Archive for the ‘Jan ’12 India Trip’ Category

Day 25: Talking with Villgro Stores about Rural Distribution

Shortly after reaching Chennai’s main railway station, I grabbed a pre-paid auto rickshaw to IIT Madras. I had a meeting with Ashutosh Sinha from Villgro Stores. The meeting turned out to be quite thought-provoking. For example, Ashutosh brought up that when you think about the various technologies

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Day 24: Talking about Logistics in Bangalore

The important Essmart-related meeting of the day was with Logistimo. Logistimo develops mobile phone applications to assist with supply chain management and logistics. They specialize in rural distribution, which is what Essmart is interested in. We were introduced to Logistimo through my Development Ventures professor, and I met

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Day 23: SELCO Bangalore

I met Grace, the MIT alum I had met in Hubli, at SELCO’s main office in JP Nagar. I always enjoy visiting SELCO. We talked with some people from the SELCO Foundation, which is the arm of SELCO that supports Ujire’s SELCO Labs. I asked a lot

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Day 20: Ujire Surveys Begin

Day 20: Ujire Surveys Begin

We began our surveys with help from SELCO Lab employees and some students who are helping them out. The morning was spent going over the surveys. I could kind of see a slight clash of interests, as what we’re doing as a distributor of products is quite

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The Importance of After Sales Service

Something we’ve learned out here in Pollachi is that warrantees are absolutely necessary. Every customer asks, “Does this come with a warranty?” or “Where can we fix this?” For Essmart, we need to think about having a service center for all of these technologies in Pollachi. We

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Day 17: Beginning the Inventory Experiment

Day 17: Beginning the Inventory Experiment

This was an exciting day for Essmart. The inventory experiment begins (although on a very limited scale)! In the morning, we met with our students to demonstrate the different products. Afterward, they gathered more products from Prashanth’s car and went off, two by two, to two different

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Tweets

Essmart works with local shops. Here's some reasons why this local shop network is so strong throughout India:

About 2 days ago