Volume 1, Issue 11 MAY 2012 Masters of International Business Centre for management Studies Jamia Millia Islamia University

Mi`bytes BUSINESS LETTER

Retail Reality : Top 5 Trends in Retail , 2012.
This year highlights as to how very different retail is today from just a few years ago. Amazon has turned bricks -and-mortar retail on its ear to the same extent that Apple gutted the retail music industry. Social media remains a huge influence, even as it remains a moving target that retailers are trying desperately to figure out. There is a new air of optimism in retail, and we can see hints in multichannel and mcommerce initiatives, which have been talked about for years, are actually starting to happen in meaningful numbers. There has been a lot of fear and uncertainty in retail these past few years, and more than enough "sky is falling" blog posts about how everything is changed and nothing will ever be the same, retail is dead, the kids these days only buy things online, yadda yadda yadda. Those kinds of articles certainly get a lot of page views which of course is the point but they dont really add anything meaningful to the conversation. Present hers is this Top 5 trends that are shaping the retail industry. Amazon - For those who remember Amazon as a really cool online bookstore, the view from 2012 shows just how far the re-tailer and the world has come. What once seemed a promising fad is now an accepted way of life. Amazons revenues more than doubled in the past four years, from $14 million in 2007 to $34 million in 2010, and show little sign of slowing down. In the past year, Amazon introduced no fewer than four potentially gamechanging products: i) Amazon Cloud, ii)Amazon Local, iii) Kindle Fire , iv)The Price Check smartphone app. Amazon Web Services set the pace for the year in March with an aggressive rollout of cloud products that included Elastic Beanstalk, Cloud Format i on, Ama zon Cl oud Player and Amazon Cloud Drive. Users can store music and other digital content in the cloud and play cloud-hosted music tracks via players for the Web and on An-droid. Although AWS represents just a sliver of Amazons total business, UBS Investment Research analysts Brian Pitz and Brian Fitzgerald predict it could capture as much as $2.5 billion by 2014. In June, Amazon Local launched, and the daily deals service with region-specific deals delivered by Living Social quickly became the sixth most-visited website in the U.S., according to comScore. It racked up 97.1 million unique U.S. - based visitors in July alone. In September, Amazon rolled out its new line of Kindle readers, and the Kindle Fire tablet. The latter was pointedly positioned as a direct rebuke to the iPad 2 and its hefty price tag, as if to suggest that Steve Jobs parting gift was essentially a $199 device dressed up in a sleek design and seductive logo. The 7-inch Fire received near-universal ac-claim as a fun and versatile, easy-to-use tablet that links seamlessly with Amazons impressive collection of digi-tal music, video, magazine, and book services. In December, Amazon once again got under the skin of brick-andmortar merchants by offering discounts to us-ers who took its Price Check app into stores to comparison shop. The deal was that in-store shoppers could earn a 5-percent discount (up to $5) by scan-ning the barcode of an in-store product and then buying it from Amazon. Apple Despite Amazons steady march of progress throughout 2011, Apple, true to form, managed to out-dazzle the worlds biggest online retailer every step of the way. The company continued to lure consumers and business users away from desktop computers to the more manageable environment of iOS devices such as the iPad, hastening the day when general-purpose computers are the province of software engineers and tech enthusiasts. The year began with an effort to broaden the iPhone market beyond a single carrier by terminating Apples exclusive partnership with AT&T and announcing that the iPhone 4 would be available through Verizon.

Inside this issue:

Corporate Speak 2

Cloud of Slowdown.

Quote for the Month. .

Cont..on Page 4

Page 2

Mi`bytes

CORPORATE SPEAK
Dola Mukherjee Senior Manager (HR) Syngene International (A Biocon Company)

Attracting and retaining of human resource has become difficult as loyalty factor is losing its shine, today HR personnel have to motivate and design healthy career road map to make them stay in the company.

Pharma-o-fact.
-The Pharmaceutical industry in India is the world's thirdlargest in terms of volume and stands 14th in terms of value. -Indian Pharmaceutical Industry is expected to grow at 9.5% till December 2011. -India tops the world in exporting generic medicines worth US$ 11 Billion. -100% FDI is allowed under the automatic route in the drugs & pharmaceutical sector.

Q1.What is the business of Syngene International? A. Syngene is an internationally reputed contract research and manufacturing organization with multidisciplinary skills in chemistry and biology services. From early stage discovery and process development through to cGMP manufacturing, we provide customized services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology majors, on a strong platform of confidentiality and intellectual property protection. Q2.What is a CRO? A.A contract research organization, also called a clinical research organization, (CRO) is a service organization that provides support to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries in the form of outsourced pharmaceutical research services (for both drugs and medical devices). The CRO industry emerged mostly in the late 1990s when pharmaceutical R&D efforts became more complex and competition in rapidly-growing therapeutic areas increased. In order to realize profit margins and be competitive, pharmaceutical companies began outsourcing activities to other organizations (CROs). Q3.Can you explain significance of IP in this sector? A. Intellectual property (IP) rights are extremely important for the pharmaceutical industry to maintain sanctity of protecting information about clients we work with. CROs are given very secretive information by the clients, which they need to protect because of aggressive competition in the market. The contracts with the clients are such that even if the contract ends after a few years, the company is asked to keep the information with itself for very long period of time. The clients can go to the extent of even closing down the company if they are able to prove that the information has been leaked out. Q4.What is cGMP? A. Current Good Manufacturing Practice regulations (GMPs) are used by pharmaceutical, medical device and food manufacturers as they produce and test products that people use. Drug GMPs also apply to the veterinary drugs. It ensures that the products produced meet specific requirements for identity, strength, quality, and purity. Q5.What are broadly the areas HR deals in? A. o Talent Acquisition & Recruitment o Learning and development o Performance management system o Employee engagement and HR operations o Compensation and rewards o Organisation Effectiveness. Q6.What have been the recent trends in HR practices? A. Given the steep growth plans at Syngene and Clinigene, HR is Constantly focusing on attracting right talent for the organisation, Developing them on the basis of the desired competencies, creating a high performance driven culture and rewarding talent for performance to ensure ongoing business success. The policies of many companies have become people centric, traditionally the policies mainly focus on the achievement of organizational goals showing negligence towards the human resource. Attracting and retaining of human resource has become difficult as loyalty factor is losing its shine, today HR personnel have to motivate and design healthy career road map to make them stay in the company. Human Resource Outsourcing is the new name in the industry to replace the redundant traditional HR department. Many HR outsourcing companies in India are already established and some are coming up to support increasing demand of corporate India. With the increase of global job mobility, recruiting competent people is also increasingly becoming difficult, especially in India. Therefore organizations are also required to work out a retention strategy for the existing skilled manpower. HR managers today are focusing on policies (trust, openness & equality), Motivation, Relations. Due to new trends in HR the manager should treat people as resources, reward them equitably and integrate their goals with that of the organizational goals through suitable HR policies. Q7.Can you explain about organizational effectiveness and its relevance in a firm? A. Organizational effectiveness is about bringing organizational change strategies in human resource processes through high-impact people interventions aiming to enhance productivity and profitability for the organization, as well as effectiveness of each employee within the organization. The way in which an organization is made to perform better. All the functions of HR department aim at enhancing the potential of human resource for the company. The gaps in the organization are identified and steps are taken to make each function of the HR department more effective. Organizational effectiveness is the way for a company to evolve. Q8.You have worked across different industries. How are the HR practices different in different industries? A. The function of HR department in different in different industries are vastly different from each other and this is largely because of the complexity that each organisation deals with reference to the employment brand positioning, talent pool availability, the focus and priorities of business leadership on performance metrics, focus on learning and development of talent, putting reward and reward processes etc and of course external market competitiveness including war for talent is different because of the variation in skill sets. The need for recruiting the right kind of candidate is completely dependent on the need of a particular organization; this is true for the learning and development process as well.

Volume 1, Issue 11

Page 3

CLOUD OF SLOWDOWN .
Great Indian success story is under grim situation. An economy which was a role model for developing countries now is in deep trouble , a steadily down GDP growth , roller costar ride of stock market, the tumbling of rupee to a record low,core sectors conditions like non performing asset and continuous decline of margin of profit. Assurance from finance minister is not working and beside that a hammer of S&P rating. Every step government is taking to improve the economic situation is not working, though they are denying the POLICY PARALYSIS. Soaring fiscal and current account deficit are other factors of concern and subsidies cutting their pocket. All of sudden investors are lost their interest in INDIAN market. The negative outlook is on account of the rising fiscal deficit, diminishing growth prospects and slow progress on fiscal reforms. While the rating agency has maintained its BBB- long term and A-3 short-term sovereign credit ratings on India, it also cut the outlook on several Indian companies and financial institutions, including SBI and ICICI, to negative. There was fresh evidence of a slowdown in the manufacturing sector, which accounts for nearly 15 per cent of the economy, on as India's top automaker Maruti Suzuki said its car sales in May fell 5.9 per cent, dragged down by high fuel costs and an excise tax hike. The government has been criticised for its piecemeal approach to the economic crisis so far. Economists were sceptical about the impact of austerity measures announce by government that included some curbs on government spending. In the three years before the global financial crisis, India was roaring with growth above 9 per cent and ambitions to challenge China as the world's top emerging economy. But main aspects when we compare these two economies are their different approach and political condition. Standard & Poor's cut India's credit rating outlook in April to negative from stable, worried by its fiscal and current account deficits. The decision jeopardises India's long-term rating of BBB minus, the lowest investment grade rating. Slip sliding away, the sum of all the fears is equal to 5.3 per cent GDP growth for the quarter ended March 31, 2012. This confirms the worst suspicion and something that the policy mavens have refused to confront - India's economy is rapidly decelerating. The full-year GDP for 2011-12 has dropped to 6.5 per cent, down from a healthy 8.4 per cent in the previous year, with manufacturing contracting acutely to minus 0.3 per cent in the fourth quarter. The nine-year low number in GDP is a result of high interest rates choking consumer demand and dampening investor sentiment, while the paralysis in the government has held back big projects in the infrastructure sector. More than that the absence of a pragmatic policy, a response to the Indian economy's structural inadequacies remains absent leaving the soft underbelly woefully exposed. A combination of internal ineptitude and extraneous factors has eroded the steel frame, leaving a wasteland in its wake. The rupee has tumbled to record depths, markets have tanked and investors are pulling out capital. Industry and manufacturing are also hurting owing to the tight monetary conditions as well as burgeoning fiscal and trade deficits. All the danger signs are on the radar. But beleaguered and embattled, the economy now looks to its managers and skywards towards the rain gods (praying for a normal monsoon) for resuscitation and deliver. The delay in the government's decision-making is holding up large projects in the mining sector, which has clocked a negative growth rate for three consecutive quarters and ended the year with a 0.9 per cent contraction. This has had a cascading effect and grounded investments in big power projects since fuel supplies are not coming through. A spate of corruption scandals has weakened the government and it has been unable to push through vital economic reforms that could have brought in much-needed FDI and technology to rev up the economy and prevent the slide in the rupee which has touched an all time low of 56.50 to a dollar. ASSOCHAM president Rajkumar Dhoot says: "The investment environment should be improved and this may even call for some review of tax proposals and further relaxation of FDI norms." CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee goes a step ahead, observing: "A comprehensive economic revival package has to be announced at the earliest." Demanding bold action from the government and the RBI exclusively aimed at salvaging the economy, the business chamber expresses hope that the political leadership - across party lines - would converge and their actions would be swift and decisive. Apex business chamber FICCI feels the global situation remains fragile and there is an urgent need to take steps on the domestic front.. Behind all aspects related to the declining of INDIAN economy every expert view is pointing towards slowdown and policy paralysis. The main factor which is important for revival is the reconstruction of business environment of the country and achieving political stability. This is the right time to take some bold and aggressive step that can refuel the economy and give a positive response to investors. By-Mohammad Furquan, 1st Year MIB, JMI

ASSOCHAM president Rajkumar Dhoot says: "The investment environment should be improved and this may even call for some review of tax proposals and further relaxation of FDI norms."

CMS, MIB

Quote For the Month Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you.
-Tony Hsieh Co-founder, Zappos.

E-mail: 2006.samik@gmail.com, mohammadfurquan1985@gmail.com Phone: 8860223083, 9716926240

Retail Reality : Top 5 Trends in Retail , 2012.

Cont...from page 1
January also saw the launch of the Mac App Store, Apples effort to remake its Mac OS ecosystem in the image of iOS, and thus collect a 30 percent cut of Mac app revenue in the process. In February Apple became the first computer maker to introduce Intels Light Peak data transfer technology under the name Thunderbolt. The iPad 2 came out in March even as competitors were struggling to deliver an answer to the original. In October Apple announced a breakthrough set of free cloud services that keep stored data up to date across all devices, including PCs. The company sold 72 million iPhones (nearly double the total for 2010), 32 million iPads, 17 million Macs and 42.6 million iPods, generating $108 billion in revenue in 2011 up 66 percent from fiscal 2010. Multichannel Integration - It no longer matters, really, whether the customer is always right. The customer is in charge. He decides when, where, and how he will interact with the retail landscape through whatever channel, device, or touchpoint he wants. Such an environment has made multichannel, by default, the new standard operating model for retail. While it can be argued that mobile devices and multichannel commerce have made it easier than ever for retailers to reach customers, they have also made it easier to lose them. Retailers will need to use a combination of channels to attract and convert consumers going forward, says e-commerce and multichannel. Customers no longer interact with companies from a channel perspective. Customers now interact through touchpoints that in-clude not only channels such as stores, branches, call centers and websites, but also emerging interactions, including apps, social media, mobile sites, SMS messages and interactive advertising across smartphones, tablets, cars and even appliances.It is time for organizations to leave their channel-oriented ways behind and enter the era of agile commerce. Mobile Coupons An increase in mobile payment systems, better targeting technologies, and budget-friendly marketing techniques, Juniper Research analysts believe mobile coupons will be key to driving instore purchasing with potential for exponential growth that could result in a market worth $46 billion by 2016. According to a survey commissioned by AT&T, 66 percent of respondents agree that mobile barcodes will drive new mobile marketing campaign concepts in the next year. The majority of executives surveyed believe mobile barcodes represent the greatest area of potential for innovation in 2012. Zappos - Seeking to drive home the point that Zappos offers more than shoes the online retailer last summer launched a uniquely interactive print ad campaign that invited consumers to dress naked models using QR codes. The ads depicted naked models (mostly women) doing outdoor activities, such as jogging or riding a scooter through Manhattan locations, with strategically placed censor bars emblazoned with the campaigns tagline. The QR codes lead the user to a website where a video shows how the sce-nario depicted in the ad plays out. Consumers can then choose an outfit for the model and go to Zappos to buy it. Nathalie Binda, marketing vice president for womens active wear manufacturer of Lol,, called the campaign gutsy and very Zapposesque. Today's Consumer rely on Smartphone, tablets and other Wi-Fi enabled devices for wide array or personal and commercial applications. The whole experience with which consumer interacts with a Retailer is undergoing a Paradigm Shift. Today's retailer needs to be proactive instead of being reactive for it to be ahead of the Consumer expectation curve. Technology has empowered the consumer with information and they would call the shots henceforth. Innovate or Perish!!!!! That's the call to retailers, Hope they are listening.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Prof. SAYED WAJID ALI

STUDENT EDITORS: MOHAMMAD FURQUAN. NAMITA DHAMANI. SAMIK SARKAR. INTERVIEW BY: RUCHIKA PARMAR.

By Ruchika Parmar 1st Year MIB , JMI.

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