Silver Jubilee Year celebrations begin!

I was almost in tears when I was informed that I have been posted in the Group’s HQ city as a Management Trainee for a year. 

I walked in to the office of Ms. Latha Nambisan, the General Manager of Human Resources at the time and was almost in tears that this had happened to me among the 2 dozen MBA students who had joined the company, for I have not crossed the city’s borders even for a vacation (sic). 

She gave me her warm, trademark smile as ever and said that this would be the best thing to happen to me in my career and that I wouldn’t regret. It was she, along with Mr. Dasharatharaman (Dash) and the late Retail legend Raghu Pillai, who recruited me after my MBA in Marketing from ITM Chennai.

She was right and her statements, true. I am deeply thankful to the Management at the eponymous RPG Group, which gave me this incredible opportunity so I could share my story one day. 

The only solace for me then, was I could listen to music all day – for the retail format I would work for, sold cassettes and CDs across languages and genres.

After 3-weeks of corporate induction at Spencers Plaza in Chennai where RPG Retail was head quartered, I was put on the 2nd class coach of an a/c compartment – a first in my life – on Coromandel Mail to Kolkata, where I would join Musicworld as Assistant Manager from this day –25th June 2001.

When I reached the Howrah city Railway station in the wee hours, all I could smell was fish and shrimp, coupled with the unique smell of river Ganges which joins the sea here, ending her journey which begins in the Himalayas.

I couldn’t miss the buzz of a city where the majority is hardworking (though a few are hardly working!), as I traversed in a taxi crossing the famed Howrah Bridge and snaked through the narrow roads and bylanes laid by the British 100 years ago.

Since I had reached a day earlier of my date of joining, I decided to take a stroll down “Park Street”, the eponymous shopping destination in downtown Calcutta at the time. There, I met my Area Manager, Dipra Jha who, to my surprise was working on a Sunday!

I introduced myself to him and he welcomed me warmly to the city of joy and wished me a wonderful career in retail. He then showed me the section which had music from “Southern India” and asked me to redo the entire collection in 2-weeks.

When I formally joined the next day, I was treated with so much of warmth by my first boss and Area Manager Sanjeev Rao and the HR Manager, Partha Bhattacharya, who treated me for lunch at the city’s most famed Peter Cat restaurant, followed by pastries at Flurys.

Over the next 5-days (and the months I spent there), my colleagues – all locals, gave me the desired comfort for an outsider and guided me to find a small dwelling. 

I chose to live independently at New Alipore. The country’s first Metro Rail ran in the city and the stations at my departure and arrival destinations where a 3-min walk. 

I didn’t even have a basic kitchenette in my room but had a stereo system with 2-large speakers and a centre unit with a 3-disc player and could play 2 cassettes!

All I had taken to Calcutta were my beloved music system, a few clothes and 2 pairs of shoes. What I brought back was unforgettable memories, a few relationships that I still cherish and the man I became personally and the Retailer I would later become professionally. Of course, I learned conversational Bengali too…

I would travel across River Ganges to Belur Math and Dakshineshwar temple, to Kalighat temple, Birla Mandir and the Alipore Zoo during my off-days and sometime walk back 7kms to my home, from Park Street. 

Every third day or so, the store would host music album releases and I had the opportunity to meet several celebrities during this period. Saurav Da was a frequent visitor. And so was our MD, Shri Sanjeev Goenka of the formerly unified RPG Group.

Food was an issue, being a vegetarian. But after sunset, I partied heavily at famed watering holes in town such as the London Pub,  Someplace Else, Trincas, etc. with friends and acquaintances. 

Since DJs would frequent my store to explore new music, I became their “beloved” guest at the Pub and would announce me on their hand mikes as an eligible and newest bachelor in town to the crowds at large, even as I would hide in embarrassment. 

Along with local friends, I danced all night to drumbeats seeing off Goddess Durga to the sea after Navarathri, watched the horror of 9/11 that fateful day at a friend’s place having dinner, attended so many parties across the clubs of town and even travelled overnight to Siliguri where the second Musicworld store came up. 

The 2002 New Year “rave” party was one to remember all my life. Enough said, I say! 

Being a bachelor, I offered to my bosses that I can work on Sunday, so they could spend time with their families. This also meant, I could learn the retail business in detail, as most of the shopping would happen on a Sunday, especially post noon and the mostly in the evening.

Back in the day, Musicworld Park Street was the largest music store in Asia, spread over 7,000 sq ft in a single floor with a 18 ft ceiling, designed by globally renowned Fitch PLC and hosting listening pods on pillars by Japanese music giant Nakamishi.

The store would record monthly sales of INR 60 lakhs and above. We would sell 40,000 - 50,000 units of music cassettes and over 3,000 units of CDs a month, with an average selling price of INR 30 per cassette for Bengali and Hindi music, and INR 200 for CDs of Indian languages and INR 300 for western music. 

During the month of December 2001, we recorded a monthly revenue of INR 96 lakhs, the highest ever done by the store in its history. By 2010, the music industry had moved away completely from hardware to digital and the last few MW stores were shut down as well. 

But for this unplanned escapade to a town that I feared so much and the initial days of learning in grassroots retailing, I wouldn’t have been able to remain so firmly over the last 2.5 decades in the Industry. Dhonyobad Kolkata… 

Celebrating our 11th year, I had launched the new website for my Business Advisory Firm Miles2Go Consulting Services on 14th April 2025 www.MilesToGo.in with an ambitious vision to file for an IPO in 2030 and to become the first Business Advisory Firm India too do so. Let’s see. 

The Annual Tribute post

Even as the country celebrates Pongal, Makara Sankranthi, Lohri and so on, I cannot but reminisce and thank my stars for where I am, what I am today professionally. For it was on this day, I flew off my comfort zone to build a career, a name in the Industry, and most importantly paved an opportunity for myself to pursue endless learning. Incidentally, I celebrate my Silver Jubilee year in Retail this year - A Retailer by Profession and Choice since 1997.

I grew for the most of my life in the erstwhile Madras until my Post Graduation. My first posting was at Kolkata to manage Musicworld. Honestly, this was the farthest maiden travel I had taken in my entire life of 21 years and also travelled for the first time ever in a 2^nd class air-conditioner sleeper coach by Coromandel Express. A year later, I returned to Chennai (the name had changed by then!) and started at Foodworld, India’s first organised Grocery retail chain. After 3 years with the company, I sensed I was not going to grow much – internal challenges, business model clarity and so on. Based on a newspaper Ad in The Hindu, I applied for a job which was based in Bangalore. My interview happened inside the retail store of the company at the Spencers Plaza Mall and in a week’s time, I received a post from the employer informing about my recruitment.

I left my hometown on Pongal / Sankranthi day by a KSRTC bus from Chennai to Bangalore with 4 bags and a heart full of dreams. Honestly, at the bottom of my heart, I was shooting in the dark but somewhere my gut feel was I would certainly not waste my life, as I was doing in Chennai, living in a comfortable cocoon under the aegis of my beloved parents. Much to their chagrin and admonishment, I stepped off the home towards a vast world which was filled with VUCA even back then. I joined Pantaloons Retail which was setting up the country’s first seamless mall by the name “Central” at Bangalore followed by aggressive expansion at Hyderabad, Pune and so on – clear focus on upcoming Tier 2 cities. Though I had my own tons of challenges in a new city, to which I had travelled just thrice before that in my lifetime, I was fortunate to be filled with fantastic colleagues, a small but worthy bunch of well wishers and an extended social ecosystem. 5 years later, I was popularly known as the guy who set-up the entire Travel Retail business at India’s first private airport – BIAL. A few years later, I was fortunate to work with India’s largest café chain – CCD and set up 100s of cafés across the country while traversing the length and breadth of the geography. 

Made some money, loads of friends and a large, extended camaraderie with the who’s who of the city – from the State Bureaucracy to Retail, friends of friends and with a very large set of colleagues and strangers. Bought my first car, a Hyundai Santro on which I travelled 75,000 kms over 3 years – mostly between TN, Tirupati & KA and a single non-stop drive to Goa. Loads and loads of memories that I can cherish all my life. Regrets, yes many many too. But that shall remain buried within me, always. Best to leave it that way!

I returned to Chennai in 2012 and ever since “settled” in the city which has given me everything though I haven’t settled with my dreams, or rather settled my dreams, professionally, personally and as a publicly obligated person as well. Lots of unfinished things yet. Though in whatever small way possible, I continue to give back what I have – knowledge, guidance, money and of course in my physical capacity as well. Over the past decade, I have taught at at least a dozen B-Schools, run Retail Management as an Elective course for 2^ndyear students and travelled extensively across the State and also pan-India on work and leisure. There’s still a lot more to see, explore and share and I am at it.

I wonder what if I had stayed back to please my parent’s wishes in 2004. Wonder how things would have been – something that we can only imagine but can never say with certainty how it would have spanned. But the courage I took on myself, guess I was right.  

The day to say “Thank you”

This year, I am fortunate to celebrate RED – Retail Employees Day with over 500 front end staff in my team at Specsmakers. What started on 12/12 a decade back in a few retail chains who were part of Retailers Association of India (RAI) has become an annual event now with hundreds of Retailers across the country saluting and celebrating the spirit of lakhs of frontend workforce across thousands of retail stores. The day is an important one in the annual HR-led celebration of every retail company today and in the current times, with the risky environment in which the employees brave to work is stupendous. May their attitudes soar higher and may they achieve greater name and fame in times to come. 

Looking back at myself, I started as a frontend retail staff in an ice-cream parlour as a part time employee way back in 1997 in Chennai. It was the city’s first and the country’s second parlour for US fast food chain “Baskin Robbins” and was located on the way to the Marina Beach, at Mylapore. I studied B.Com (UG) at Vivekananda College, Ramakrishna Mission in the evening from 4pm – 8pm and learnt computer languages at NIIT in the morning from 7am – 9am. During the day from 11am – 3pm, I would scoop ice-cream and desserts and learn the ropes of retailing and customer service. At the end of my computer course which coincided with my third year UG, I decided to continue my focus in the same field that I had been groomed for over 2 years, ending up in a PG in Marketing. Thereafter, my first job was as a Store Manager with RPG Retail’s formats including Musicworld and Foodworld as a Management Trainee. As days and years pass by, I thank everyday my stars, my peers, my former & current bosses and of course, the customers of various businesses that I have been associated with – due to which I remain an eternal student of retail forever. 

 

Early in my career, I chose the tagline “Retailer by Profession & Choice”. Over time, this appeared on my resume, my LinkedIn profile and as my introduction at 100s of seminars on Retail that I have been privileged to address to students at B-Schools, employees and entrepreneurs over the past twenty years. And there are two strong reasons for choosing this tagline: One, I wanted to have something similar to how global iconic brands have (or had) – “Yeh Dil Maange More”, for example. Something, that can be related to me and only me when someone refers about me. Second, back in the new Millennium, Retail was not a preferred job, forget it being considered an Industry. It was widely said that UGs and PGs who didn’t get a proper job in Manufacturing, Banking or IT/ITES industries ended up as an FMCG Salesman or even worse, as a manager or a deputy in a “retail showroom”. Even managerial jobs in Retailing were considered lowly from a socio-economic point of view until around 2010 when the Industry started looking up – thanks to the emergence of Malls, huge network of retail chain stores and the growth of Indian business houses such as The Future Group, Tata Westside and eventually, Reliance Retail in 2008 as well as entry and scaling up of International Retailers and Brands such as Marks & Spencer, Zara, etc. taking wings and soaring high in India across Tier 1/2/3 towns. 

Today, a job in retailing is not just a coveted one but fiercely competitive too. For mid-level and senior level roles, the competition is quite high with as many as 4-5 candidates making it all the way to the final, meeting the CEO / Top management to clear the last round. I was quite excited and privileged to be a part of the celebrations at a few stores at Specsmakers today, my current organisation, cheering the staff and being with them. This is a day to thank my compatriots for their service, dedication and hard work, rain or shine. Kudos!