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A version of this article appeared in the Autumn 2016 issue of strategy+business.
The tiny commuter kiosk at the train station in Andheri, a working-class suburb of Mumbai, is a hub of activity most afternoons. The proprietor, Shyam, sells dozens of prepaid mobile phone recharges each day, and he comes highly recommended for another service. “Bhaiya, ready hai?” (Brother, is it ready?) asks a 14-year-old boy. The kiosk owner nods and pulls out an SD memory card from an aluminum box. The card contains some Hollywood and Bollywood films, a playlist full of popular songs, and some episodes of Aap ki Adalat, a popular TV show featuring hardball interviews with leading public figures.
The boy hands over Rs150 (about US$2.25), and happily inserts the card into his mobile device. That mobile, known widely as a “feature phone,” doesn’t have a global brand name like Apple or Samsung. And it’s not as versatile as a smartphone. But it shows videos, and, unlike the shared TV in the boy’s home, it belongs entirely to him.
Although this sale would be labeled piracy in many quarters, Shyam sees himself as performing a necessary service for the young people living in his community — just a few members of a vast and underserved market that could be called infotainment followers, after the new media they prefer. A year or two from now, many of them may replace their feature phones with smartphones, especially if the much-anticipated high-speed 4G mobile Internet service is launched throughout India. In the meantime, they depend on their 2G connections and memory cards.
About 30 miles away, a group of young creative professionals — writers, filmmakers, and a chef — are having brunch at one of Mumbai’s many international cafes. They are representative of today’s full-fledged smartphone-based media market. Over shaksouka (a poached-egg dish from North African Jewish cuisine) and masala tea, their conversation flows freely from the Panama Papers to the new Captain America film to the local motion picture investment scene. Everyone at the table is well informed. But when asked if they read newspapers, only one says yes. “I always read news at breakfast — but only peruse the headlines,” she says.
This group is representative of India’s global sophisticates. In media terms, they are digital self-aggregators; they get their information through Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp, following links to particular stories on the Times of India, NDTV, or New York Times websites. A few of them regularly scan aggregator apps like Flipboard, Inshorts, or Google News. What they consider “news” is highly varied, is easily shareable, and has an extremely short life span. And they’re reading just about all of it on their mobile phones, connected wherever possible to high-speed Internet service from urban providers.
India’s global sophisticates get their information through Twitter, Facebook, and links to news sites.
Meanwhile, rural communities throughout India constitute the largest and fastest-growing media market of all: regional print readers. India is one of the few parts of the world where newspapers enjoy rapid circulation growth. With free delivery, and a business model driven by advertising, newspapers cost only 5 to 10 cents per copy. For people who are largely first- or second-generation literate, the print newspaper is still a mark of status and a newly discovered window on the world. Families buy several papers daily and read them together at breakfast. Commuters read them on trains and buses, and discuss the contents during lunch and tea breaks.
In India, for those who are first-generation literate, the newspaper is still a mark of status.
In this world, Hindi and English remain the two most popular newspaper languages — Hindi is ahead by far — but regional papers published in vernacular languages such as Malayalam, Tamil, Marathi, Bengali, Telugu, and Gujarati are growing at a faster pace. In total, consumer print revenue from newspapers and magazines in all languages rose by an estimated 3 percent in 2015, and regional publications’ revenues are expected to grow 12 to 14 percent annually for the next several years. At the same time, broadcast television remains popular, and the smartphone is increasingly prevalent. Some observers expect the heyday of English-language print in India to last only a few more years.
These three vignettes are typical of the way the India media market is evolving. While newspapers and magazines are thriving, especially in India’s villages and in their non-English editions, hundreds of millions of people are moving to the smartphone as their main source of information and entertainment.
Like other emerging economies, India is condensing this evolution — which took more than a century in the West — into just a few years. The leap to digital, if it continues on its current trajectory, will divide the country’s media, in effect, into three business models, each targeting a different audience: infotainment followers on feature phones, digital self-aggregators on smartphones in the cities, and newspaper readers in villages and small towns. All of these audiences watch broadcast television, but they are moving to digital media for news and other entertainment — just at different speeds. Marketing, advertising, and media companies that want to win in emerging economies may find it useful to understand the differences.
As Sandeep Amar, CEO of India.com Media, puts it: “The truly big opportunity right now lies in mobile, video, and vernacular languages.” The opportunities are huge, because not only are the audiences growing rapidly, but they’re also poised for change. To succeed, each media company needs to decide which segments it can reach, and then carve out a business model for reaching those target segments, especially in new digital forms.
The Growth Trajectory
A confluence of factors have led to India’s current media transition point. The first is accelerated access to technology. In December 2015, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India announced that the country had more than 1 billion mobile phone subscriptions — a number second only to China’s. India is also the third-largest smartphone market, after China and the U.S., with 239 million smartphone users. It is expected to overtake the United States in 2016.
The growth of mobile broadband is being promoted heavily by one of India’s most influential companies. At the April 2016 media business conference hosted by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (a major industry group), Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani referred to Jio, Reliance’s new $22 billion telecom venture, as “one of the largest transformational greenfield digital initiatives anywhere in the world.” His description of Jio was widely noted. It would be, he said, “a 4G broadband service, slated to provide 70 percent of India’s population with speeds 50 to 80 percent faster than the currently available Internet, with data prices well below current rates.”
The government is also promoting accelerated access to digital technology. Its Rs1.13 trillion ($17 billion) iDigital India initiative will provide biometrically based digital identification for all citizens. It is also dramatically increasing connectivity, particularly in rural areas. Digital India has promised to install broadband in 250,000 villages by 2017, free Wi-Fi in public schools and universities, and public Wi-Fi hot spots in all major Indian cities by 2019. In addition, the government is developing electronic healthcare, education, infrastructure, and banking services, all of which are already drawing people online.
India’s media habits are changing as a result. In her annual report on the Internet economy, Mary Meeker, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, estimated that in 2016, 65 percent of all Internet traffic in India will take place on mobile phones. “The mobile is no longer the elitist screen, or the ‘second screen,’ as some used to refer to it,” says Paritosh Joshi, CEO of India TV (a Hindi news channel with 90 million subscribers). “It is the most personal, ubiquitous, democratized screen, and the majority of India is on it. We are a mobile-first country.”
Yet India’s tremendous growth in mobile content consumption has not come at the expense of print. That’s in part because of a second key factor in the nation’s digital transition point: increasing literacy, and the way it has expanded the audience for print media. The country has a literacy rate of 71 percent, up from 12 percent in the 1940s, and boasts one of the highest literacy growth rates, about 9 percent per year. Moreover, compared with the rest of the world, Indian residents pay very little for newspapers. Fifty years ago, newspapers had government subsidies; today, advertising revenues allow publishers to keep the price as low as about Rs3 (5 cents) per copy. This has made the newspaper into an aspirational commodity for newly literate low-income readers.
Siddharth Varadarajan, founder of thewire.in (a news site) and former editor of the Hindu (a leading English-language newspaper in South India), says, “Indian newspapers are terrified of raising their prices. They believe that the phenomenal growth we have seen is because the papers are really cheap.”
A third major factor, India’s high-growth economy, has helped increase advertising revenues throughout the industry. India currently has the most vibrant economy of the BRIC nations. Millions of people in middle-tier cities and small towns are eagerly entering the consumer economy and building their personal wealth. In April 2016, the International Monetary Fund projected India’s GDP growth at 7.5 percent annually, which is higher than China’s. The entertainment and media industry directly benefits from the economy’s high growth; for example, entertainment and media advertising revenues grew more than 10 percent year-over-year in 2015, and are forecast to maintain a compound annual growth rate of 8.6 percent to 2020. As one might expect in a newly industrializing economy, the categories with the largest ad spending are consumer packaged goods (known as fast-moving consumer goods), retail, and e-commerce.
“India is the fastest-growing ad market among all the major markets of the world,” declares C.V.L. Srinivas, group chief executive of Southeast Asia for Group M, a global media investment group. He adds, “2015 was the best year for ad spend growth we’ve had in the last five years. While digital will remain the fastest-growing platform, India is one of the few large markets where all traditional media platforms will show positive growth.”
Only one category of print publication appears to be headed for quicker decline in India: English-language newspapers and magazines.
Only one category of print publication appears to be headed for decline: English-language newspapers. Although they continue to post strong circulation and revenue numbers, their readers tend to be younger, more educated, and more urban than the readers of other newspapers — and thus they are expected to migrate more quickly to digital content.
This finding reflects a fourth major factor: India’s enormous youth population with its digitally oriented culture. Not surprisingly, millennials are forsaking the print newspapers that were the staple of their parents’ generation. “More of our audiences [are] consuming content on their mobile phones,” says Pankaj Mishra, former technology editor of the Economic Times, who left to cofound Factor Daily, a technology-oriented digital media startup. “We realized we had to move with them.”
India’s Media Ecologies
The audience for each of India’s media subsectors is larger than the total population of many countries. Each sector is thus attracting its own unique group of entertainment and media providers — its own interrelated media ecology, consisting of the creators, the publishers and channel owners (on the Web and elsewhere), the advertisers and marketers, and those who track results.
Consider, for example, the digital self-aggregators. Like the habitués of that Mumbai restaurant, they are globally oriented, open to new ideas, and highly partial to peer curation over traditional news and entertainment channels. They use Twitter; Facebook; and DailyHunt, an Indian news aggregator app with editions in 10 languages, which have a total of 6.5 million monthly active users.
“We’ve been very clear from the beginning that we cater to this group,” says Samir Patil, founder of Scroll, a digital news startup, which he describes as a “destination site for thinking India.” He adds, “We did not lower the quality bar to chase audiences. We trusted instead that our audience would find us.” Indeed, Scroll grew to a million readers in its first four months. Patil attributes that success to its social media–style ambiance. Almost 80 percent of its traffic comes from Facebook and Twitter.
Many other startups are trying to reach this market, some with venture capital. Youth Ki Awaaz, a crowdsourced news and opinion site with the slogan “Public opinion is the new superpower,” has 35,000 contributors and 2 million monthly visitors; it is funded by Quintillion Media, a digital content venture founded by Raghav Bahl, founder and former managing director of Network18, and his wife, Ritu Kapur. Another site aimed at young people, ScoopWhoop, raised $4 million from Kalaari Capital, which it intends to invest in ScoopWhoop Talkies, a video production unit. Inshorts, which limits the news stories it publishes to 60 words, is the fourth-most-popular Indian news app and has raised $24 million in funding from Tiger Global.
When designed to foster community (for example, when anonymity is discouraged and people post comments with their real identity), these digital efforts have social network–like qualities that actually raise the level of discourse. “There’s a human psychology effect,” says Patil, “where readers will share stories that make them look good.”
The infotainment followers are very different. On their feature phones, they tend to follow sites that keep their articles and videos short and full of hooks. Most of these media sites offer a combination of popular headlines; film information; and sports, lifestyle, auto, and market news.
India’s traditional media houses, which display a deep knowledge of their varied audience, have tapped into this market with digital offerings. For example, Indiatimes.com, the most successful English news website, belongs to the Times Group, the publishers of the Times of India, the world’s largest-selling English daily. The site has 19 million unique visitors per month. NDTV’s English and Hindi sites as well as Zee’s India.com are among the largest digital crowd pullers in this market. Anant Goenka, head of new media at another major newspaper, the Indian Express (IE), celebrates the paper’s digital experience by saying, “I’m very happy with the reach and revenue of the last two years.”
Many publishers are focused on the regional print readers, who generally favor languages other than English. The Times Group is expanding to 12 regional-language editions. The Hindustan Times, the Hindu, and the IE are making similar transitions. As in the U.K., a person’s choice of newspaper often reflects his or her political stance, religion, and profession as much as geographic location. For example, Hindustan, the flagship Hindi-language newspaper published by the Hindustan Times, has grown 11 percent per year in recent years, compared with 4 to 5 percent for its English-language equivalent.
Although the size of this media market is often ignored by those outside the country, India’s media leaders are keenly aware of it. India TV CEO Joshi calls the English-speaking audience “a vanishingly small minority” in comparison. “Take the example of just my channel,” he says, referring to one of India’s most popular Hindi-language news channels. “It draws a viewership of around 80 million per week,” compared with 1 million for all the English news channels in India combined. That’s just one of several major channels in Hindi, which in turn is just one language; Tamil and Telugu channels each have tens of millions more viewers.
One trend has accelerated growth for all three audience categories: the increased popularity of video, especially when streamed or downloaded from the Internet. Indian investors are scouting actively for video content companies. Betting on this trend are startups like NYUSU, a self-funded venture. The self-proclaimed “one-minute, multi-lingual, video news app for Android phones” provides short videos in six regional languages, featuring opinion journalism.
Another hopeful enterprise is Ping Digital Broadcast, launched by Govindraj Ethiraj, the founder and former editor-in-chief of Bloomberg UTV. He explains that the motive behind Ping was “questioning whether we wanted to cater to the audiences of yesterday and today, or to create for the audiences of tomorrow.” Ping offers infotainment categories such as food, music, gaming, fashion, and technology. For more serious topics, Ethiraj also founded Boom Live, an independent digital journalism initiative focused on what he calls “impact docu-news.” One of his most popular video series, Explained in 90 Seconds, condenses complex issues like the European migrant crisis into very brief primers. “Our next step is to do it in 30 seconds,” he says.
These emerging video enterprises are betting, of course, that the smartphone and broadband continue to take market share. It’s a reasonable expectation; an International Data Corporation report taps India as one of the fastest-growing smartphone markets in the Asia-Pacific region, with sales of 4G devices outpacing those of their 3G counterparts, and smartphones expected to move from their current 40 percent market share to 50 percent or more by the end of 2016. If projections like these are correct, then in many villages, video will not arrive through today’s broadcast channels. People in India, even while watching large-screen TVs, will get their news and information through the Internet.
The Strategic Response
What do these trends mean for the business model of a major media company? To start with, the advantage is still with print over digital when it comes to advertising revenues. Close to 40 percent of 2015 advertising spending in India went to print publications, and less than a tenth of ad spending was on Internet advertising. (The rest went to various forms of broadcast.) Although Internet advertising spending grew by 24.2 percent in 2015, compared with 5.3 percent for print and 13.5 percent for broadcast television, the total amount of Internet advertising remains much smaller — about Rs32 billion ($499 million), compared with Rs163 billion ($2.5 billion) for print and Rs204 billion ($3.2 billion) for television. Print, in particular, is regarded in India as a prestige advertising play: It is the medium where brands are built, especially in consumer-oriented sectors such as food, personal care products, and real estate.
But as Scroll’s Samir Patil pointed out in a 2015 white paper, these spending levels don’t reflect usage habits. “Indians with Internet access spent over half their media engagement time online,” he wrote. If digital advertising spending were proportional to the time spent on each platform, advertising spend on the Internet would rise to Rs192 billion (about $3 billion), or six times current levels.
One problem, of course, is the ad-subsidized model for print — and the widely held view that subscribers will not pay much for information. Digital subscription vehicles, such as paywalls, are not treated with serious consideration by a majority of publishers, for fear that their markets will erode. “When I began this job four years ago,” says IE’s Goenka, “I believed that we would eventually institute a paywall. IE was creating the kind of content that was worth paying for. I quickly backtracked from that. That thinking doesn’t work here.”
Moreover, advertisers have yet to fully embrace the Internet as a vehicle. The Internet audience is still only one-tenth the size of the television news audience, and Internet-based news is more likely to be aimed at urban digital self-aggregators. The traffic on newspapers and TV is more varied, spread across more geographies, and more oriented to family than individual access.
Vikas Kothari, a venture capitalist at the Mumbai-based private equity firm Lightbox, argues that over time, digital startups — which can easily gather and track usage data — have an advantage over incumbent media companies, especially in countries such as India where they can leapfrog past conventional practices. “Outsiders have nothing to lose, while incumbents have to disrupt their own business models,” he says.
All of these concerns may well vanish, of course, when media companies see the audiences for digital media solidify — especially when millions of people begin to watch massive amounts of video online. Because relatively few Indians have credit cards, billing through mobile carriers will probably be the most successful early payment method. It has already been employed successfully by the Indian music site Saavn and by the content distribution company PK Online, whose audience views about 50 million videos per month. Even where individuals possess credit cards, the government’s two-factor authentication rules make online payments a more cumbersome (albeit safer) process. Online micropayments companies such as Yippster, which offer direct carrier billing through a simple SMS, have solved that problem.
Nickhil Jakatdar, CEO of Vuclip, a video-on-demand service, recalls Airtel’s one-minute video for Rs1 as an example. “If you ask users to pay each time for each video, they won’t do it. But if you offer them a one-time payment plan, like unlimited or 10 videos a day for Rs10, they readily subscribe.”
Some publishers believe the subscription-based monetization and advertising models may be helped by a multiservice approach. “Pure news offerings won’t be enough to sustain a business,” says India.com’s Amar. “Even content by itself is not enough. I see the model of the future being a combination of content, community, and personal assistance services.” Some news websites in India now include curated city guides and local referrals, whereas others include partnerships with global content providers such as the Huffington Post (for Times Internet Ltd.), Quartz (for Scroll), and the Wall Street Journal (for livemint.com, a Hindustan Times property). These allow Indian media companies to provide their global news–hungry audiences with diversified international content, while enabling U.S. and European news media companies to tap into India’s promising markets. They already know, from traffic on their own websites, that they have sizable potential Indian readership.
The stakes are high for media and entertainment companies in India. Overall, total entertainment and media revenue is expected to reach about Rs2.7 trillion (about $41.1 billion) by 2020, rising from Rs1.6 trillion ($25.1 billion) in 2015. Much of this will be drawn from advertisers, which tap into the consumer demand of a giant emerging middle class.
If you are a media enterprise leader — within India or looking in from another country — the three audiences of India give you a solid starting place. You may have entertainment or media tailor-made for the vast infotainment-craving population on their feature phones and smartphones. Perhaps you have niche mobile news content that caters to the sophisticated urbanites. Or your future growth may lie with the vernacular print audiences in India’s smaller cities and villages. Each of these markets will require a different approach to advertising, subscriptions, and monetization.
In the end, however, you cannot let this broad segmentation blind you to the one big factor all three groups have in common: They are becoming mobile-first audiences. India, along with other developing economies, will soon have millions of connected, energetic individuals ready for digital media that meets their aspirations. They see themselves living in a world of opportunity. They want to have it all — all the media of the world delivered immediately, accessibly, and inexpensively. They want the one screen that is inexpensive, ubiquitous, and always on. As in the rest of the world, the smartphone is a gateway to news and entertainment that didn’t exist just a few years ago, and that continues to evolve at digital speed.
Reprint No. 16313
- Suvarchala Narayanan is a business writer and TV host based in India and Switzerland. She writes about technology and startups for the Bangalore Mirror.
- Also contributing to this article were Smita Jha, director and leader of the entertainment and media practice at PwC India, and Munnish Puri, managing director of India Financial Advisors and Indian Film Advisors. All statistics not otherwise attributed are adapted from the PwC Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2016–2020.


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CONCESSIONAIRES TAKE SPINACH RECALL IN STRIDE
CONCESSIONAIRES TAKE SPINACH RECALL IN
Author: Pam Sherborne
Date: September 20, 2006
All across the U.S., consumers started throwing
out their raw spinach when the U.S. Food and Federal Drug
Administration began advising consumers not to eat bagged spinach
on Sept. 14. The alert was extended to any raw spinach.
According to a report in the Chicago Tribune
dated Sept. 20, the E. Coli bacteria linked to raw spinach has sent
about 50 perce...

domain: news


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US clothing chain Nordstrom has launched a line of 'dirty' jeans which come with a 'crackled, caked-on muddy coating'.
Fancy A Snog? Whiff-Free Garlic Means A Post-Dinner Kiss Is Back On The Menu
Italian entrepreneurs have spent three years growing an odour-free garlic crop, which means no more smelly breath! Here are the deets...
Most of us love the taste of garlic, but it’s hard to love the inevitable smelly breath and pore-seeping stench that comes with it.
Fortunately two garlic lovers in Italy have spent three years developing a crop of giant garlic known as aglione, which is milder and COMPLETLEY odourless.
This particular type of garlic has been around for donkey’s years, but farmers haven’t cultivated it in large quantities for nearly four decades. In fact, many experts believed the variety to be almost extinct!
Fortunately, foodies Alessandro Guagni and Lorenzo Bianchi didn’t let this get them down, and having found the rare seeds they are now on a mission to sell their ‘kissing garlic’ in Michelin restaurants across the world. Some are even hailing it as the ‘hidden gem’ of Italy!
We reckon it’s about bloomin’ time someone developed a stink free garlic…there are only so many mints you can chew after a posh dinner before people start to notice!
Read more: 5 Brand Renames That Drove Us Mental!
Looks like that Italian restaurant (and goodnight kiss) is back on for date night...
Would you give this kiss-ready garlic a taste?
You'll be shocked when you see the result!
A rare northern white rhino has gone onto the Tinder dating app in an attempt to keep his species alive.
Yes, you did read that correctly.
Make Heart the soundtrack to your day and you could be a winner with great prizes up for grabs throughout the day.
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Figo Aspire Impact: Ford August Sales sees 53% Increase
Good things happening for Ford. The huge campaign conducted by Ford to promote its Figo Aspire is now showing results, as the company reports that it sold 21,520 vehicles in combined domestic wholesales and exports in August 2015 as compared to 14,092 vehicles in the same month last year (2014). By selling 21,520 cars, Ford has managed to register a whooping 53 percent growth in year-on-year sales.
Ford Sales August 2015
The domestic sales for the month of August stood at 8,331 vehicles against 6,801 units in the same month in 2014. The exports number stood at 13,189 units as compared to 7,291 units in August 2014.
Mr Anurag Mehrotra who is the Executive director, Marketing, Sales & Service at Ford India said,
We are delighted with the response Figo Aspire is getting in terms of interest and recognition from customers. Figo Aspire is a no-compromise car and sets a benchmark – from safety offered with standard dual airbags or 6 air-bags to comfort and style and technology offered with SYNC, My Ford Dock, MyKey.
Mr Mehrotra also said,
We are extremely confident of Figo Aspire’s differentiators and its success in the market and are now gearing up to introduce the new Figo ahead of the upcoming festive season. With these two brand new products, we are confident that more and more customers will drive home a Ford to add to their festivities
Source: Economic Times Auto


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Photos shared by Dukes and a Travis Scott fan page appear to show the musos working together earlier this week, although Parker and Scott aren’t actually seen in a photo together.
Travis Scott was in the studio with Kevin Parker of Tame Impala last night pic.twitter.com/lbPusBZs11
— 🎪 (@RodeoTheAlbum) October 17, 2017
Neither Parker nor Scott have mentioned anything about a possible collaboration on social media, but Parker is increasingly being touted for his production chops in the US, after working with the likes of Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson and SZA and, allegedly, A$AP Rocky.
Parker released his latest Tame Impala album Currents in 2015, while Travis Scott released his latest album Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight last year. He also just dropped a new collection with Australian fashion label Ksubi.


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October 28, 2008
Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 for the Italian police
The Italian company Lamborghini made a special gift to the traffic police Italian city of Bologna - referred the sports car Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 Polizia Stradale by the native police.
It should be noted that this was the third police Coupe Gallardo, transmitted by the Italian traffic from the manufacturer supercar Lamborghini.
In the car with a computer, video camera, radio, holster for weapons. But, in addition to standard police equipment, sports car Lamborghini Gallardo Polizia Stradale is equipped with a medical kit: cardiology installation of electrical shock and defibrillators to restore normal rhythm of heart beats after resuscitation, as well as the refrigeration unit for the transport of donor organs for transplantation.
In addition to the pursuit of evil offenders and particularly zealous riders Gallardo police cars are used as emergency medical assistance at the Autobahn.


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Gold rush as India opens door to global retailers
Government defends policy, saying it will protect small retailers and create new jobs
Saturday 26 November 2011
The Indian authorities have signalled their intention to open up the country's retail sector, worth an estimated £258bn, to international brands such as Tesco and Wal-Mart who have been salivating over the prospect for many years.
The cabinet took the decision to change regulations to allow 51 per cent foreign ownership of supermarkets in cities where there are more than 1 million people. The minimum investment will be £65m and half of this would have to be invested in transport, storage and other infrastructure.
The commerce minister Anand Sharma yesterday sought to reassure critics of the plan, saying that small and medium domestic retailers would not be affected and that the move would help to create 10 million jobs over three years. But his effort went in vain: parliamentarians in both the upper and lower house erupted in noisy anger, tearing up copies of his statement and obstructing proceedings. The session was adjourned until Monday.
The opening up of India's retail market has long been the dream of global chains such as Carrefour, who have always said they could help to modernise infrastructure in a country where a reported third of produce rots on the way to market because of poor-quality roads and insufficient refrigeration. Foreign firms, which at the moment are able to partner with Indian businesses to operate wholesale operations, would have to help develop supply chains.
International retailers yesterday welcomed the decision, while saying they needed more details from the government. A spokesman for Tesco said: "Allowing foreign direct investment in retail would be good news for Indian consumers and businesses and we await further details on any conditions. We already have a franchise arrangement with Tata's Star Bazaar stores. Learning about India and serving more customers every month is a win-win for customers, suppliers, Tesco and Tata."
Rajan Bharti Mittal, director of Bharti Enterprises, which has 13 joint ventures with Wal-Mart, described the announcement as a "major landmark in India's economic reforms process".
The government said a number of safeguards had been built into the plans to protect Indian firms and business. One of the rules is that 30 per cent of produce sourced by any foreign retailer would have to come from small or medium operations.
While the political opposition voiced its strident objection to the new reg- ulations, the impact on small bus- inesses may not be as drastic as some fear. Komal Kumar, a shopkeeper in South Delhi, said he welcomed the announcement, which he said re- flected well on India and would bring in large investment.
"Everyone will get opportunities – constructors, labourers – there will be jobs once the operations start," he said. "Also, small shopkeepers like me will not be affected. Foreign companies will not be trying to compete with small operations. Perhaps the [larger Indian retailers] will be affected, but not small shops."
In addition to opening up the retail sector, the Indian government also indicated this month that it was prepared to allow 26 per cent foreign investment in pension fund management. According to Associated Press, this was another plank of the second wave of economic reforms promised by the Congress Party-led government. They follow a round of liberalisation forced by a balance of payments crisis in the 1990s.
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There’s a new place to get your car serviced in Land O’ Lakes, and its owners and employees pride themselves on not being the fastest place in town.
Christian Brothers Automotive, 23650 Venezia Drive, opened last week near the Terra Bella subdivision, just off State Road 54.
The nearly 5,000-square-foot location with nine service bays is the first Christian Brothers Automotive franchise in Florida. Owner Larry Giannone and his wife, Cindi, of Tampa decided to invest in the company “because of its values,” he said.
“It’s a faith-based franchise,” Giannone said. The honesty and integrity of the business is important to the 20-year automotive industry veteran.
So is making sure the job is done right the first time.
“We’re not a quick-service,” Giannone said. “An oil change will take about 40 minutes.”
Giannone said he will be onsite every day, and will drive customers “anywhere you need to go” in the company shuttle car. If you don’t want to wait while your car is serviced, whether its going to be 40 minutes or several hours, Giannone will drop you off back at home or a shopping center, then return to pick you up once your service is complete, he said.
If you choose to wait, the lobby features leather couches and free Wi-Fi, making it a comfortable spot to settle in and get some work done or surf the web.
And if they find something that needs to be repaired, the technicians won’t just tell you.
“We’ll show you,” service manager Don Kalogerson said. “We’re not about high-pressure sales.”
Christian Brothers Automotive is equipped to do everything a dealer can do, unlike most small auto repair shops, Giannone said.
The shop is equipped to “flash” vehicles’ computer systems—updating the software in a car, similar to a Windows update, Giannone said.
Something that might seem to need replacement or repair could be a simple fix with an update, Kalogerson said.
And if they find something on your vehicle that is still under warranty, a technician will alert you and make arrangements to drop off the vehicle at a dealer for you, Giannone said.
Christian Brothers Automotive is open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays.
For more information, visit the Christian Brothers Automotive of Land O' Lakes Facebook page or call 813-949-0100.


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Bank predicts inflation to force the RBA’s hand – how much and when?
Days after AUSTRAC starts formal investigation, big bank breaks big news
- 2018 Commercial Lenders Roundtable
- Top 10 Brokerages 2018
- 2018 Brokers on Aggregators
First shopping malls had to contend with online merchants. Now they have to worry about whether nearby homeowners can pay their mortgages, a new study suggests.
A moderate increase in people struggling to meet their mortgage repayments could harm malls in the neighbourhood, according to new research from Morgan Stanley. Large shopping centres and their owners – who are much more dependent on consumers’ discretionary income than smaller neighbourhood stores – could be in trouble if their centres are located in suburbs with greater concentrations of mortgage delinquencies of 30 or more days, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
“Real estate investment trusts with malls in areas of high mortgage delinquencies may be at risk of underperforming, with shoppers perhaps having less discretionary income to spend,” Morgan Stanley analysts Lauren Berry and Simon Chan said in the study.
The Morgan Stanley study follows a Moody’s report in April that studied rising mortgage delinquency by postcode. If households in problem postcodes are behind on their mortgage repayments, they are less likely to buy jewellery or expensive clothing or eat out in restaurants, Morgan Stanley said.
The average rate of mortgage arrears in Australia over the last five years was between 1.5% and 2 %, according to the Herald. The Morgan Stanley analysts compared the geographic spread of malls owned by Mirvac, Scentre Group, GPT, Stockland and Vicinity with postcodes where delinquency was under 2% and areas where it was higher.
The study found that about 80% of Mirvac, Scentre Group and Stockland’s malls were in locations with delinquency rates below 2%. Only 51% of Vicinity’s malls, however, were in areas with sub-2% delinquency rates; the rest were in postcodes with a greater concentration of defaults.
Read next: Record pricing, rising arrears
Morgan Stanley pointed out that large shopping malls usually attract customers from more than a single postcode, and not all households are owner-occupiers with a mortgage. However, they said that over the next six months, malls’ performance maybe driven by geography and which postcodes recover best from the economic impacts of COVID-19.
“Beyond this, as omni-channel shopping continues to increase traction, borders re-open, and retail networks reassess their stores and rent expense, malls may continue to face challenges, so any advantage (e.g. exposure to lower mortgage arrears), however slight, should not be sneezed at,” Morgan Stanley said.
Ryan Smith is currently an executive editor at Key Media, where he started as a journalist in 2013. He has since he worked his way up to managing editor and is now an executive editor. He edits content for several B2B publications across the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. He also writes feature content for trade publications for the insurance and mortgage industries.
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- Expect more delinquent borrowers – Moody’s
- More than half of Tasmanian borrowers under mortgage stress – report


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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Today, Governor Rick Scott highlighted 75 new jobs at Sweet Pete’s following the small business’s expansion last year in Jacksonville. In total, Sweet Pete’s employs nearly 100 Floridians. Sweet Pete’s operates one of the largest candy-making facilities in the nation and sells over a thousand different types of candy and chocolates.
Governor Scott said, “Sweet Pete’s is a great addition to the Jacksonville community. It is exciting to highlight their growth in Florida and across the nation with 75 new jobs just this year. We want small businesses like Sweet Pete’s, who would directly benefit from our proposal to eliminate the income tax on manufacturers and retailers as well as the commercial lease tax cut, to keep expanding throughout our state.”
Peter Behringer, Founder and Owner of Sweet Pete’s, said, “Sweet Pete’s has experienced so much success in the past year and we look forward to our business continuing to grow in Florida and in other states. Our goal at Sweet Pete’s is that people leave with not only great candy and chocolates, but a memorable experience. This is only possible because of our great Sweet Pete’s team. We are excited to see what the next year will bring and thankful that Governor Scott recognizes our hard work and creation of more jobs for families in our state.”
Sweet Pete’s was the childhood dream of Peter Behringer after his mom opened a famous family chocolate business, Peterbrooke Chocolatier, when he was 11 years old. After finishing college, Behringer decided to follow in his family’s footsteps in the candy-making business and opened Sweet Pete’s candy shop in Jacksonville in 2010. Their handmade candies were such a hit in the community that Sweet Pete’s was featured on the CNBC show The Profit last year. After their TV success, Sweet Pete’s expanded their Jacksonville location and bought a 23,000 square feet building to keep growing.
7,479 total views, 6 views today


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For the four weeks ending 26 December 2021, retail sales of meat, fish and poultry reached £1.9bn, purchased by 98% of households, according to Kantar data just published by AHDB.
Total value and volume sales were down, and turkey lost share to all other proteins, but spend on red meat roasting joints rose by 2.2% year on year. Lamb was the only roasting cut to post year-on-year growth with both pork and beef roasting joint sales down year on year.
Most beef cuts still outperformed 2019, however, including burgers, ready meals, pies and pastries, with a trend of trading down expected to continue for inflation-hit consumers in 2022.
Nielsen data for Scotland paints a similar picture with value and volume sales of fresh red meat failing to reach the giddy heights of 2020 in the 52 weeks to January 15, 2022, but up 8.8% in value and 2.5% in volume versus 2019 figures.
Antoine Legendre, category manager at Quality Meat Scotland (QMS), says: “This is mostly driven by sausages (+19.7% in value) and fresh beef (+6.1% in value), but all proteins are growing. Red meat in retail has benefitted from the increase in at-home consumption thanks to its versatility.”
Shoppers graduated from bulk buying mince in the first lockdown to higher priced cuts such as steaks to replicate the restaurant experience at home. Kantar data for the 52 weeks to October 3, 2021 reported 8.1% value growth for premium brand and premium private label meat in Scotland.
Above and beyond eating habits, shoppers and therefore the whole industry have focused more on meat's environmental impact. With the pandemic and COP26 in Glasgow also reigniting consumer interest in provenance and shopping locally, the narrative around meat and sustainability is being reshaped.
“According to IGD, red meat is in the top three categories for which buying locally to support local businesses is important,” says Legendre. “The pandemic drove younger shoppers into butchers’ shops for the first time. The argument around local diets being better for the environment will continue to grow.”
Research by Kantar and The Knowledge Bank in December 2021 suggests eco-active shoppers could represent 62% of the population in Scotland by 2030.
Stuart Ashworth, chief economist at QMS, says: “International collaboration is building through initiatives like the Global Meat Alliance and the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. These are examples of where co-operation throughout the supply chain at a pre-competitive level will contribute to securing a marketplace for meat.”
Justin Sherrard, global strategist for animal protein at Dutch financial services company Rabobank, says the meat sector should view sustainability as an opportunity rather than a risk.
“Everyone’s trying to show how they’re reducing their impact and, because we tread relatively heavily on the world in animal protein, it’s easier to show how you’ve reduced your impact than it is in other parts of the whole food system,” says Sherrard.
“Individual companies are taking great strides, setting ambitious goals and starting to go after them, whether that’s in the marketing of a carbon neutral product, high animal welfare standards or products that come from production systems where antibiotics are not used.
“There’s been a coming of age around sustainability initiatives, shifting them from a smaller project for those deeply committed to a more mainstream offering. It’s about helping consumers to make that choice and to feel better about the meat they’re consuming.”
Earlier this month, agri-food tech company Elemental announced its first licensing agreement to supply Dawn Meats & Dunbia with innovative protein and fat recovery process technology expected to capture 15% more human edible food products from every carcase they process.
Niall Browne, CEO of Dawn Meats & Dunbia said: “We’re constantly looking for ways to increase the efficiency and sustainability of our operations. The installation of this new technology is expected to deliver 20% of our annual Scope 1 reduction target, helping us to achieve an ambitious 58% overall reduction in absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030.”
Meanwhile, messaging from the plant-based sector has evolved from its original headline-grabbing ‘we’re going to save the world’ approach, says Sherrard, following a backlash of negative publicity questioning its sustainability.
Plant-based brands can no longer say ‘eat me because I’m not beef’, he says. “People are understanding the beef they’re eating in Europe or the UK has actually got a fragment of the sustainability footprint of the global averages thrown around.”
Projections the plant-based category would capture 10%-plus of animal protein sales within a few years were unrealistic, he says. Plant-based will continue to grow but is currently outperformed by growth in meat sales.
Health & NPD
Just as sustainability can be turned into an opportunity for the meat sector, so too can rising interest in health and nutrition.
Ashworth highlights an opportunity to reposition meat with consumers through innovative marketing, product development and addressing the concerns of consumers seeking a balanced healthy diet from sustainable food sources.
Kieran Bansi, head of category management and shopper marketing for Peperami and Jack Link's, says: “High protein, lower sugar and lower calories have become key benefits consumers are looking for and meat snacks deliver on and, as a result, the category has continued to grow from strength to strength.
“Today most protein consumption takes place as part of the centre plate main meal but, with over 70% of us snacking at least once a day, there is huge headroom for meat snacking to grow even further in the snacking territory.”
Bansi says the Jack Link’s range of beef jerky, biltong and protein beef bar lines is driving category growth among consumers looking for taste and health with its lean beef high-protein and low-calorie content.
The total meat snacking category has grown by over 85% in the last five years, says Bansi, driven by NPD such as Peperami’s latest launch, a premium Chorizo five-pack targeted at lunchtime and afternoon snacking opportunities, particularly among young adults.
It's encouraging to see some of the real progress being made by the industry, especially in the face of what analysts affectionately call 'strong headwinds'.
“The challenges are varied but it’s quite a list,” says Justin Sherrard, global strategist for animal protein at Rabobank, citing inflation across input costs from animal feed and agri commodities to freight, labour and energy.
“We’re seeing a squeeze on margins across all food but with animal protein, because it’s such a labour-intensive operation, you really do feel that added cost very acutely.”
High energy costs and lack of labour prompted Moy Park to temporarily suspend live bird processing at one of its Northern Ireland sites in January, with Manufacturing NI calling for Government action addressing the energy and labour crises before other firms follow suit.
Martin Morgan, executive manager of the Scottish Association of Meat Wholesalers, says: “Due to the UK Government’s intransigent and dogmatic approach to immigration, there is every indication that labour shortages will persist throughout 2022.”
Supply & trade balance
As the industry confronts these pressures, what shape is general supply in and how is it likely to fare? Latest forecasts from AHDB indicate a 12% boost for sheep meat production in 2022, against low cull figures in 2021 after many lambs were brought forward in late 2020 ahead of Brexit. Lamb consumption is expected to drop as inflation bites for consumers, but exports are forecast to climb.
For beef, production is forecast to rise by 1% this year, with more Irish supplies coming into the UK market but UK exports climbing by 15% to service strong demand on the Continent.
Pig production and consumption is expected to fall by 2% in 2022. “The pressure on the pig industry is immense at the minute,” says Chris Gooderham, head of markets, AHDB.
Complex and costly export rules and associated bureaucracy are making it impossible for some Scottish businesses to maintain supplies to long-established customers in EU countries.
A Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs survey in December 2021 identified a backlog of around 170,000 pigs, directly linked to the labour shortage and unlikely to be cleared until the summer.
Pig meat exports are forecast to rise 9% in 2022. “Until the supply-demand balance for pigs in the EU is readdressed, prices are going to remain weak,” says Gooderham. “Decline in Chinese demand has somewhat derailed the market, but lower pig numbers in the US and rising prices in China are offering some hope of a recovery later in 2022.”
Sherrard highlights the impact of animal disease on global meat trade, with avian flu pushing up poultry prices at a time when other input costs are also rising, but African Swine Fever lowering EU pig prices by boosting supply through restriction of exports.
Exporting after Brexit has not been without its problems. Morgan says: “Complex and costly export rules and associated bureaucracy are making it impossible for some Scottish businesses to maintain supplies to long-established customers in EU countries.”
Glesni Phillips, data analyst at Hybu Cig Cymru (Meat Promotion Wales), also cites short-term issues stemming from increased paperwork for EU exports and pandemic disruption but also opportunities.
“Prior to the pandemic, Welsh Lamb exports to the Middle East increased by around 400% in two years, and HCC is currently investing in the region to capitalise on this demand. The recent opening of the US market too, following a decade of work to raise the restrictions on beef and lamb produced in the UK, will offer opportunities for Welsh farmers and processors.”
Sherrard says Brexit has not changed trade flows between the UK and EU much to date, but the introduction of veterinary inspections for EU imports on July 1 may have an impact.


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How Fei Siong uses smartphones to train non-digital natives
"Deskless workers" like F&B staff have very different computing needs from PMETs.
With the advent of universal public education, the ability to read and write is taken for granted in the developed world today. Yet in Singapore — one of the most educated societies on the planet — about 2.7% of the population above 15 years old was illiterate in 2018. Lest this seems like a small number, this represents 141,951 people, more than 100,000 of whom are elderly.
In a rapidly digitalising society like Singapore, many of these workers are increasingly at risk of being left behind. It is nearly impossible for such individuals to use modern technology, most of which demand at least a basic reading ability. Lacking such basic skills means that many such individuals are at risk of social exclusion, being unable to effectively participate in a tech-savvy society.
Local F&B firm Fei Siong finds itself in such a predicament, with illiterate workers among its 1,600-strong headcount, even as it embarks upon digital transformation. Moreover, even for its literate workers, who are largely older folk aged 40–60, cyberspace is an unfamiliar and even threatening new world.
Fei Siong operates a chain of outlets via around a dozen different brands selling traditional hawker fare like fishball noodles and curry rice. Most of Fei Siong’s workers are more familiar with Chinese dialects rather than English — the lingua franca of the technology world.
“The government says: go online, while the police are warning you: be careful of scams,” says Makansutra founder KF Seetoh in a phone interview with The Edge Singapore. While scams are a real threat, robust government campaigns to be vigilant against such cyberthreats may have inadvertently sent the message that the internet is dangerous and threatening. The elderly may therefore be afraid of exploring this brave new cyber world.
At Fei Siong, founder Tan Kim Siong considers his staff as his family, and believes that digital transformation is a journey that should not leave anyone behind. “We needed a cost-effective solution that could overcome language barriers, ensure consistency in training, and provide the ability to track each employee’s learning progress,” shares Mervin Lee, vice president of Fei Siong’s corporate development group.
This led Fei Siong to partner local start-up ArcLab, which has hosted courses in 17 languages on its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform. The two firms teamed up to develop an upskilling solution for Fei Siong’s staff in a cost-effective manner, ensuring that its training programme caters to all workers. Videos and pictures are used to convey information, and instructions, if any, are written in plain and simple language to ensure ease of understanding. The digital solution is also available in Chinese to cater to Fei Siong’s non-English speaking workforce.
This upskilling SaaS solution is just one part of a firmwide digital transformation drive. Fei Siong outlets now use enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems through tablet computers to better manage inventories. Additionally, Fei Siong is gradually introducing the use of cashless payments at its outlets — most hawkers typically still prefer cash.
Tech for the techless
The narrative that dominates the tech world today is about who can create the most elaborate, beautiful and cutting-edge user experience (UX) for the digital native user. Yet these fancy bells and whistles can often prove alienating to the digitally illiterate. To ease latecomers into the contemporary wave of digital transformation, sometimes less is more.
For the ArcLab team — most of whom are in their 20s — developing such solutions has involved transporting themselves from a “4G world” to a “2G world”. The team brushed up their Mandarin skills and went on the ground to better understand the needs of the Fei Siong workers. Challenging preconceived notions of what good tech looks like, seemingly intuitive actions like pushing the “play button” to watch a video may not hold true in the “2G world”.
ArcLab’s CEO James Chia, at 43 years old, can probably better empathise with the need to bridge this cross-generational digital gap. During his experience selling bubble tea as a university student in the early 2000s, he observed that “deskless workers” like F&B staff often have less access to and familiarity with technology than PMETs (professionals, managers, executives and technicians). “If we don’t understand them, we are actually doing ourselves a disservice,” Chia tells The Edge Singapore. He notes that Facebook regularly holds “2G Days” to ensure their products will perform in less tech-savvy markets.
Fei Siong’s upskilling solution adopts the “less is more” approach. The user interface is simple and no-frills, with users only having to press simple navigation buttons. Quizzes are presented in a multiple-choice format to check if workers have grasped the knowledge presented. Even a 3G phone, says Chia, can access the SaaS solution. “We deliberately decided not to build a native app, so everything is hosted directly on the browser,” he says. This cuts down the number of steps needed to access upskilling modules as employees do not have to download an app via the App Store or Google Play. This helps to make usage as straightforward as possible.
Based on the concept of “nano-learning”, information is presented in bite-sized chunks of 5–10 minutes. Not only does this prevent information overload, it also allows for workers to be trained in a time-efficient manner. Lee says that workers typically use the training modules during lull periods when there are few customers, or when commuting to and from work. Employees without smartphones can use tablets at each outlet to access these courses.
Designed for the field
This is in contrast to Fei Siong’s previous training practices, which required trainers to conduct in-person sessions off-site. Employees’ disparate schedules had to be coordinated on a large scale, with management juggling the unenviable task of ensuring that a steady roster of trainers would be available to conduct the sessions in the appropriate language. The need for workers to leave their workplaces to attend training sessions meant that productivity often suffered.
Digital courses are designed by six certified trainers handpicked by Lee, most of whom were previously outlet managers. The trainers are thus able to create modules that are relevant to the employees, including informal training in skills such as cash handling and customer service. The trainers are attached to each of Fei Siong’s brands and staff can call them for additional technical support. The trainers also occasionally conduct outlet visits to train workers as well.
Lee, a former civil servant at Workforce Singapore, says: “When we design a module, we give it to the staff to try and we see how they use it.” This allows module designers to further tweak their module design. Insights could be as simple as avoiding the colour red for navigational buttons. Illiterate workers perceive red as a warning colour, potentially making them more cautious about pressing such buttons.
For now, as Fei Siong is in the early stages of rolling out this new technology, adoption rates are still expected to be relatively low as staff take some time to adapt. “We are focusing our efforts on improving the adoption rates for the coming months, as we believe that mobile learning is the future for frontline staff,” Lee tells The Edge Singapore.
Progress and tradition
As traditional hawking increasingly becomes a dying trade, is digital transformation the answer to keeping it alive? At the very least, Fei Siong’s Lee believes that digital transformation will weaken the trade’s barriers to entry. Staff will be able to learn the culinary arts efficiently while simultaneously streamlining the operational side of running a food business.
Yet Seetoh of Makansutra argues that large commercial hawker chains like Fei Siong are the exception in Singapore’s hawker scene. Most hawkers, he says, just do not have the economies of scale to implement digital transformation. He argues that the capital outlay of implementing digital solutions risks compromising the attractive pricing of hawker food in Singapore, which are as famous for their affordability as they are for their taste.
For instance, while food delivery apps are potentially effective channels of distribution, the cost of relying on such services makes them less attractive for hawkers. The fees for using apps like Foodpanda or Deliveroo, says Seetoh, can reach up to 35% while hawkers make no more than 12–15% from their cheap delights.
These apps, he surmises, are catered more towards higher-end food businesses rather than low-cost options such as local hawkers. Digital technology could also disrupt traditional business practices that are central to the hawker culture. Seetoh explains that many hawkers have deep networks with existing suppliers that are not wired. With an entire traditional business network using cash to supply the ingredients that give hawker food its distinct flavour, replacing traditional business practices with digital ones is easier said than done.
“Food is a very offline thing. Some foods weren’t created for deliveries. That’s what makes our food culture great,” Seetoh tells The Edge Singapore. Popular zi char fare such as hor fun just does not taste the same after delivery unlike Western fare such as burgers, he contends. Trying to evoke the heat and noise of a traditional hawker centre in a sterile cloud kitchen and operating a delivery-only model is perhaps a step too far — even in these post-Covid days.
Then again, perhaps there exists some room for compromise between the demands of progress and preserving tradition. Market food stalls in London have taken readily to using cashless payments, while in China, street food vendors routinely accept payment via Wechat or Alipay. For more ambitious hawkers striving to match Fei Siong’s scale, however, the question of digital transformation is perhaps one of “when” rather than “if”.
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Indian online pharmacy
and telemedicine startup PharmEasy, on Tuesday, announced its merger with competitor Medlife
starting 25 May, 2021. Both companies’ plans of a merger first came to light in August last year, when PharmEasy
had submitted a proposal to the Competition Commission of India (CCI) for acquiring Medlife.
The deal saw API Holdings, the parent entity of PharmEasy, acquire 100% equity shares of Medlife.
Medlife’s promoters have in return got a 19.95% stake in the merged entity, which is expected to be valued at $1 Bn.
cofounder Dhaval Shah wrote on LinkedIn that the merged entity will be India’s largest online healthcare delivery platform, serving over 2 million families every month.
As part of the merger, Medlife will cease operations while its users will be able to use their login credentials to access the PharmEasy
portal. Their digitised prescriptions and saved addresses up to a year back will be available on the PharmEasy app.
“We are also looking forward to onboarding Medlife’s retail partners and continuing our journey with them with utmost sincerity. We assure that users’ and retailers’ experience won’t be compromised in any way, and will only get better going forward,” wrote PharmEasy in a blog post.
Founded in 2015 by Dharmil Sheth, Dhaval Shah and Mikhil Innani, PharmEasy offers services such as teleconsultation, medicine delivery and diagnostic test sample collections.
On its social media collateral, the startup claims to be delivering medicines in over 1,000 cities covering more than 22,000 pin codes.
The PharmEasy-Medlife merger comes amid increased activity in the online pharmacy
space, which has seen the entry of big ecommerce players such as Amazon, Reliance and Flipkart since last year.
In August last year, Reliance Retail acquired a majority stake in online pharmacy
NetMeds. In the same month, Amazon launched its online pharmacy, Amazon Pharmacy in India. In September, Flipkart partnered with online pharmacy 1mg, integrating the latter’s platform into its Android app.


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Amazon’s Kindle Fire was predicted to shake up the Android tablet world – and it appears to be doing just that.
Analytics firm Flurry have released some interesting data on Android tablet usage. Whereas most market share numbers report the number of devices shipped or sold, they’ve looked at the number of user sessions – that is, instances of a user opening an app. (Naturally they can only measure apps which use their software, but that’s likely to be a fairly representative sample.)
In less than three months, usage of Fire apps has rocketed up to parity with the much longer established Samsung Galaxy Tab:
What’s more, their analysis of the number of paid downloads on the Tab and the Fire suggests that the Fire is already hugely outstripping the Tab in revenue:
Something I’d like to highlight here is that these numbers are for app revenue only. Amazon is known for its success in selling books and music, so good sales in those media on the Fire would be natural; but these numbers demonstrate that they’re extending that success to app sales as well.


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Godfrey Sullivan, Splunk CEO
In an IT infrastructure which is increasingly dynamic and virtualised, it seems humble log management and analytics is suddenly something that enterprises need. So says Godfrey Sullivan, former CEO of Hyperion and CEO of just such a log analytics firm, Splunk, since late 2008.
Sullivan, who says Splunk has around 3,000 customers worldwide of which 500 are in Europe, says Splunk, "Does for machine data what business intelligence did for structured data. This is the next generation."
After successfully piloting his former company, Hyperion, from $500m to $1bn revenue in six years before selling it to Oracle, Sullivan says he shortly after received several offers to become CEO of public companies, as you would expect. However after due diligence which he says included talking not just to managers but to customers, and finding that Splunk had doubled in size three years in a row, he decided to take the reins.
"This is the most fun I have had in 20 years," he says. "We’re going to grow Splunk by at least another 70 to 80 percent this year despite the economy."
But is machine data management really such a hot area to be in? Wouldn’t the management of unstructured data, such as emails, social networking feeds and multimedia have been a better bet? "The trouble there is that there are already two gorillas in that space," Sullivan says. "Google and Autonomy. And they are doing a pretty good job managing unstructured data."
"I’ve spent a lifetime in Silicon Valley and I have learned that the most fun you can have is finding a new category and helping to create that," Sullivan says. "And remember that machine data is also unstructured – it comes in multiple formats that we need to be able to make sense of."
Surely if not unstructured data then anyone in their right mind would have been looking for a hot young cloud or SaaS vendor to run? "I also assumed I would be working for a cloud company," Sullivan muses, "but what I found was a lot of companies trying to be cloud companies because they think it is hip. Four years on and it has matured quite a bit but when you scratched under the surface in 2008 you found a lot of very average technology."
Splunk in the cloud
Sullivan notes also that the company recently launched Splunk Storm, for analysing and troubleshooting applications in the cloud.
"There are two further points I’d make about Splunk," he continues. "The first is that customers have downloaded it from the web and used it with almost no assistance from us. The second is the diversity of use cases. I called people all over the world using Splunk in geographies where we have no sales force, using it in different ways: to help with security, infrastructure management, application monitoring, compliance. Six of the seven biggest banks are using Splunk for compliance. It’s a very horizontal product. And download to success is measured in days."
So what does machine data management actually do? Essentially Splunk tracks every machine event — the clinking on a URL, the movement of a virtual machine, the trade in a stock, the list is almost endless – and stores them all in proprietary flat files. There’s no relational database underneath, no schema, just a high speed indexing engine, Sullivan claims.
Customers can then use natural language queries or Splunk’s analytics to query those machine events, perhaps to find error codes, failed transactions or just degradation in transaction handling times.
Users can download the software and monitor or analyse up to 500MB of machine data before they need to get their cheque books out. Sullivan says the typical sale is $20- to $30,000.
As well as security and compliance the web analytics potential is gaining ground, Sullivan says. Splunk can be used to find, for instance, all those cases where a web surfer got to the checkout but didn’t go through with the purchase. It’s also being used in telcos for call detail record (CDR) analysis.
Sullivan says Splunk made around $66m in revenue in 2010. His goals for 2011 are to have added 1,000 new (paying) customers and break the $100m mark.
Is it too early to be thinking about an IPO or trade sale? "No, I am preparing the company to be a public company," Sullivan says. "We have to be ready to manage it that way. SarbOx, compliance etc. But an IPO is just a financing event. The question is, can you run the marathon? I estimate this is a $7 to $10bn market, and there’s no direct competitor. It’s only a matter of time before we have some more competition. There are so many use cases for Splunk my biggest challenge is deciding which areas not to pursue yet."
Please bookmark CBR today.
UPDATE: Splunk has just announced that in its latest quarter it added 350 new licensed customers and grew sales 95% year on year. It now claims 3,200 customers in over 75 countries. "At the core of every business is data that can provide a powerful competitive advantage. Every company is a data company. Splunk is delivering software that enables companies to derive game changing insights from their machine data," added Godfrey Sullivan, president and CEO.


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The cover comes off the NSX Concept on August 18 at the Pebble Beach Concours.
“The Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is more than one of the world’s preeminent exhibitions of luxury automobiles; it is a celebration of style and refinement that is the perfect showcase for the Acura NSX Concept,” said Michael Accavitti, senior vice president of Automobile Operations at American Honda Motor Co., Inc. “We are thrilled to align the Acura Brand with this prestigious event that is the ultimate celebration of the automobile.”
Engineers at Honda R&D Americas, Inc., Raymond, OH are leading global development of a production model based on the Acura NSX Concept. The next-generation Acura sports car will be produced in nearby Marysville at the newly established state-of-the-art Performance Manufacturing Center now under construction. The NSX is slated to go on sale in 2015.
Targeting next-generation supercar dynamic capabilities with advanced environmental performance, Acura announced in 2012 that the NSX will be powered by a mid-mounted, direct-injected V-6 mated to Acura’s Sport Hybrid SH-AWD® Super Handling All-Wheel Drive.
Acura’s Sport Hybrid SH-AWD® is an all-new, three-motor high-performance hybrid system that combines torque vectoring all-wheel-drive with advanced hybrid efficiency through the use of three electric motors. One motor is integrated with the V-6 engine and its all-new dual-clutch transmission (DCT) driving the rear wheels, and two motors driving the front wheels. The system enables instant delivery of negative or positive torque to the front wheels during cornering to achieve a new level of driving performance unparalleled by current AWD systems.
On August 4, a testing prototype version of the NSX lapped the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, OH prior to the running of the Honda Indy 200 race. It showcased the steady progress being made toward the launch of Acura’s next-generation, mid-engine supercar. The Acura NSX Prototype, above, Mike Matune photo, lapped the 2.4-mile winding road course, driven by a member of the engineering development team. The NSX Prototype featured custom blue graphics that speak to Acura’s intention to go racing with the new NSX. The NSX Prototype shares the same basic styling as the NSX Concept that will be on display at Pebble Beach.
For more information about Acura vehicles, please visit http://www.acura.com/future/NSX#1
For the latest on the 2013 Pebble Beach Concours, check out


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According to a report, Amazon is having a lot of trouble keeping their staff due to a billion attrition rate. Leaked firm spreadsheets, slide decks, and internal research papers were used to demonstrate this.
This was acquired, according to the source of the documents that were released, since the company doesn’t have internal controls.
According to the analysis, the company’s turnover rate is estimated to cost its worldwide consumer field operations team $8 billion a year. Compared to the number of workers who were laid off or fired by the company, more workers left of their own volition.
The information was widely disseminated among Amazon employees, from warehouse laborers to those in entry-level positions to vice presidents. The Verge reports that the company’s ten tiers of employees had an attrition rate of 70%, with 81.3% being the highest.
The highest attrition rate was not identified in the study, but it was made known to the public that Amazon experienced frequent turnover in its warehouses and other fulfillment centres.
The company’s present approach, which could financially hurt them, and employee complaints about not receiving proper training and promotions despite having a reputation for gathering consumer data are also included in the leaked documents. The claims claim that the company’s training initiatives are either disjointed or inefficient for the personnel.


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No More Online Gambling in the US?
Well, it looks like the nuclear option has hit. Online gambling will no longer be legal in the US. It is a sad day for gaming Americans. This new law, "the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006", will have sever impacts on the gaming companies here in the US, and abroad, as all that revenue will either vanish, or go underground.
First off, it all went down under the guise of ammendments to a port security bill, and of course it happens just as congress is heading home for final campaigning for the mid terms. Slimy.
Yahoo News Had this report today:
Online gambling firms faced their biggest-ever crisis on Monday after U.S. Congress passed legislation to end Internet gaming there, threatening jobs and wiping 3.5 billion pounds ($6.5 billion) off company values.
Britain's PartyGaming Plc, operator of leading Internet poker site PartyPoker.com, and rivals Sportingbet and 888 Plc said they would likely pull out of the United States, their biggest source of revenue.
"This development is a significant setback for our company, our shareholders, our players and our industry," PartyGaming Chief Executive Mitch Garber said.
The House of Representatives and Senate unexpectedly approved a bill early on Saturday that would make it illegal for banks and credit-card companies to make payments to online gambling sites.
Read on for more from around the News Wires.
Casino City Times is reporting that already some companies are not taking US funds.
CryptoLogic Inc. (TSX: CRY)(NASDAQ: CRYP)(LSE: CRP), a leading software developer to the global Internet gaming industry, announced that effective immediately licensees of WagerLogic Limited, the company's licensing subsidiary, will not take wagers from U.S.-based players. This is a result of new legislation expected to be signed today by President Bush that prohibits financial transaction processing in the U.S. online gaming market. The company has spent five years preparing for this eventuality by shifting its revenue base to fast-growing European markets, and is positioned for long-term profitability and growth.
"Since 2001, CryptoLogic has been shifting its business to Europe, and our record revenue and earnings in 2005 and 2006 to date flow from our success in the markets that embrace Internet gaming," said Lewis Rose, CryptoLogic's President and CEO. "While the new U.S. developments will be a challenge for the whole industry, our company's diversification, strong balance sheet, thriving European customers and potential new business in emerging markets enable us to face the future with confidence."
With more than 70% of its licensees' revenue now coming from outside the U.S., CryptoLogic is one of the industry's most geographically diversified businesses. The company also enjoys a very strong balance sheet. At June 30, 2006, CryptoLogic had $126 million in cash, $91.7 million in net working capital and no long term debt. Based on historical results, the annualized impact on revenue of today's decision would have been approximately $30 million for the full year 2006, with an estimated effect on earnings of approximately 80% of that amount. In its remaining business, the company continues to maintain its corporate objective of growing revenue by 20%. Continued, strong organic growth, the launch of Playboy's non-U.S. facing Internet casino and Internet poker sites and potential signings of new licensees will help CryptoLogic in this goal.
On the evening of Friday, September 29, the U.S. Congress adopted the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, which prohibits financial transactions processing for certain types of Internet gaming. Certain types of gaming are exempt, including horse racing, state lotteries and intratribal transactions. The legislation addresses previous uncertainties in the law governing non-sports Internet gaming in the U.S.
And if you have any assets in any online casinos now, you may be stuck without them.
Gambling Planet has this story this afternoon:
Internet gambling firm 888 Holdings Plc is expected to freeze indefinitely business from U.S. customers on Monday after Washington moved to tighten its online gambling laws, the Financial Times said.
The company is thought to be preparing to issue a statement to the London Stock Exchange acknowledging that congressional approval of the U.S. bill last Friday would have a "material" negative impact on its trade, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed people close to 888.
A company spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
Rival gambling firm Sportingbet Plc was also believed to be preparing a statement for the stock exchange but is expected to wait to consider the actual effect on business, the FT reported.
The bill, a compromise between earlier versions passed by the House of Representatives and Senate, would make it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to online gambling sites.
We're no lawers, but it seems to us that if you have anything in any online casino accounts, you'd better cash out now if you can, otherwise it may remain lost to you (if its not too late already).
A sad day indeed.
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Posted by Russell Miner at October 2, 2006 2:46 PM


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Supermarket chain Publix is recalling a snack mix because the label doesn't warn shoppers that it contains peanuts.
When Scott J. Moore first opened his menswear store in Tampa, brands thought he would be out of business in a year because "men don't shop." Fifteen years later and bigger than ever, he managed to prove them wrong. Now they reach out to him to get a chance to dress Tampa Bay's fashion-forward men.
TAMPA — For years, browsing the rows of Features costumes in search of the perfect Halloween outfit has been a tradition for Mary Hanyok.
1 MarineQuest and the St. Petersburg Science Festival: The open house at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute has grown into a huge extravaganza of science-related exhibits and activities that spreads from the marine institute along the waterfront to the adjacent University of South Florida St. …
The Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World's Magic Kingdom now has its own line of swag at a new gift shop called Memento Mori that has opened in Liberty Square in the Orlando theme park.
SARASOTA — The Tampa Bay area hasn't had a new major mall since 2008, when the Shops of Wiregrass opened in Pasco County.
NEW YORK — Sony is launching its new Xperia Z3 waterproof smartphone through Verizon, the nation's largest wireless carrier, as well as T-Mobile.
NEW YORK — No wonder Coke and Pepsi are spending millions of dollars to fight proposed taxes on sugary drinks in California.
INTERBAY — An Italian renaissance is under way at the southern end of Bayshore Boulevard with the arrival of the Bake, a cafe and bakery, and Noi (translates as "us") Italian Kitchen and Bar.
ST. PETERSBURG — Now that the new Publix at 3700 Fourth St. N is open, it's doubtful shoppers will still refer to the chain's other store two blocks away as "the good Publix." Many have used that term for the store at 200 37th Ave. N since the Albertsons across the street was converted to a Publix in …


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Nigeria’s largest retail bank and sustainability champion, Access Bank Plc., has joined other organisations to launch the first-ever United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) sustainability compendium in Nigeria.
The compendium, which was launched recently at the UNGC Breakfast Dialogue, documents some of the stellar efforts of the Bank, its sustainability journey and its strategic collaborations to facilitate socio-economic development.
Launching the compendium, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, the former Group Managing Director, Access Bank Plc., urged corporate organisations and SMEs to invest in and practice sustainability. Highlighting this as the primary solution to achieving the SDGs in view of the critical issues around health and poverty that have plagued Africa, he stated:
“The collective will and desire for action amongst organisations has taken a giant leap from where it was few years ago. However, compared to other nations, the statistics of malaria, poverty and deaths in Nigeria paints a very gory picture. Hence, it is the responsibility of every corporate organisation, SME and individual to get involved in activities that will aid the achievement of the SDGs come 2030.”
Over the years, Access Bank has facilitated a growing number of sustainability activities, including the Malaria-to-Zero initiative, issued the first ever CBI-certified Green Bond, and also funded various not-for-proﬁt organisations and programs across all 36 states in the country’s six geo-political zones, among others.
Omobolanle Victor-Laniyan, the Head, Sustainability, Access Bank Plc., assured Nigerians that Access Bank will not relent in its contributions to the achievement of the SDGs saying, “We have entrenched sustainability into every part of our business operations and activities, in addition to aligning the implementation of our sustainability strategy with the achievement of the SDGs.”
“To this end, we have made good progress in driving social, environmental and economic development locally and globally. Despite these, we will not relent, rather, we will continue to invest our time, resources and work with relevant stakeholders to provide innovative solutions to local and global challenges,” she added.
The Bank’s sustainability efforts have been recognized by several prestigious local and international bodies, becoming a four-time consecutive winner of the Outstanding Business Sustainability Award by Karlsruhe Sustainable Finance Awards; 9-time winner of the Most Sustainable Bank in Nigeria Award by World Finance Awards; two-time consecutive winner of Most Sustainable Company in Africa by the Sustainability, Enterprise and Reporting Awards; 2-time consecutive winner of the Central Bank of Nigeria Sustainability Awards in all categories including Most Sustainable Bank in Nigeria; 2019 Gender Leader of the Year Award by Africa CEO Forum Awards, among others.
CHI, Lagos State Chapter of Nutrition Society of Nigeria advocate daily fruit juice intake
Roy Deepanjan, the Managing Director of CHI Limited Nigeria, and Dr. Oluwatosin Adu, Chairman, Lagos State Chapter of the Nutrition Society of Nigeria (NSN), have called on Nigerians to embrace daily intake of fruit juice as a way of boosting their physical wellbeing.
The duo made this call at the 2019 Chivita World Juice Day Conference themed, ‘Everyday Wellness – Crystallising the Role of Fruit Juice’, held recently at Sheraton Hotel & Towers, Ikeja, Lagos.
Speaking at the event, Deepanjan said fruit juice intake is an excellent way to achieve the recommended daily amounts of nutrients the body requires to meet its optimal health. He stated that 100% fruit juice is an alternative to fresh fruits and vegetables known to contain essential nutrients, vitamins and minerals.
Deepanjan added: “This is why nutrition experts recommend that we drink 1½ – 2 glasses of 100% fruit juice every day. Research indicates that countries that are low in consumption of natural foods and fruit juices also rank low in life expectancy. This is because fruit juice is a key component of the healthy living equation.
“Being the leader in the fruit juice category in Nigeria, Chivita has boldly taken up this public interest initiative to drive awareness for everyday wellbeing through fruit juice consumption.”
This year’s event themed, ‘Everyday Wellness: Crystallizing the Role of Fruit Juice.’ brought together experts & key opinion leaders on one platform.
Deepanjan said “Chivita is not only committed to producing quality and healthy beverages, but also feels responsible to educate consumers about making the right beverage choices to ensure their overall health and wellbeing. This platform will enable us deepen the conversations on fruit juice consumption.”
In the keynote address, Dr Adu, Associate Professor of Nutritional Biochemistry at the Lagos State University, stated that, “100% fruit juice plays a major role in boosting wellness and that its nutritional value is at par with that of fresh fruits and vegetables”.
He noted: “Consuming 100% fruit juice along with foods rich in non-haem iron can help increase absorption of minerals. It helps consumers to achieve recommended potassium intake levels and support the maintenance of normal blood pressure in the general population.
“Pure fruit juice contains bioactive substances such as carotenoids (mainly luteins and cryptoxanthins) and polyphenols (hesperidin and narirutin which are within the flavanone group).
First Bank: Towards reviving Nigeria’s textile industry
Chinyere Joel- Nwokeoma
For many years, until the early 1980s, the Nigerian textile industry was the highest employer of labour, after the public sector. Sadly, the industry is in dire straits battling for survival in recent times.
Among the challenges that confronted the sector was policy inconsistency leading to closure of many textile companies occasioned by poor power supply, smuggling, poor access to finance and high operating cost, among others.
It is unarguable that the closure of many textile companies contributed to the rise in the country’s high unemployment rate, rising insecurity and other social vices.
It is against this backdrop that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele, recently lamented the country’s descent from being a textile giant to a mediocre player in the world economy.
Emefiele said Nigeria used to be home to Africa’s largest textile industry in the 1970s and early 1980s with the employment of over 450,000 people.
“The textile industry at that time was the largest employer of labour in Nigeria after the public sector, contributing over 25 per cent of the workforce in the manufacturing sector.
“The industry was supported by the production of cotton by 600,000 local farmers across 30 of Nigeria’s 36 states.
“This sector supported the clothing needs of the Nigerian populace, as our markets were filled with locally produced textiles from companies such as the United Textiles in Kaduna, Supertex Limited, Afprint, Texlon, Enpee and Aswani Mills, among others.
“In addition, the cotton growing sector has gone dead, thereby depriving thousands of smallholder farmers the chance to earn a living.
Furthermore, a large proportion of our clothing materials today are imported from China and countries in Europe,” Emeifele stated.
It is against this background that First Bank of Nigeria Ltd, in line with its celebratory 125th anniversary , themed, “Woven into the Fabric of Society”, on Oct. 2 commemorated the country’s independence with a locally made textile attire.
Specifically, the bank set aside Oct. 2 to have all staff wear a locally made textile attire adorned in its 125 anniversary logo and over 18,000 staff across the bank and FBN Holdings participated.
The bank in a statement attributed the initiative to moves to celebrate the country’s 59th Independence anniversary and at the same time support the textile industry.
“The native attire fashion statement by FirstBank and the FBN Holdings Group is rooted in our trust in the diverse opportunities the textile industry provides.
“And indeed its contribution to national growth and development, vis-à-vis the job opportunities, youth and women empowerment, as well as the entrepreneurship driven influence its creates cannot be overemphasised.


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Fujitsu has launched its upgraded TP8 family of all-in-one (AIO) and modular retail point-of-sale (POS) systems in the US market.
The company claims that its new POS system features new technologies and offers retailers seamless serviceability for high uptime and rapid processing.
Fujitsu America retail head Ray Caul said: “Fujitsu’s POS solutions are the foundation of our 50-year heritage serving over 500 global retailers in 52 countries and have enabled us to solidly support our customers’ business needs in a space as dynamic as retail.
“Our updated Fujitsu TP8 retail engine product line-up showcases constant innovation of our technological products and services that offer retailers the superior performance, flexibility, serviceability and design they need to better serve customers and increase their overall bottom-line.”
With a refreshed and sleek design, the new TP8 AIO POS terminal and compact TP8 Modular Box POS system features 15in and 18.5in LCD monitors.
They are powered by the Intel’s sixth and seventh generation processors to provide sales associates with a boosted uptime and swift processing.
The company further added that its new POS solution has been designed to suit a full range of retail segments, including speciality, mass merchants, department stores, drug stores, DIY and grocery.


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I had occasion yesterday to be on The Call, a CNBC television show hosted by economist Larry Kudlow. Like other supply-side economists, Kudlow follows Milton Friedman in assuming that the inflation rate is driven solely by monetary policy.
My topic as a talking head: Where is inflation headed in the US? Inflation matters because it affects the stock market, interest rates and our real wealth and income.
I think horse racing is a good analogy for inflation predictions. A lot of people are betting on the horse called inflationary expectations: the Federal Reserve’s monetary stimulus will create higher inflation rates so let’s build that expectation into today’s interest rates and prices. Another horse is medical costs: pharmaceutical companies and health care providers are raising rates in anticipation pricing pressures once the Democrat’s national health care policy is enacted. Yet another horse is energy prices.
I’m betting on the horse called deflation, owing to the increasingly commodity-like economy coupled with recession-induced excess capacity. Those betting on inflationary expectations, I feel, are incorrectly assuming that the monetary stimulus will come on top of a traditional economic upturn. What they’re forgetting is that the only thing holding up the economy and prices today is stimulative spending and monetary policies of our government.
And we haven’t even seen the full effects of state and local government deficits, record-high office vacancies causing bankruptcies and further bank capital problems and a growing retail bankruptcy rate. Eddie Bauer declared bankruptcy yesterday. Who’s next?
In the end, most of the prices in our economy are set by individual business people and not by some mysterious mechanism. What will these business people do? We have record high unemployment and excess industrial capacity. Furthermore, customers increasingly see few if any differences between the products of the companies they’d consider buying from, making price the key driver of customers’ choices. The bottom line (or should I say my racetrack bet?) is that the forces for higher prices just aren’t strong enough in the near to mid-term to cause inflationary concerns.
Deflation does not bode well for corporate earnings. What are you to do? Engage in business model innovation. You’ll discover new growth platforms and, as a one-of-a-kind business, you’ll have much better control over pricing.
I’ve said it before in this blog. Every industry has its Walmart. If you can’t be your industry’s Walmart, avoid becoming its Sears, Shopko or K-Mart. Differentiate your business model.
For insight on business model innovation, read my recently released book, Beyond Price.


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MINNEAPOLIS — Target has hired Peter Glusker as SVP new business integration and operations, effective May 19. In this role, Glusker will lead the integration of new acquisitions into Target.
“Over the past year, Target has acquired companies, including Chef’s Catalog, Cooking.com and DermStore, which complement and extend our assortment and content for guests,” stated Casey Carl, president of multichannel for Target. “We’re excited to welcome Peter to Target, where he will focus on unlocking the full value of these and future strategic acquisitions.”
Glusker joins Target from Gilt Groupe, where he served as vice chairman and CEO of Gilt Groupe Japan. Previous roles at Gilt Groupe included head of business development and international operations. Prior to that, Glusker held digital media leadership roles with CBS and Viacom.
“I was drawn to this opportunity because I see a new level of energy coming from Target — from a renewed commitment to speed and innovation to the desire to try things that have never been done before,” Glusker said. “I’m looking forward to joining this incredible company at such an exciting time in retail.”