Raju Alluri’s Personal Blog

How do the FMCGs and other retail economy players adjust fast to a recession? Going by the trends I have seen, they usually try to lower their margins yet improve their sales and increase their reach.

For example, the entry level for Colgate-Palmolive’s toothpaste in India is recently reduced from Rs. 6 to Rs 5. Why does it matter? Because the 5 rupee coin in India is more like a nickel in US: frequently used, considerable amount yet affordable for many. Especially in India’s rural economy, there is a lot of difference between being able to buy something with Rs. 5 versus Rs. 6. The next barrier is at Rs. 10, which is the typical price for a single serving of soft drinks, potato chips, chocolates, etc.

With moves like this, India’s FMCG giants are slowly unveiling their plans to stay put in a tougher economic scenario.  For example, remember the last time you could buy a Coke or ThumsUp in India for Rs. 5? And the historic sales growth that move created a few years ago?
We need to see how it works this time.

Spurthi and Surya gave Latha the “Best Mom Award” in the evening. Then we headed out for our dinner. Being a mid-week day, there is not enough time to go for a full pledged, multi-course dinner. We stopped by at Just Bake, our regular bakers these days, for a quick bite. The cake is served back at home. Here are the proceedings of the evening as seen by the lens:

LathaBDay2008

Thanks to all those who called during the day to wish Latha.

The last couple of days saw untimely rains in Hyderabad and rest of Andhra Pradesh. The coastal region of the state received huge rain fall due to this cyclone, which impacted the crops that are ripe for cutting. I am sure rice growers in coastal Andhra are going to face huge losses because of this cyclone.
The life in the city is not much impacted over the weekend, but today is for sure is going to be a messy day. Wet pavements, clogged water and potholes on certain roads are going to impact the commute. Hope the bad weather clears off soon.

Pavan, our coworker at NetEnrich, got married recently. The wedding reception is held on Sunday night in Hyderabad. More than 10 of our colleagues attended the reception. Came to know that the bride’s dad is my engineering school alumni and a close family friend of one of my cousins. He is also related to Latha’s cousin. Its a small world.

Had a decent couple of hours spent there with all the guests. It is topped  up with a tasty dinner. For those who missed the dinner: Mutton (lamb) curry is very tasty.

Here is a good comparison of open source media centers.

The Compaq F730US I got last year has 1GB RAM for Windows Vista Home Premium. The system is running at a substandard speed. Now that this system is exclusively used by family members, I may no longer run the Unix variants on this. I bought a 2GB DIMM today and replaced a 512MB DIMM with it. Now this laptop is running with 2.5GB RAM and the performance is decent enough.

Also did some cleanups on the partitions, thanks to GParted again.

This Diwali evening and night was a remarkable one. GVV (Venkatesh Varma) made very nice arrangements for all our relatives at the farmhouse. About 10 families, with about 15 kids, gathered there that evening. We went there early by 3.00pm. I was a little down with step throat and cold, but could manage lot of activity there. Gave a couple of hours of “Acclimatization” session for kids. They are asked to light crackers in turns, with me showing them how to light different kinds of crackers with different kinds of ignition mechanisms. Within two hours, most of them became experts in lighting fireworks and came out of their inertia. Then their respective parents had a tough time containing them through out the next few hours.

There is ample space and good amount of provisions (food, softdrinks, fireworks, etc.) which made the evening flow very smoothly. All the kids are exhausted by 9.30pm or so and headed home happy.

After about 100 photos later, I had to head home for rest of the week’s proceedings. The hectic week delayed the upload of the pics:

DiwaliNight2008

One of the finest and memorable Diwalis we had in recent times ended up with a safe note.

Happy Diwali Everyone!

This year, my preparations for Diwali are really substandard. I could spend only one hour of firecrackers time with kids prior to Diwali day. However, I bought decent amount of crackers for Diwali. I know we are still left with boxes of crackers from previous years, so I had to go a little light on shopping.

On Diwali day, I sorted the crackers from multiple boxes into their respective clasess: light making, noise making, child safe, etc. The first 3 pics of this album are the result.

Diwali2008

The following box shows the purchases for this year, not yet put into the pipeline .

From Diwali2008

While looking at the album, I realized that the following picture might depict a very scary picture in many a mind, but these are very safe fireworks.

From Diwali2008

Thats all from me till noon on Diwali Day. More later. Have a nice and safe Diwali day.

Srihari (Chanti) and Uma have a new baby boy.

Its a Boy!

This cute little guy is yet to be named.Will keep you posted.
Congratulations Srihari & Uma!

Markets tumbling. Brokers in distress. Hands on their faces. Blog Here.