of Clark Kent, or is Clark Kent the alter ego of Superman?

With a Tertiary Sales app, you can capture every sales movement at retail fronts.

Monitor the beating pulse of every retail shelf and drive enterprise-wide reporting, decision making and forecasting to control the health of your business.

A Tertiary Sales App can provide the insights and tools needed to streamline sales performance, understand customer behavior, and drive growth.

Is it done? What’s the progress on that? How did that one go? When will this be closed? Such sentences have become the Bible of the managerial life. And it makes you wonder too, what do managers work for?

In the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) retail industry, automation has become a key tool for improving efficiency and profitability. One of the most important aspects of automation in FMCG retail is the use of Manager’s app.

There are actually so many colours that even if each human being on Earth was of a unique colour, there will still be too many humans left to be born, to complete the colour wheel.

If your everyday business glitches were like detritus, do you have toothpicks (tools) to make them gone?

In life, yes! Leaving more – may it be cities, bad habits or toxic relationships, lets more live more. But in business, what does leaving markets and leaving existing products lines behind mean?

The mask, the cape, the super-cool cars and the Batcave, can probably not happen.
But like the prince of Gotham, you too can have real-time visibility into any market, even without lifting your thumb.

The one question every human thinks every day is what am I gonna eat today and answers differ based on cost, our surroundings, diet, availability, time of the day, mood and so many other things.

You, your team and even the boss – everybody wants data. Yet nobody knows the best way to get it. So the search continues.

Stocking our memories or games like Road Rash or Mario, or even creating that perfect music playlist with those timeless classics. CDs truly used to hold an essential part of our youth.

Hitting yourself in the face might work better than hitting that snooze button. Seriously.

Consumers always want the right products at the right time to make the right and convenient buying choices. “What is seen, is sold”. Consumers buy things which are value for money and are available. So it’s imperative for brands to ensure availability and visibility in stores.

What’s the most constant part of your every day? It’s probably scrolling your smartphone. You might even forget to drink water for hours, but tapping on the mobile and sliding the fingers on the screen has become an inseparable part of daily life.

Around 2900 km below the ground we breathe on, the Earth is changing. Recent research predicts that the planet’s inner core that’s surrounded by a liquidy outer core, has stopped rotating and is possibly rotating in the opposite direction.

When racehorses run the mile, the one fundamental principle they follow is absolute focus. But what’s the foundation of this focus? Is it the horse or the jockey?

In every movie, no matter how powerful the villain is, the protagonist always wins the show by leveraging some situational inefficiencies. From The Sound of Music to Spiderman, all movies have the same story.

That chair in your house that’s existing to be your cloth hanger, could be more. It could’ve become what it was meant to be. A chair to sit on. But who cares, right? Convenience really does kill care.

If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.

– Henry Ford

What’s your impact as a leader? Business growth? Team performance? New policies? Well, it runs deeper than that. A leader sets the foundation for how future leaders should be. So if “Simon Says” shout at them when there’s no sales, that’s what future leaders will follow.

Well, no. This is not a LinkedIn motivational post from the kitchen. The Hot Stove Rule is a management principle that talks about how employees should be disciplined. According to it, the way of discipline should exactly be the same as when a person touches a hot stove.

No, we aren’t talking about selling in the Wizarding World. (Although, how cool will it be if market visits could start from platform 9 ¾ quarters 😀)

Traffic lights, which were introduced by the British, are more in use than the English language. 

Where’s this? Where’s that? Mothers or wives are bombarded daily with such questions. Because they know it all. They make our homes.

The voice recorder on our phones is possibly the least used feature by most of us. But did you know for a salesman who’s talking to 50 people every day, taking orders, and closing deals, it’s actually helping them recollect particulars of each conversation and complete their work effortlessly.

Eight billion people in the world today, and two billion are already on WhatsApp. A tool that was started for conversations, is becoming the hub for commerce. Meta has built the WhatsApp shopping experience for India, by bringing the JioMart grocery store on WhatsApp.

Of all the things we need to do daily at work, closing to-do lists have become a constant. May it be a mail or a deal, all we want is to get it off the plate. But in that urge, we usually miss out on asking if we are doing it right.

Bizom B2B WhatsApp Engage takes every business information right into your retailer’s WhatsApp chat box.

Bizom’s Sales & Operational Planning (S&OP) tool makes this possible and ensures your team doesn’t just do things, but they do it right.

Our midnight food cravings always bring up the same question – “Will I be ok if I ate at this hour?” But has that ever stopped us? Never!

We talk a lot about how India got its Independence. But have you wondered how India lost independence in the first place?

Step into the life of a driver who works for multiple companies like Uber. We all know how they simultaneously juggle bookings across different platforms in the hope of maximizing their income.

This simple hack lets owners gain a higher rating without even making any food! And when the deliveryman comes to take the order, he picks up an empty food box from the shop and delivers it to the same place.

Let’s start with the story we’ve all probably heard before. A thirsty crow smartly got water from the bottom of a pitcher by filling it with rocks.

We mostly don’t even know the name of the shops or shopkeepers in our locality. But have you noticed that these shops probably have the highest loyalists? If you observe, you would see the same set of people shopping there for ages.

If an empty mind is a devil’s workshop, an empty business could be your failure’s hideout.

How many eCommerce stores have you visited in your life?
90? 900? 
India has over 19000 eCommerce stores.

Some things just exist to make us realize how far we’ve come. Beetroot chips are probably one like that.

Some of our classmates always knew exactly how much they would get after a maths exam. The ones who would write their answers on the question paper just to match it later.

Let’s be honest. We never really knew their names, but they dominated our happiness.

Retail is a team sport. The ideas and performance of each participant matter. 

The secret sauce to higher Route-to-Market (RTM) performance isn’t doing more things that increase your efforts.

Who holds the reins of a business?

It’s becoming a double-edged sword for retail: omnipresence.

The air in a Lay’s packet is seeing high competition with the new chip in town.  Yes, Chip. Not a pack of chips. A single 5gm chip sold for ₹199 and more. Claimed to be the spiciest chip, it has already garnered over 15k consumers in India by creating FOMO …

The post-purchase reaction phase has undergone a severe change since eCommerce began. 

Ten years ago, feeling hungry at an odd hour only led to midnight cooking and crazy hunger pangs.

Like water, distribution flows downstream with the aim to reach every part of the earth where there is need.

While an empty mind is the devil’s workshop, a clogged mind is often Aergia’s (God of Laziness) adobe. 

How deep do you dive to get your consumer?

How many browsers are open on your computer right now? Multiple.

You probably know IPL cricket scores better than your product sales numbers at this moment. But Omni-IN retail intelligence makes life more progressive.  An integrated retail solution that manages seamless product distribution across all online and offline channels, and brings you 100% unified sales visibility on every B2B, B2C, and D2C sale.  …

In a 90 minute game, the two things that determine the win are how well your team is built and how well they sync.

Anybody who works in retail has surely heard the word “Omnichannel” popping up now and then. “Omnichannel Retail”, “Omnichannel Technologies”, “Trends” and what not.

How fast can someone spend 10,000 bucks?
Probably a few minutes, or a few hours, or days. 
Or they can do all three. And all for buying the thing

The 90s kids who were buying chocolates from the nearby shops, are now ordering chocolates online.

Every minute we breathe, 266 new consumers are coming into this world. That’s nearly 16 thousand new humans in a day and approximately 140 million in a year.

What pushes the average consumer to order groceries online?

What determines the quality of the quality that products provide?

Congratulations! If your company’s yearly turnover has clocked more than 20 crores since 2017-18, you’ve now officially made it to the club of e-invoicing.

One of the first things that come to mind about Tom and Jerry, is probably cheese. That tiny bite of cheese that Jerry was always hunting for.

Like every home, every store’s inventory is also different. And these inventories feed the homes of millions of consumers.

Information tends to be both liberating and chaotic. A single piece of information can get tangled and reshaped by the time it reaches the final destination.

Consumers aren’t the only ones moving the sales engine, but are merely a part of the downstream trade mix. From distributors to retailers, when a product reaches a consumer, it has been part of three sales cycles – primary, secondary and tertiary. 

Light travels faster than sound, which is why data travels faster than words.
Insightful data can reach the eyes of the right decision-maker DAYS before sales teams meet to discuss the performance of the market.

The sensational “badam badam” song that’s sprawling the social web and the subconscious of the millions who are humming it, coincidentally reveals the underlying reality of the Indian economy. 

Since last Tuesday, when the news hit the streets, most people have been saying the same thing – How Budget 2022 will impact Indian retail. But the more critical question is – How will Indian retail manage to leverage this future-forward Budget?

How many utensils do you have at home? And how many among them do you use?

Have you stepped out of your home recently? Where have you been? Is it the supermarket or the super-near retail store?

Have you ever jumped over an edge for a good view? If you have, you’d know that it’s not about ensuring that you cross over. That part’s driven by adrenaline. 

The new year is here, but India’s fashion streets are yet to be decked up with the best trends. The reason? Not Covid, but GST.

It’s most probably not the same as it meant ten years ago to you. And when you think about it, the meaning of ambition changes with time for every person. 

“FMCG brands have been naughty, causing price disparity”, so says the distributor Santas.

Fighting the struggle to keep pace with the pandemic, a large number of FMCG brands have been selling online to create convenient shopping experiences for their customers.

Where does all the marketing bucks go? Probably on reaching and informing all prospective buyers of lucrative products & offers.

But does that always do the job to earn the revenue?
Somewhat yes and probably no.

At the nexus of every successful product promotion lies many promotional strategies, devised to shower heaps of revenue and masses of consumers for retail brands.

What’s the one thing most businesses struggle to master? It’s not finding customers, making money or handling people. It’s managing time.

In a home, it’s not about the money you make. But rather about how you manage money to take care of others living with you.

And building a business is no less than building a home with lasting relationships with your stakeholders, where each member supports and promotes each other’s well-being, and everyone grows the trade together.

To make money in business, you gotta put in money every step of the way. Whether it’s production, manpower or sales and marketing, all require investments to render revenue. And if each cost component is not monitored, the profitability of the business remains unclear. 

Claims Management, which primarily tracks the expenses made by on-field employees, is now becoming an essential part of employee management in 2021. Here’s why. 

FMCG customers buying from kiranas have a much shorter patience level than online shoppers when making a purchase. An online surfer will take the time and browse through options on various platforms before getting their desired item at the most lucrative price.

If you head out to buy a bag of chips in an Indian city, there’s a high chance you’ll come across at least 5 brands in a 5 minutes radius, all selling the same or alike versions of the packet of chips you desire. 

Still, even with options galore, most consumers know exactly what they want, especially in matters of food. And if they don’t find it around, many are willing to travel the distance to find it where available. 

How long does a sales rep last in the field? Industry statistics say it’s roughly 18 months. 
Feet on street is not the most fun street. 
Tasked with a list of activities, sales folks follow the law of averages, and go on meeting clients and prospects in order to meet their targets. 

Probably the toughest part about being Spiderman is being consistent with performance and attendance. Waking up every day to save the world at the right time, needs immense perseverance and dedication.

Which is somewhat similar to what FMCG sales folks are doing every day. Waking up and travelling the globe, to bring in the business for FMCG companies and take their products to the customers, helping them live better lives.

Sitting in a 4X4 room with hundreds of products, created with multiple variations like size, flavour, a retailer stills know exactly what to give when we ask for it. May it be the new product in a particular packaging that caught our eye yet we can’t remember, or a product we are in search of with no idea how it looks like.   

Living in this 24-hour world, we are all spoilt with over 20-25 options for each and every product. May it be toothpaste we use or the ginger-garlic sachets we buy to cook.

And although too many options end up taking too much time to choose, each product is finding its audience and growing its market.

Yet somewhere, every product is failing to bloom in some territory on the globe.

30 days of September, and all the way till December, India is officially feeling the festive fever.

Commercial places like malls, pubs, bars and restaurants have opened up in full capacity, all set to cater to the millions of Indian consumers who have been stuck up at home for more than a year.

A global confectionery manufacturer achieved an 85% elimination of stock-outs and a 30% increase in productivity by enabling Bizom ARS Every day at the break of dawn, trucks filled with FMCG goods head out from warehouses, distributing products all over the country. And every day, we all survive on those …

When 2021 began, a survey asked shoppers if they still wanted to shop at regular stores after experiencing the ease and convenience of doorstep delivery that online shopping brought forth during the pandemic, and the majority said yes.

FMCG in India is rebuilding, and things are auguring well for the economy as we approach the festive season. Based on Nielsen data, after taking a hit during the April-June 2020 quarter, the Rs 4.5 trillion a year market has recovered well over our pre-pandemic levels. Data shows, while during …

The “Pay-Later” market in India is booming with millennials and Gen Zers opting to buy something now and pay later at no added cost, and sometimes with added benefits. This method of experiencing the product without spending a buck upfront gives the opportunity to enjoy the benefits, without having the …

Today, every consumer is spoilt for choices. Making the cut to enter the consumer’s shopping basket takes a whole lot of effort and a well-executed RTM strategy. Even for a ₹1 toffee a kid wants to buy, there are at least five brands pitching for the spot at any local kirana shop in India.

The performance of an FMCG product rests on its reach in the market. The best chocolates, chips and cold drinks that we savour are not just old favourites because they are the best, but because they are always there. There when the consumer is just wandering through the aisles. There when the consumer is looking for options. There when the consumer is making the purchase decision.

The Sun is there. Night and day, all the same. Sometimes hidden behind the clouds or shadowed by the pouring rain. But always there, going from East to West. All we gotta do is look up to the light.

Hi, I’m Whisky.

For arranging my birthday party (which I hosted at the last minute), I visited some wine shops nearby. As we all know, you can’t just order any random drink online when your close friends are invited. You need to go out and pick the right drinks yourself, because you know your friends!🙃

Profitability is questioned and measured at every bend in the business. The sales of the day, the best and worst-performing regions, the market that’s ready for harvest and the market that’s saturated. An ideal manager keeps track of all these critical metrics.

Ilwoo is a guy you might never have heard of. But Ilwoo did something that made the world go gaga last year. Jung Il-woo, is a South Korean actor who streamed a video of himself last year, dining in a restaurant in Macau drinking coffee.

The initial investment to create a business is made up of people, capital, and maybe land or technology. But over the years, almost everything depreciates. The time value of money changes over time, and today’s technology loses value to tomorrow’s machines. It’s only the value of people that appreciates over time.

Becky hasn’t been able to find her favourite biscuits since the COVID-19 pandemic. She looked for them in several stores futilely.

Sounds familiar?

Digital Transformation is key to getting Data insights for deeper Retail Penetration.

The digital divide in retail is widening now more than ever. The downpour of the pandemic has resulted in two types of retailers – ones who were forced to shut shop and the ones who recorded growth by choosing digital transformation. Thus the concept of “survival of the fittest” has never been more evident in the context of retail.

As we reach mid-year, tiptoeing our way while expecting the worst, a new dawn just might set in the context of the Indian CPG market. May 2021 saw sales taking a steep drop by 79% in comparison to pre-COVID-19 levels last year. However, with “unlockdowns” in place, retailers are hopeful of better days ahead.

Rural markets are leading the growth of retail in most developing nations. However, in the second wave of COVID-19, the future seems wary as the spread of the Coronavirus strengthens in tier 2 and 3 cities, reducing the number of mom-and-pop stores.

A couple of weeks ago, I placed an order on Big Basket. Instead of giving me the delivery time options, it gave me a token to place my order two days later. With no other options during a lockdown, I complied.

They say a lot of changes in a decade. But 2020 brought forth a decade’s change, in just a year. Things we never thought would happen, happened and continue to happen even in this new decade.  Take the example of the following three changes in the retail pulse that you …

Why are we not surprised? Retailers are rethinking their assortment strategy and stocking fewer SKU units. It will impact brands’ focus SKUs – what to push to retailers and their replenishment cycles. Still, there might be opportunities for brands to up the game of their retailers. The current economic climate …

Eid Saeed, my dear friends. On this auspicious day, may Allah shower his blessings upon you and your family!  This Ramadan has been tough without meeting our extended families, friends, and community. Still, it has meant that along with us, consumers have been online more this season. Consequently, B2B e-Commerce …

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find medication or pharmacies that are open. To counter that, we’ve created the Find My Chemist app to enable anybody to find pharmacies nearest to them that are open and stocked. You can search for these pharmacies from 500m to 10km from your location. The app’s intent is …

A CEO’s job never ends. It gets harder in times of crisis. In the decade or more of being Bizom’s CEO, I have dealt with my share of crises. Yet, they were all fleeting moments in the long journey of our business. They taught us to be resilient.  Last year …

What blood is to a human body, money is to a business. It keeps it going. But unlike a human, a business is co-dependent on its stakeholders to ensure that the blood of the business keeps flowing. This is especially true in the context of the CPG industry which thrives …

Bizom’s data shows no fall in the performance of CPG categories. If it does, how can your business cope?

Technology enables brands to execute remote retail execution with various tools and, most importantly, by providing access to data and intelligence. CPG brands use mobility solutions and geospatial tech to empower field teams, channel partners and their distribution strategies to expand their market reach.

The one challenge that’s worrying CPG brands the most is their outlet coverage. The pandemic has dented their outlet universes, and they are unsure of the actual reach.

Last year, the business landscape evolved, and so did the execution models. It became evident that D2C powered by B2B eCommerce Marketplace is the future of CPG in emerging markets.

January is the beginning of the last quarter of the financial year for many CPG companies in India. It is also the last chance to bridge target gaps. It’s the quarter that determines promotions, sales incentives and growth for professionals across the industry. Despite the gloom of 2020, Jan-21 opened …

A marketplace has become a holy grail for most CPG brands. It promises to cure all brand sales ailments and bestow immortality to brands. No, we aren’t kidding. Today, consumers are fundamentally driving what products they want. In such a scenario, any CPG brand needs to move from push-based to …

In February 2021, our audience of CPG leaders, experts and executives couldn’t get enough of our stories on supply chain automation. Some of them had just begun their digitisation journey. They had read and watched our stories on deploying a distributor management system or beat optimisation.  Others who have had successes from …

2021 had a bittersweet start. Thankfully, in the CPG world, it began with hope and a lot of momentum according to our monthly Kirana report. In the last quarter of 2020, consumer goods moved faster than ever before. In December 2020, kirana sales grew in double digits MoM despite coming …

Brands such as Unibic, Epigamia, 4700 BC, PeeSafe, Ustraa, Soufull, and Wingreens did not exist ten years back, yet have managed to take on large consumer brands and change the competitive landscape. These brands have even outpaced their category growth rates. A quick look at all these brands will tell …

2021 started with new hope. Markets showed their enthusiasm for the new COVID-19 vaccines and the new leadership in the US. It seemed as if world trade would recover after the long, depressive 2020. Were we too optimistic? The cynic in us would have probably told that anything would be …

We are always nosing around the digitalisation approaches of CPG’s big baddies and looking for growth trends. The latest report from Economic Times on Unilever’s growth focus gives a bang for our buck (Coz we’ve been talking about it for so long!). The Surf Excel and Dove soap maker will …

Can you deploy your DMS in less than 8 weeks? You can. Here are the milestones and best practices to do it successfully.

The brouhaha around soaps lately has me wondering if the pH debate is worth it. There is a fatigue with off-the-shelf mass consumption products. Consumers seem to prefer soaps made by niche brands like Sebamed which are cruelty-free and organic. There’s a perception that such products are better because they are made from wholesome materials with fewer chemicals. …

Happy New Year! We’d like to maintain it is a happy start. There will always be a storming and ours is to steadily move forward. Like the consumer goods companies that are building B2B eCommerce Marketplaces to digitise their route-to-market journeys and supply chains. Still, it’s often hard to imagine how that …

What a year it has been! A year when our friends in CPG went through the toughest disruptions ever.  Like them, we faced tumultuous moments at Bizom. We braved through them, and built our resilience as we helped our customers to build their own resilience and continue growing their businesses.  …

Q3 2020 brought more relief and it’s clear that recovery of demand is well underway. However, on digging deeper, we found variances in performance across categories and regions. Here are some emerging trends:  Changing Buying Patterns: There’s a visible change in the buying behaviours of distributors, stockists and retailers. They …

We are in the last month of 2020 and is that a collective sigh that we hear? Is 2021 going to be any better? Thankfully, two global developments have brought some cheer, and markets are responding in kind. Thank you, Joe Biden and COVID-19 vaccine. All the optimism almost makes …

The festive season gave us a much-needed sales boost. Yay for that!  So how did the categories perform in the month of October? We looked at the throughput from kirana stores to analyse the trends. Here’s a quick look at it. If you need more information, please look up the …

Shopping behaviours across the world have changed. What does it mean for your distribution? Especially since consumers are shopping online more and are connecting directly with brands in greater numbers. Here’s a view of what McKinsey reports has changed in the emerging markets of India, Indonesia and South Africa. How …

US Presidents will come and go. India will always provoke bipartisan interest in US politics. So we’ll only say let Trump and Biden fight it out! Turning the analytical eye inwards: Is it time for CPG brands to adopt B2B eCommerce Marketplaces as their primary channel? OK, first things first. What is …

Bizom India Kirana Report – September 2020 Edition Given the challenges consumer businesses have had in the last six months, there are very few things that could thrill us right now. Royal Challengers Bengaluru winning the IPL, maybe! The vaccine, sure! Are Kiranas bouncing back? Most definitely! And that’s precisely …

Mangoes in summer. Beverages during IPL. Mithai at Diwali. Ghee and dairy products during Janmashtami and regional festivals. Indian consumers have certain preferences, and it reflects the increased consumption of those food categories. The seasonality for consumption is impacted by sporting events, cultural traditions, festivals and even the weather. But 2020 is the year …

Revival is the name of the game, and we couldn’t be more excited for our FMCG customers. Demand led by rural has increased, and an uptick in in-house consumption is bringing cheer to brands. Many of these brands are fine-tuning their channels to ensure availability. They are skewing their strategies …

In the age of selfies, you’d think cosmetic sales are recession-proof. They were during the recessions of the Dot Com bubble burst, 9/11 and the 2008 banking crisis. In the early 2000s recession, it was Leonard Lauder, the Chairman of the Estee Lauder Board, who famously coined the phrase Lipstick Index to …

5 Wicked Facts About FMCG Categories That Bucked The Trend During Lockdown

With shrinking wallets, there’s no doubt that the spending capacity of the average person has reduced. Millions of jobs were lost, and a vaccine to end the Coronavirus remains elusive. There’s much to wring our hands over, and there have never been more testing times than now. However, it’s also …

Phew! 2020 – How could 7.8 Billion people not see you coming?  If there’s one thing that most of us have been looking forward to in 2020, it’s the IPL. Premier League cricket has always engaged us with the joy of competing, the pride of victory, and most importantly the …

IPL 2020 is around the corner, and not even Coronavirus and Suresh Raina can dampen our enthusiasm. However, we strongly support and recommend social distancing even when cheering madly for your favourite teams.  While working out our TV schedule and afternoons to play hooky at work (kidding), we wondered at …

We always love it when an underdog saves the day. It’s a story that we like to listen to and tell. It’s the same with the kirana stores. They stayed open and served their customers even when the most steady market players floundered. Their resilience and numbers are now a …

Apparently, there’s a fine line between genius and insanity. Makes us wonder if there’s a Russell Crowe’s John Nash in every brand and sales manager. In that, the obsessive seeing of numbers everywhere. If you find yourself thinking that there’s more than a touch of insanity in you these days, …

We have been talking a lot about Route to Market digitisation lately. It is a burning issue for CPG brands. We are observing it in the strategic decisions of our customers who have ramped up the digital transformation of their RTM processes. While there is no one approach to winning in markets …

Kings & Queens In the age of real-time analytics, Nielsen and its ilk are dinosaurs. They once ruled the world with their reports. But have lost relevance with outdated research methodologies and no access to real-time data. Here’s how Nielsen describes its measurement approach on its website: “In order to accurately represent the …

Godzilla of Availability. Really?  If that’s your question then clearly you are not up to date on monster movies. Godzilla is Earth’s saviour now. Just like consumer brands. For their power play during the pandemic despite the headwinds of political uncertainties across the world. Data played a significant role in …

We Built This City A lot has been said and written about the Chinese ban. So let’s put the “ban” in perspective. Over 14% of India’s total imports for FY 2020 (till Feb. 2020) came from China which is the highest share among India’s importing nations. We source over 90% …

There’s someone who is always telling how 40 is the new 20. That someone is almost always an extroverted 60-year-old or a patronising 30-year-old. Both are delusional.  40 is 40 with its warts and all. We are not delusional because we rely on data. Numbers tell the truth. In this …

Distributors & stockists, and retailers are moving from fortnightly or monthly replenishment cycles to weekly cycles. This is driven by a range of factors including stock availability and ability to give credit in the market among others.

All For Love We love our visitors. Do you know anybody who says they don’t? Still, you can’t hustle the hustlers. At least, not our visitors.  Our visitors are also constant learners. They seem to want to read all that we have to say about growing sales and the role of …

Hello, Local is Vocal. It took a lockdown to put the spotlight on local brands like BL Agro (Bail Kolhu oil), Unibic, Fena, Capital Foods, and others. These brands used their nimble supply chains to plug in the gaps left by the Goliaths whose distribution networks collapsed in the times …

Feed the Baby  That’s right. Your sales teams need all the nourishment that they can get now and you can give it to them. Make their jobs easier. Automate some of their banal tasks. Give them easy access to insights. Put them on a path of sales self-actualisation.  If you …

Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao  There’s so much happening in the world today that we can’t help but get a bit emotional. Bella Ciao, a classic Italian protest song that also makes Money Heist characters dance, seems like the perfect song to sing along to; on a loop.   We have been considering …

What did one cyclone tell another cyclone? I have my eye on you. Don’t blame us for starting with a joke. We needed that pick-me-up after the dreary news that we have been waking up to this week.  The first thing about best practices to get your retailer to self-order …

That’s a no-brainer. With retail intelligence. Specifically, Bizom’s Eagle Eye retail intelligence.  The reality of our times is that business targets have become tougher. We are asked to do more with less. Besides, there are only so many times that you can ask for a discount from your vendors (including us) while …

Hello Darkness, my old friend! It’s layoff season again.  Except that this time around, you’re doing the laying off. Our commiserations. These are indeed tough times. At Bizom, we deal with such times with sleepless nights and humour so sharp that it cuts. We’ll prescribe the same for you although …

Let’s Get Loud India’s Prime Minister might wax eloquent about making local brands more vocal, but our local brands are already killing it in the market. In fact, in the first two weeks of the lockdown, it was local brands like Unibic, Chings, Jyothy Laboratories Limited (JLL) and Fena that …

It’s Chakna Time IF you’re anything like us, then you would have lapped up the news and memes about alcohol consumption in the last two days. The best meme hands-down has to be about the one with helicopters showering India’s boozards with moongfali (peanuts). As absurd as the memes were, …

Pie in the Sky? It’s Thursday morning. A bit early for celebrations. Especially for the kind we are proposing. Are you game?  Here’s what you need:  OK, here’s how it goes. Look at your sent emails from 22 March. Tick every item in your list that you thought could NEVER …

Coronavirus outbreak has forced governments across the world for a lockdown to contain the spread of the virus. In India, at first, the Prime Minister tried to gauge the mood of its people with the Junta Curfew for a day. A 21-day lockdown followed it. Though there was an expectation …

Press the right buttons! Oh, we are “woke” alright. But the only “broke” we like right now are broke jokes like this one:What happened when the Frog’s car broke down?It got toad. How can we joke about these times, you ask? We can. Ask Lalit Bhise, our big man. He has …

Love in the Time of Corona It’s the kind of love that says: kuch karo na! Alright, don’t get your knickers in a twist. We know about the gravity of our situation. We know how hard COVID-19 has hit your brand’s sales.  But did you know that some brands are doing brisk …

Over the past few years, it’s been gratifying to see the consumer trend move away from sugary cola drinks to healthy fruit drink brands like ours.

So, out of hand sanitizer or groceries at home? Planning to stock on some snacks while you practice social distancing? Easy. You’ll go online and order from Amazon or some other giant. Someone’s gonna deliver it at your doorstep. Problem solved, right? Wrong. What about the majority of India that …

Straight talking Are these unprecedented times? Yes, they are. Are our supply chains facing what can only be a war-time strain? Yes, they are. Is our field force down to a quarter? Yes, they are. Probably, less than a quarter. But do we have to despair? My answer is an …

It’s IPL season soon, and we are excited. Yes, we are one of those optimistic sorts who believe despite every reason not to. We are incorrigible about these things. So when India Inc continues to ring the IPL cash registers, and FMCG enterprises line up to create another season of …

Automation, digitisation and advanced analytics are changing the business landscape in India.  While most business sectors are already on the maturity curve in the adoption of digitisation and automation tech, CPG and FMCG in India are the Johnny-come-lately sectors. Part of the reason has been the disbelief that technology can …

Whatever the impact of the downturn has been on your brand, as we pointed out in our last newsletter, there is no better time than now to look into your operational efficiency.

Seventy-five years ago, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was nervous when he launched the D-Day attack against Nazi Germany during World War II. The weather was so vicious on the day of the invasion that failure was guaranteed. Nevertheless, Eisenhower sent a contingent of 146,000 soldiers, 4,000 ships and 11,000 aeroplanes …

Change is always disconcerting. Ask the Pakistani cricket team. Inside sources say, after losing the World Cup game to India, the team is on a hard diet now.  Fixing unproductive behaviours is tough. We know exactly how tough after having worked with over 300 customers and 150,000 users.  This is why …

Unlike Election 2019 exit polls and the totally unsatisfactory finale of Game of Thrones, AI delivers. Yet, consumer brands lag behind in innovating around sales and modernizing supply chain processes.  Why? IT Strategy and marketing leaders from some of the top consumer brands that we work with spoke about the reasons behind …

Every year at Bizom, we host an annual gathering for our folks where we try and set priorities for ourselves. This year, after much debate, we decided to set our priorities along with you, our customers. Then we told our folks @ mobisy that this year will be all about focusing on …