Online Grocery - BigBasket

I have been a big time user of Big Basket online grocery and I like the service, it almost replaced my offline grocery shopping. Sometimes I do miss the brightly lit aisles and the big lines at the billing counters, but hey guess what, it saves me significant amount of time and sometimes offers good discounts as well. I do not remember the last time I walked into my regular grocery - Hypercity then replaced by Ratnadeep . My offline retailers do miss me, big time, as I get SMSes about new offers and come back discount codes. Those discount codes don't drag me me back to off line shores anymore. What makes me stick to Big Basket ?

1. Amazing Customer Service - For a product I bought, Brittania NutriChoice multigrain biscuits, there was a free gift of worth 40/- per packet of 50/-, the gifts were not delivered, I did not check the details until after few weeks.  I called the helpline and with out any questions being asked, the equal amount of money was refunded and appeared in my wallet in no time.Now that is a delight though I do not expect the BigBasket guys to foget my gift in the first go and give me the pain to call their helpdesk, I have to say , I was pleasantly surprised when I was told about the refund with no questions asked, that is not a customer service I am used , not in India until that transaction.

2. Some of the products on Bigbasket, for the first time in the last 22 months of my experience with BB, were not good - by good I mean the coriander that was delivered was half smashed into pulp + the corn was half dry and dead. I did not expect that quality and this was the first time I was calling them to replace some of the items, mind you, I boiled one sweet corn and consumed it too- ofcourse that consumption led me to decide on the product exchange, promptly the products were exchanged the next day and I was given replacements. Now those products are not what made me happy but the whole transaction and how the customer, I was being valued in the equation.

3. My recent observations with BigBasket
Big basket announced express delivery about a month ago in Hyderabad - with a promise to deliver the products in 90 minutes from the time of order.  Magically the products were delivered almost in a 60 minute turn around time. But my order on 2nd March had some products qualify for the express delivery [ The way the express delivery works is, some of the products are kept in a warehouse closer to my zipcode and they qualify for the express delivery, for a stand delivery the products are often supplied from another city hub warehouse that houses all the listed products] and some for standard delivery with a slot for the next day. Surprisingly after the payment was made, I was shown the Standard delivery will be done as promised the next day BUT the "express" delivery will not happen until 4th March - that is a delay on express by almost 30 hours +, when I called the helpline, the mentioned the express delivery orders are back listed. This is not something any customer expects - a stand delivery to come in first almost 24 + hours prior to express, that surprised me. Also the express delivery is wonderful packed foods but not for polythene covered- leafy vegetables and the sorts. I have often seen all the soft stuff gets crushed- could be the fast handling of the "express" delivery turn around times are hurting the vegetables quality as well. I will wait for Big Basket guys to fix those problems soon.

Next Steps - as I understand ..
I just learnt Big Basket is winding upto launch its market place business- so a cake from my neighborhood or a bread from my favorite near by bakery. Do not be surprised if you find Big Basket branded foods in the small and big retails very soon too.  With Amazon India lauching "KiranaNow" with a promise to deliver the ordered essentials in 2 hours- already started in Bangalore.With that spreading to other cities Big Basket and other Hyper locals alternatives - the Grofers, the PepperTaps will have a run for every rupee the customer spends.

What is clear is the Online Grocery and the Hyperlocals are clearly the urban favorite where traffic snarls and parking pains + polythene cover purchase [ many people I interview tell me that the 5 Rs they pay per polythene bag is something they do not like spending for] continue to haunt us.

For  the customers who have traditionally shopped with a local baniya are not yet ready to replace the trusted baniya shop as the Baniya offers home delivery for even 50/rs product with no additional charge + he is offering me a monthly roll over credit + no polythene charges. So if the Big Basket wants to reach most of the homes in India - selling through the trusted offline baniya and selling meat through our favourite offline "mastaan" shop is the next extension for Big Basket, their basket just cannot wait to get bigger - do keep an eye on the quality,- brothers at BigBasket, I want you to scale new heights - raising the bar on quality ofcourse !

Hyderabad, Here We Come- Apple,Google and now Amazon

What: Amazon to set up the 2nd largest global delivery center outside of US in Hyderabad

When -Operational target 2018

Where - Hyderabad, The Telangana Gov, alloted 10 acres to Amazon

Impact - Apple[setting up Tech Dev center in Hyderabad] and Google[Biggest Campus outside of US to be Hyderabad] did announce earlier + IKEA is coming up in Hyderabad - first store in India, so market economy will impact the real estate by pushing the value up + creating wonderful tech centric jobs and will also help the Startup community in Hyderabad to find better talent

125.7 KMs and Counting..

I am late, terribly late by 10 days of my due post - It's better late than never! I continue to run with my posts too :).

Feb has been lean for me as I was away from workout schedule for good 15 days [ out of 28 !] . Great temple visits and awesome family gathering and some conferences took away my 15 days - but I had absolute fun!

Let us take a quick look at last 38 days.. and some observations from those fun loaded days!

Pros

• I kicked the inertia and started to run again, it was tough to start back , but I did start again
• I signed up for assisted personal training - on 1st March , I realized I am ready to go to the next rung and signed up for some expert help. Now I get 4 days a week of going the extra-mile - man, it does pain to push the limits!
• Due to High Intensity training from Jan, my knees complained a bit [ especially when I chose to run at 18 to 20 KM/H for non-stap 1 KM laps. The vacation and break in Feb was a blessing in disguise and the 15 days provided complete relief to my knees,quads and calves. Also gave me sometime to reflect on my schedules and some changes.
• I lost 1 inch of fat around my waist [ as a dear one says, it is not my waist but the trousers [all of them] chose to expand by an inch ! :)]
• I got a big team of - health junkies signed up at the gym ![ no reference bonus :( , but hey it is always good to motivate others towards the right things , ah [ I can say I am one of those factors [ their health checks and weight might have been #2 & 3 respectively]

Improvements Needed:

• I don't yet follow a strict diet - don't get me wrong - I don't do Alcohol,Smoking and the usual junk, but I don't eat on time and don't follow a prescribed schedule and tend to load my last meal of the day.
• I am being lazy to track my food details in the Fitness Pal, starting now, I will enter every detail[ a promise to the self], because what cannot be measured cannot be changed !
• Weekends, the calorie load is increasing, need to trim them a bit
• Need to load up food with more fruits and greens.
• My biceps tend to be weak and I need to pump more and that's where my expert's help will come in handy.

As of today I lag behind by 62 KMs of my actual target of running and staying fit [ Planned target was 188 KMs and my actual is 125.7 kms as of today].That's Okay, balancing my work/life and other priorities I am doing the best I can and I don't curse for not making up 188 KMS yet, I know I can beat the 1000 KMs target to pulp, so here I come, my target.

Keep running and inch towards your progress ! Start Now !
 

Bhaagh Milka Bhaag

The title of this post is not directly related to this post. But yes I did derive some doses of inspiration from the Flying Sikh movie.

I have been going to gym for almost 8 years now. In spite of my gym regime, I gradually added weight, from lean to over-weight. The one major reason was lack of discipline – in eating [I never really pinched on the sugars and fats and never did I stick to the discipline of eating on time], following a process [no specific schedule for gym, no proper diet]. Last year as I stepped on to weighting machine it turned to 97 kgs giving me a major alarm, also my body fat was hovering around a good 29%. I wanted to do something about it and was pretty irritated and of course felt restless. Coming from an operations world, I live with data every day and understand the importance of tracking data and therefore the informed decisions, but that was something I was not taking into account with respect to myself. That was the time I started taking pictures of my cardio-activities everyday- the picture would capture the distance and the calories burnt

This continued for almost 6 months then the biggest problem was extracting the data [distance and appx. calories]. I was searching for a nice app that can track my fitness activities and ran into as usual a myriad of options. I tried couple of them before really getting hooked on to Runtastic Pro. That was the beginning of tracking the data- may be a quantify me moment! I realized that running has been a big weakness for me - right from my school days I was least interested in running competitions and was never inclined towards running. I stayed away from running for a long time [old habits die hard!

  

    I started tracking my data using Runtastic on the 24th of March 2013. That’s when I started running consciously, earlier I did but always gave in on the first sign of exhaustion and sweat. Days rolled by and the data kept pouring into the system. On 31st Dec my runtastic clocked 324 KMs of running and cycling for the year of 2013. There were some additional workouts that I did not enter in runtastic but were captured the old way of pictures that had no real shelf value. My 2014 target is 1000 KMs of running+cycling and/or any other cardio activities. That is almost 3 Kms everyday [ 2.73 to be specific]. But I go to gym 5 days a week so try to balance the required distance in 5 days almost 5 kms a day of running in 30 minutes. It is been one month since my start and I did 82.5 Kms in January.

At the end of month I weigh 94 Kgs and my fat has gone down to 24% and I feel pretty good and fit. I need to inculcate the habit of eating healthy and sticking to time, now given the crazy schedules we all live in, I often found my reasons of not eating healthy and/or on time on something external rather than the intrinsic discipline and the strong motivation. I often have strong cravings especially those days that I don't get a full night sleep [I sleep about 6 hours on a normal day]. If my sleep is reduced then my cravings go up, I have observed one more hard to break pattern - I need to have belly full food before the dinner ! I am trying to break away from some of these observed patterns that are not good for health. I also started to track my food habits a week ago and I use FitnessPal app for tracking my food intake [My Runstaic Pro is integrated with MyFitnessPal]. Calorie count is important but not THE measure that keeps me going. I will come back to you on 1st of March with my progress but do note, if I can run so can you - start small and make sure you eat into your laziness and start doing those little things that will give you a feel good factor. I feel awesome every time I step out of the gym - just one another day - my motivation wins over the inertia and laziness.

Mothers - We Salute You :)

My Mom has come home - hurray, it's been a month [ you might say Just, but it is a month long],she has been around in the city for the last one week but could not come to my place as she was tied down with lot of family occasions and had to attend for all of us busy being who would conveniently nominate her to represent the weddings and other social gatherings. I was truly irritated with my mom being so near, so very near but yet very far. My 5 year old son would complain saying "granny cheated me , when does she come home, daddy ? was his constant question. As I sat down this evening thinking about my mother..

When I wanted to climb the tallest mountains, do things that sound absurd to lot others, go visit saints and the base of Himalayas during my late teens - My mother packed my bags and prepared a nice lunch. She always stood by my dreams, though they were ahead of their times [you can choose to call them Stupid, my I liked to stay hungry and ofcourse foolish too]. 

As I was progressing through my early 20's through the famous Carnegie Mellon University and their world famous robotics, there were many instances where I turned towards our universal Solution architect [A.K.A God] and thanked him/her for the most popular creation - Mother. Possibly they are the emotional robots that are programmed to read our minds and do everything possible to make their creations life as comfortable as possible. I call them Emotional Robots with unconditional love because you don't hear your mother tired to do anything for you, she would not mind overfeeding me something I love even if she had to starve. Mother's truly have the magic wand that would heal any of our wounds - not just physical and emotional much beyond that.

Growing up,I would make mistakes whole through- again and again yet my mother was very forgiving, and now during my so called busy days/routines. When my mother calls me, the first thing she asks is if she could talk for a minute, I feel guilty that the angel of my creation , needs to take my permission to talk to me. On a specific day, If I did not talk to my mother yet, I make it a point to call my mother before my back to back business takes over. Now I realized that my mother is far more comfortable and relaxed in the day because she is done talking to me and that is something for me. 

She is my easiest target, I would take my full liberty and express all my frustration, disgust and anger at her, even if I did not mean it, she would take it and just absorb all of it like a magical sponge that absorbs the whole thing, mothers mop our lives so clean of stress and tension. For everything mother continues to do you will be forced to open your heard and wipe out your resentments, if any, now that's what is LOVE.


Very surprisingly all mother's can read their kids brains, their ears and eyes hear and see everything- they don't not need a Ph.D in psychology to understand their own creations. Amazing how mothers remember everything with a photographic memory for all the good and some of the very bad, though they pretend not to remember the bad ones just not to remind us of our bad patches, mother's very well bring back joy by talking of those great moments of our lives.


Only mother's can find us when we are lost in the crowds, her mere presence makes us so feel secured. Now as I was writing this post my son shows up asking about his daily quota of cartoons and I told him " not to disturb me" and he in no times runs to my wife and his very loving mother.


Now I don't know how to thank the god for his wonderful creation, we call Mother.

 Saluting all the mother's of the universe.

P.s I did not edit /proof read this post because the authenticity of the post needs to be captured in it's true sense and not in filtered/moderated and processed and packaged way. :)

After 19 months..

I am sure a LOT has changed from the last post to this one :). A quick glimpse at the the last one year..

1. Have completed 6 glorious years with our NGO - SpandanaCharitableTrust
2. Almost nearing the first year with ShreeMaatha.Org - a spirtual startup[if you will] with a special interest in gathering the rare Sanskrit scriptures and also trying to spread the motherly love, to the abandoned and ignored,that is latent in all of us.
3. Trying to keep up with my gym regime - would be completing my 7th year with  4 times a week strike rate.
4. Bought a bike and did put in around 200 Kms on it so far, and need to make it an integral part of my routine.

When I tend to think I am too busy to accommodate my passions, I recall my father's one liner.."Its a busy man who finds time" so true dad!

pO[A]st Man !

Its been a while since I blogged, honestly had way too many things and way too less time ( no different from most of you folks out there!).
Yesterday, I was baby sitting my son and the door bell rang in the late afternoon, I was not expecting anyone and more so it was a clear indication that it was a stranger at the door( my watchmen very well know and have an instruction to tap the door but not the bell during the odd hours of the day unless there is an emergency). When I opened the door ( a bit irritated) I was very surprised to see a man from the very past- infact most of our pasts' - The Post Man!, I have not seen the post man in a while now! I continue to receive the post (paper post)but never get to see the man(woman) supplying to my letter box. Here was the post man to deliver a registered post to me. As he delivered and went away, my son very innocently asked who it was and I did tell him that it was a post man and his immediate question was- who is a post man? so I had to explain him ( a 4 year old)what a post man does. He was somewhat puzzled but seemed to understand much better, kids are way too good in handling change and new scenarios, they are facing them every day. They are great at handling transformations and changes - the best change managers, I have ever seen!

I was introduced to the online(Internet) world on Jan 1 1995 and from then on I saw a gradual but sure decline in the post I received or sent, back in school and during the competitive exam days, I had to wait for the hall ticket so used to look forth for the arrival of postman literally every single until my hall ticket arrived. Its been 17 years since the birth of my email address and I almost forgot the post man. The courier companies ( the multitude of logistic companies- national and international) fill the gap from the sender to the receiver these days with a tracking functionality that was so Sci-Fi when I was back in secondary school, tracing a registered post took 3 weeks time for post offices. Now it is a click away.

Is the post man becoming a Past Man?

So Busy Yet So Relaxed

Reflections from the recent week long vacation:

I was extremely busy traveling back and forth and doing specifically nothing but adding on to my spiritual quotient.I liked the time I got to spend with my family - I cannot think of the last scene when the whole family sat down together for such a long time in the last 4 years.Thanks to the road trip - all of us were boxed together for almost 16 hours and that gave a good platform to talk/discuss/brainstorm.I keenly heard my dad talk and derived some parallels that are very well applicable to us ( at least to me). Read on:

Being Busy

I don't believe any of us can afford to be less busy than we are today, most of us are trying to get 30 hours worth out of the 24 hours a day.I am not a proponent of doing less - I believe it no more. I do support slowing down once a while but what if the nature of job,routine is so hectic that you will be busy most of the day and not very relaxed- then slowing down needs to happen atleast once a day :), the nature of work,job I am in is so extremely taxing and very stressful. The more you bite, the more +1 you have to chew and it is a vicious cycle. I have made some rules that I follow 99 % of the times. I define a slowing down time every day where I work on reducing the stress and recharging the body and mind- I call it the "The burn out zone" -I hit the floor- not the dance but the gym. Next 70 minutes I sweat crazy and it is such a feel good factor- you have to experience it. I have just finished 39 months of gym regime( nope I don't work on building muscles- not yet :) ). This phase truly burns my stress and probably some fat and helps me bounce back recharged. I observed the freshness and increased alertness of the brain and spike in "being in the moment", it helps me stay focused. Now once a while the world goes crazy and it has no dependency on my burn out zone, if required I just head back to my office in a war footing mode. If folks need me they know how to reach me- similarly if someone needs you badly they will reach out- just make sure you set the expectation right and let the concerned folks know your whereabouts. It helps.

I realized (may be you subconsciously did too, just did not acknowledge explicitly ) that you have be ready to handle any thing that comes your way - our mantra in transformations,client engagement and operations. It has a universal appeal just because you don't have a choice. When situation throws an unfolding scene at you either you have dealt with it or a similar one in the past if not this would the first one, as long as you are breathing (actively!) you will have so many firsts- I can guarantee you that. Just make sure you are following your lessons from the last first if applicable or make a note of the learning and pass them on. Doing a part of this will achieve an equilibrium of "Busy-Yet-Relaxed" so your brain can really think rather than just act. Strategy has a way of winning over tact !