Hello World!

Hello everyone,

I am Prashant Patel and I am a research analyst.  I have been tracking U.S. consumer business over the last two years now.  I have the unique opportunity that some of us have – staying in India and researching on U.S.  

Frankly, I believe that in the case of consumerism and in most of the related innovations, India lags the U.S. by a generation.  So while 10000-20000 sq. ft. groceries are coming up in India over the last five years, they came up in U.S. in 1960s and 70s.  There are some innovations that came over here almost immediately as they took hold in the developed world – e-commerce being one.  But overall, at least India’s retail industry is one generation behind U.S.’s.

I shop in the Shoppers Stops, Crosswords, Hypercities, and Spencers of India, while I read and write about Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon, and Whole Foods.  I read about a 100-beverage fountain dispenser for Coke and go out and increase Coke’s unit case volume in India.  So I think I am beginning to form a sort of unique perspective around these consumer i ndustries, especially CPG and Retail.

So this blog is at times going to be talking about my research about U.S. and at times about my experiences in India. While I will try to make it fun and insightful, even debatable, sometimes I may have to put across some retail news updates – just for the sake of filling in the voids and keeping the posts flowing.

You may ask, I write about these things for a living, so why write about it here. Well this is a place where I intend to form my own hypotheses and test them independently.  This is where I plan to write in a slightly less constrained language and formats. Many of you, who write reports for a living, know what I am talking about.

With that I will end my first post.  I hope to have fun writing and I hope you all have fun reading this.

Keep visiting.

Cheers,

Prashant