Yeah! It has finally happened! You are reading the 200th post of this blog. It may not seem like a big achievement to some but it certainly feels like one to me. So go out to the nearest cake shop, get a piece of your favorite cake and eat it cos its celebration time!
Whats funny is that I wrote this celebratory 100th post way back in November 2006 which means that it took me 17 months to write the second hundred posts when it only took me only 4 months to complete the first 100. But that’s okay! The post frequency had gone since last year, I took two 3 and 4 month long breaks from blogging last year and even came close to abandoning the blog but decided not to do so because my blog had helped me get through some tough times.
I’m happy that my blog is back on track and I have been sticking to my aim of at least 2 posts per month. I hope that I’ll celebrate a millennium soon. Okay, not soon but still!
I guess this would also be a good time to talk about what’s in store for my blog. Hmm, I plan to be more regular with the updates, write about a lot more diverse things and very soon, I plan to redesign the blog. Should be fun! So if you don’t find this blog to be the most boring, self-involved blog ever (heh!), stick around!
Now go get that cake please!
I learnt about this extremely useful Firefox extension in a post about being industrious. It allows you to block all the websites that you think you waste a lot of time on. As the description says: “All you need to do is specify which sites to block and when to block them.” Really! You can create different sets of sites and block them during different hours of the day. What’s really great is that it does not allow you to edit the options for a set during the time of the block so you can’t do much in a moment of weakness. I’ve been using it for the past one week and so far it’s been great. So if you use Firefox then this might be a good tool for fighting distractions at work. Go ahead, give it a try! Get it here!
The Indian retail industry is booming and lots of snazzy supermarkets have popped up in most cities. A lot of these are either owned or have been acquired by major business houses . There are 7 such stores within the 2 km radius of my house. But since I am planning to move to a different area, I decided to look up their websites and use the store locater to find a store in the new area. But what I soon discovered was that some of these supermarkets don’t even have any official site and the only way to find a store in an area is though local classifieds (Sulekha) , local search engines (Just Dial) , Google maps and Wikimapia. But the information on these sites can be wrong or outdated and not as reliable as an official site.
This got me interested and I decided to do a comparison of the online presence of all the major players in Bangalore (and in India).
Here’s how they fared:
- Reliance Fresh: Its one of the biggest players in the sector but surprisingly neither Fresh nor any other retail formats owned by Reliance (Footprint, Digital, Jewels, Timeout etc.) have any web presence. Just a one page summary of the company’s retail plans exists on RIL’s website. There are, however, many unofficial blogs dedicated to Reliance Retail.
- More: Fabmall, one of the largest supermarket chains in South India, was recently acquired by Aditya Birla Group’s More making it an important player in the market but again, except for a page mentioning the launch of its first store and news articles on the aforementioned acquisition on the group’s website, nothing much can be found online.
- Nilgiris: This South Indian chain recently acquired Daily’s supermarkets belonging to Valdel retail but I could not find company’s official website even though I found Valdel’s website.
- Subhiksha: They do have a website and the link “Store Locators”(locators??) did get my hopes up only to be met with a “Page in Under Construction[sic]” message. I am still hopeful that someday soon, they might have a real page there.
- Fresh@: Interestingly, the owner of this chain, Heritage Foods, has a website with a store locator but unless one knows the parent company and searches for it, there’s no way to find the website. Now that’s some bad search engine optimization (SEO) at work!
- Food Bazaar: They have an info page on Pantaloon’s site and there’s also a common Store Locator for all formats owned by the company. Good!
- Foodworld: They too have a website that seems alright and there is a list of all stores too but unfortunately, it is on the “Contact Us” page which is linked only in the footer.
- Spencer’s: They have a proper website (with the useless flash intro and all) and do have a “our stores” link which works well. Its definitely the most impressive of the lot!
What this proves is that a lot of Indian companies still don’t understand the power of Internet. Sure, most people would go to the nearby supermarkets rather than search for one on the internet but I think an online presence is an important part of brand development. Let’s hope they would realize this soon enough and make amends.
The Heroes soundtrack was released recently and it includes a track from one of my favorite artists, Imogen Heap. Its called “Not Now, But Soon” and I really like it. I am not sure if people who aren’t familiar with her music would enjoy it as much on the first listen. Give it a try! Hear (or rather watch) the official sample here.
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