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Time of India
3 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Shark Tank India judge Anupam Mittal warns India against blind AI push: 'Jobs first, deep-tech later'
Shark Tank judge Anupam Mittal founder and Shark Tank India judge Anupam Mittal has started an important conversation around India's AI ambitions. In a lengthy LinkedIn post, Mittal has advised caution against the tech-first approach which overlooks the employment realities of the country. Mittal has also criticised the blind adoption of deep-tech narratives and warned that India's present skilling infrastructure is 'dangerously out of sync' with its lofty AI goals. Anupam Mittal warns India against blind AI push Mittal's LinkedIn post featured a photo of an elderly woman wearing a BlinkIt delivery jacket with a caption, 'Maybe she should learn Python. Perhaps she can fine-tune an LLM too, while delivering your groceries.' This remark made by Mittal reveal the disconnect between elite tech discourse and the lived experiences of India's gig workers. Mittal also argues that AI-driven automation is transforming tech giants like Microsoft, Meta and Google, but India still lacks the formal emlpyment and reskilling budgets required to keep pace. 'India is not there yet,' Mittal wrote, noting that most of the workforce is self-employed and lacks access to real-time upskilling. Read Shark Tank India judge Anupam Mittal's complete LinkedIn post here Saw this woman the other day, and thought maybe she should learn Python 🤷♀️ by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Luxury Views, Affordable Prices - Binghatti Hillviews Binghatti Developers FZE Learn More Undo Perhaps she can fine-tune an LLM too, while delivering your groceries 😏 Every time I say India needs jobs along with deep-tech, someone sends me a whitepaper on AI skilling . Basically parroting the west without understanding our own reality. Of course, AI replacement and automation is happening at the top cos in the world including Microsoft, Meta, Google. Their CEOs are on record: 40–50% of work processes will be AI-driven in 2–3 years. Yes, true! But those are economies with lower populations, high formal employment, and deep reskilling budgets. When I worked in the US, every time a new tech or software rolled out, we were upskilled in real time not just as individuals, but across the entire org. That's what real skilling infrastructure looks like. India is not there yet ❌ given most are self-employed. Ergo, the gig economy has been a blessing for us. It enabled employment for millions. In a country 🇮🇳 holding ~20% of the world's population, that's no mean feat! When we start touting deep-tech as the only solution to all our problems, we endanger the livelihoods of a billion plus nation. Yes, we have highly-skilled and super-talented folks who will undoubtedly build future big-tech from India but we also have a large low-skilled populace that needs to be taken along. India needs to address both these issues simultaneously, no? What's your take?
Business Recorder
5 days ago
- Business
- Business Recorder
Indian supermarket chain DMart's Q1 profit falls as competition, higher costs bite
India's Avenue Supermarts, which operates the DMart chain of supermarkets, reported a small decline in first-quarter profit as higher operating costs and rising competition from quick commerce players ate into margins. Consolidated net profit dropped to 7.73 billion rupees ($90.12 million) in the three months to June-end from 7.74 billion a year earlier. Sales grew 16% in the quarter. Analysts have flagged weakness in DMart's first-quarter sales growth, provided in a business update before results, cautioning about sustained margin pressure ahead as rivals, including online shopping platforms, gain ground. Quick-commerce platforms such as Zepto, Eternal's BlinkIt and Swiggy's Instamart, which deliver items in as little as ten minutes, are increasingly attracting tech-savvy customers by subsidizing delivery and offering discounts. DMart's profit after tax margin stood at 4.7% in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, compared to 5.5% last year. The company attributed the decline in gross margins to 'continued competitive intensity' in the consumer products space. Operational costs rose due to capacity building efforts and wage inflation, DMart said. The retailer, founded by billionaire investor Radhakishan Damani, also competes with brick-and-mortar supermarkets owned by Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries and Vishal Mega Mart. It utilizes a low-cost, low price strategy where it procures goods at competitive prices and sells them at heavily discounted rates, making it especially lucrative for budget-conscious and bulk buyers.
Hindustan Times
5 days ago
- Business
- Hindustan Times
Supermarket chain DMart's Q1 profit falls as competition, higher costs bite
India's Avenue Supermarts, which operates the DMart chain of supermarkets, reported a small decline in first-quarter profit as higher operating costs and rising competition from quick commerce players ate into margins. DMart's profit after tax margin stood at 4.7% in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, compared to 5.5% last year.(Pixabay/Representative) Consolidated net profit dropped to 7.73 billion rupees ($90.12 million) in the three months to June-end from 7.74 billion a year earlier. Sales grew 16% in the quarter. Analysts have flagged weakness in DMart's first-quarter sales growth, provided in a business update before results, cautioning about sustained margin pressure ahead as rivals, including online shopping platforms, gain ground. Quick-commerce platforms such as Zepto, Eternal's BlinkIt and Swiggy's Instamart, which deliver items in as little as ten minutes, are increasingly attracting tech-savvy customers by subsidizing delivery and offering discounts. DMart's profit after tax margin stood at 4.7% in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, compared to 5.5% last year. The company attributed the decline in gross margins to "continued competitive intensity" in the consumer products space. Operational costs rose due to capacity building efforts and wage inflation, DMart said. The retailer, founded by billionaire investor Radhakishan Damani, also competes with brick-and-mortar supermarkets owned by Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries and Vishal Mega Mart. It utilizes a low-cost, low price strategy where it procures goods at competitive prices and sells them at heavily discounted rates, making it especially lucrative for budget-conscious and bulk buyers. ($1 = 85.7700 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Hritam Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo)
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Are 10-minute online deliveries killing the Indian corner shop?
The corner shop Ramji Dharod has manned for over six decades is now on the brink of closure. The store sits in a bylane in the central Indian city of Mumbai's busy shopping precinct, and has served the community for 75 years. Dharod began coming to the shop with his father when he was just 10. These days, he mostly sits idle, waiting for an occasional customer to walk in. Behind him, cardboard boxes of unsold biscuit packets and snacks show a "stock clearance sale" sign posted on them. "I wouldn't get a minute to breathe a few years ago, but now I rarely get anyone coming," says the septuagenarian wryly. "They are all shopping online. I've decided to retire and down the shutters." As 10-minute online deliveries by "quick commerce" apps like Zomato, BlinkIt and Zepto pervade urban India, hundreds of thousands of neighbourhood stores across cities have closed down. A lobby group of consumer product distributors estimated that number to be 200,000 last October, while the municipal body of the southern city of Chennai estimated 20% of small grocers and 30% of larger departmental stores had shut down in the city in the past 5 years. Sunil Kenia who runs a provision store right beside Dharod's shop says he's still in business only because his family owns the shop. Those on rent are no longer able to stay afloat, he says. "It started going downhill after the Covid lockdowns. Business is at 50% of what we did before the pandemic," Kenia told the BBC. Most of his revenue now comes from wholesale customers – hawkers or those selling street-side snacks. The retail customer has all but "vanished", he says, because of the convenience of mobile deliveries. Mumbai-based graphic designer Monisha Sathe is among the millions of urban Indians who've stopped their weekly run to the market because of the ease of quick commerce. "Lugging groceries back home was a big pain," says Sathe. And occasionally, when she took out her car, navigating narrow market lanes and finding a parking slot would be a challenge. Sathe says she misses the human interaction she had with the grocers and vegetable vendors and even the variety of fresh produce on sale – but for her, the balance still tilts in favour of online deliveries because of how much easier it has made her life. A recent survey by consultancy PwC shows some 42% of urban consumers in India's big cities think like Sathe, especially preferring quick delivery for their urgent needs. And these shifts in buying behaviour have led to three out of 10 retailers reporting a negative impact on their business, with a 52% drop in essential goods sales. But to what extent is quick commerce really hollowing out the Indian high street? There's no doubt general trade – which includes grocery stores, corner shops and even big retail outlets – has come under threat, says Ankur Bisen, a partner at Technopak retail advisory. But at least for now "quick commerce is still a three-four city story", he says. Nearly all of their sales come from these cities. Lightning fast deliveries bucked the global trend and became successful in India largely due to a large concentration of people staying in urban clusters. They are serviced through low-rent "dark stores" - or small shops dedicated to delivery and not open to the public - in densely populated areas, enabling economies of scale. But the precarious nature of demand and fragmented demographics of smaller towns could make it expensive for quick commerce players to expand and make money beyond the metros, says Mr Bisen. There's little doubt though that these online deliveries will disrupt trade in the longer run. Bain and Company expects quick commerce to grow at over 40% annually through to 2030, driven by expansion across "geographies". And this has made traditional retail nervous. Trade organisations - like the Confederation of All India Traders, or the All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation which calls itself the voice of India's 13m retailers - have made urgent and repeated pleas to the government against this breakneck expansion. They allege that these companies are using billions of dollars in venture capital funds to engage in anti-competitive practices like "predatory pricing" or "deep discounting" which has further distorted the playing field for mom-and-pop shops. The BBC spoke to several small retailers who shared these concerns. Mr Bisen too agreed there's evidence of such practices in the clusters that quick commerce companies operate. Swiggy, Zepto and Blinkit, who primarily control this market, did not agree to comment on the BBC's queries on these allegations. But a source within one of the quick commerce companies told the BBC the discounting was done by traders on the platform and not by them. The source also said that contrary to the binary narrative of the "big guy versus small guy", online deliveries were solving real-world challenges for people for whom going to the market was a "traumatic" experience. "Think of women or senior citizens - they don't want to be harassed or navigate potholes and traffic," the source said. "Also consider the small brands that sell on our platform - they never get shelf space in physical shops where only the big names are displayed. We've democratised the market." Analysts say, the sheer diversity of India in terms of its stages of development, levels of income and infrastructure will mean that in the end all retail models - small corner shops, organised big retailers and quick commerce platforms - will cohabit in the country. This is not a "winner takes all market", says Mr Bisen, giving the example of e-commerce which came into India in 2010 and was meant to sound the death knell of local retailers. Even after all these years, only 4% of all shopping is done online in India. But the ripples caused by quick commerce should be a warning for physical retailers, say analysts, to improve their marketing and integrate technology to use both online and offline channels to give their consumers a better shopping experience. Competing with click-of-a-button delivery means it can no longer be business as usual for the millions of corner shops who've existed for decades, with little or no innovation. Follow BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, X and Facebook.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Are 10-minute online deliveries killing the Indian corner shop?
The corner shop Ramji Dharod has manned for over six decades is now on the brink of closure. The store sits in a bylane in the central Indian city of Mumbai's busy shopping precinct, and has served the community for 75 years. Dharod began coming to the shop with his father when he was just 10. These days, he mostly sits idle, waiting for an occasional customer to walk in. Behind him, cardboard boxes of unsold biscuit packets and snacks show a "stock clearance sale" sign posted on them. "I wouldn't get a minute to breathe a few years ago, but now I rarely get anyone coming," says the septuagenarian wryly. "They are all shopping online. I've decided to retire and down the shutters." As 10-minute online deliveries by "quick commerce" apps like Zomato, BlinkIt and Zepto pervade urban India, hundreds of thousands of neighbourhood stores across cities have closed down. A lobby group of consumer product distributors estimated that number to be 200,000 last October, while the municipal body of the southern city of Chennai estimated 20% of small grocers and 30% of larger departmental stores had shut down in the city in the past 5 years. Sunil Kenia who runs a provision store right beside Dharod's shop says he's still in business only because his family owns the shop. Those on rent are no longer able to stay afloat, he says. "It started going downhill after the Covid lockdowns. Business is at 50% of what we did before the pandemic," Kenia told the BBC. Most of his revenue now comes from wholesale customers – hawkers or those selling street-side snacks. The retail customer has all but "vanished", he says, because of the convenience of mobile deliveries. Mumbai-based graphic designer Monisha Sathe is among the millions of urban Indians who've stopped their weekly run to the market because of the ease of quick commerce. "Lugging groceries back home was a big pain," says Sathe. And occasionally, when she took out her car, navigating narrow market lanes and finding a parking slot would be a challenge. Sathe says she misses the human interaction she had with the grocers and vegetable vendors and even the variety of fresh produce on sale – but for her, the balance still tilts in favour of online deliveries because of how much easier it has made her life. A recent survey by consultancy PwC shows some 42% of urban consumers in India's big cities think like Sathe, especially preferring quick delivery for their urgent needs. And these shifts in buying behaviour have led to three out of 10 retailers reporting a negative impact on their business, with a 52% drop in essential goods sales. But to what extent is quick commerce really hollowing out the Indian high street? There's no doubt general trade – which includes grocery stores, corner shops and even big retail outlets – has come under threat, says Ankur Bisen, a partner at Technopak retail advisory. But at least for now "quick commerce is still a three-four city story", he says. Nearly all of their sales come from these cities. Lightning fast deliveries bucked the global trend and became successful in India largely due to a large concentration of people staying in urban clusters. They are serviced through low-rent "dark stores" - or small shops dedicated to delivery and not open to the public - in densely populated areas, enabling economies of scale. But the precarious nature of demand and fragmented demographics of smaller towns could make it expensive for quick commerce players to expand and make money beyond the metros, says Mr Bisen. There's little doubt though that these online deliveries will disrupt trade in the longer run. Bain and Company expects quick commerce to grow at over 40% annually through to 2030, driven by expansion across "geographies". And this has made traditional retail nervous. Trade organisations - like the Confederation of All India Traders, or the All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation which calls itself the voice of India's 13m retailers - have made urgent and repeated pleas to the government against this breakneck expansion. They allege that these companies are using billions of dollars in venture capital funds to engage in anti-competitive practices like "predatory pricing" or "deep discounting" which has further distorted the playing field for mom-and-pop shops. The BBC spoke to several small retailers who shared these concerns. Mr Bisen too agreed there's evidence of such practices in the clusters that quick commerce companies operate. Swiggy, Zepto and Blinkit, who primarily control this market, did not agree to comment on the BBC's queries on these allegations. But a source within one of the quick commerce companies told the BBC the discounting was done by traders on the platform and not by them. The source also said that contrary to the binary narrative of the "big guy versus small guy", online deliveries were solving real-world challenges for people for whom going to the market was a "traumatic" experience. "Think of women or senior citizens - they don't want to be harassed or navigate potholes and traffic," the source said. "Also consider the small brands that sell on our platform - they never get shelf space in physical shops where only the big names are displayed. We've democratised the market." Analysts say, the sheer diversity of India in terms of its stages of development, levels of income and infrastructure will mean that in the end all retail models - small corner shops, organised big retailers and quick commerce platforms - will cohabit in the country. This is not a "winner takes all market", says Mr Bisen, giving the example of e-commerce which came into India in 2010 and was meant to sound the death knell of local retailers. Even after all these years, only 4% of all shopping is done online in India. But the ripples caused by quick commerce should be a warning for physical retailers, say analysts, to improve their marketing and integrate technology to use both online and offline channels to give their consumers a better shopping experience. Competing with click-of-a-button delivery means it can no longer be business as usual for the millions of corner shops who've existed for decades, with little or no innovation. Follow BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, X and Facebook.
