Entrepreneur Speak

When I entered the retail business with our first store at Juhapura in the year 2004 I hardly knew much about this sector. Having spent most of my professional career as an advertising and media executive, food-grocery retail remained alien to my knowledge. While I was struggling to learn the ropes of retail I saw many corporates rode the retail wave and there were scores of retail chains cropped up in food-grocery domain. Amongst the prominent ones were Future group, Adanis (which later sold the chain to Reliance), Reliance retail, Subhiksha, More (Birlas) etc. But there was one name which never made it to this ‘prominent’ list’ – D-Mart. It is irony that most of these ‘prominent retail chains’ who were touted as a game changer of Indian retail industry are struggling today while D-Mart is the talk of the town. Much of the credit for this success of D-Mart goes to its approach to the organized retail. While most of the Indian retail chains blatantly copied the western formats, D

  Sat, Feb 02, 2013 at 15:50 This week CNBC-TV18’s special show, Young Turks highlights the achievements of a 41-years-old, who would not strike as a quintessential entrepreneur. This week CNBC-TV18's special show,  Young Turks  highlights the achievements of a 41-years-old, who would not strike as a quintessential entrepreneur. After studying retail management, Nadeem Jafri, Founder, Hearty Mart spent years in the advertising world in Mumbai until 2002 Gujarat riots that led him to decide to give his corporate career a pass and turn entrepreneur. He set up Hearty Mart with the idea of giving people of Gujarat the experience of a super market and today Jafri has created hope where earlier there was only despair. February 2004 may not have been the best time to take the entrepreneurial plunge in the Juhapura neighbourhood of Ahmedabad. The nightmare of the worst communal riots that Gujarat saw eclipsed normal life. Juhapura became home to 5 lakh refugees making it the largest Mus

Hearty Mart: Endearing Success of a Small-Town Retailer FEATURES / Work in Progress  | Nov 7, 2012    by  Dinesh Narayanan    An Ahmedabad entrepreneur finds that villages want supermarkets as much as cities do   Image: Alok Brahmbhatt for Forbes India Nadeem Jafri, Hearty Mart, Juhapura, Ahmedabad February 2004 was not the best of times to start a business in the Juhapura neighbourhood of Ahmedabad. Two years ago, the city had been gripped by the worst communal riots in its history. Following the bloody riots in Godhra, Juhapura swelled with refugees, pushing its population up to about 5 lakh, making it the largest Muslim neighbourhood in Gujarat. In the meanwhile, Nadeem Jafri—tired of his five-year stint at ad agency Grey Worldwide’s Mumbai office—got an itch to start something of his own. Enamoured of a Big Bazaar outlet in the same building as his office in Mumbai, he quit his well-paying job and returned to Juhapura to start a supermarket. Jafri say

Understanding Retail Childhood memories often hover around a  kirana  store which you had frequently visited to purchase your favourite brand of chocolates or biscuits. Just outside our house we too had a grocery store owned and run by  Kamal bhai  –  Paavan Kirana store . I loved the store and was a loyal customer. As a neighbour I got many privileges – one of them was an entry inside his stingy store. This liberty that I was allowed beyond the boundary set for other customers, must have proved him expensive as most of the time I would pick up a handful of chocolates from the jars kept on the shelves and would rarely acknowledge a correct number pocketed. I am sure this must have accounted for losses which need to be compensated whenever we meet next. After entering into this industry now I realize what a commendable job  Kamal bhai did. In absence of technology and infrastructure he managed to run his store successfully for many a decades. Things have changed a lot from  Kamal b