Tag: Entrepreneurship

My Management Mantra: This airline boss believes in giving opportunities to colleagues to excel at work

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

How do corporate leaders manage? Where do they draw inspiration from? CNBCTV18.com is launching a series of interviews titled ‘My Management Mantra; with experienced leaders who run large companies and oversee a large workforce. The first one features Tony Fernandes, Group CEO of AirAsia, the founder of Malaysia-based low-cost airline AirAsia Bhd.

1. What time do you like to be at your desk?

I work on my phone most of the time but when I have scheduled meetings in the office, I like to be at my desk early so I can get started on the day.

2. Where is the best place to prepare for leadership: at business school or on the job?

Knowledge is important but nothing trains you to do something better than actually doing it.

3. Describe your management style.

I try to have the right people around me that I can trust with important decisions. You are only as good as your people.

Everyone has the potential to be amazing at something, and your job as manager is to give them the opportunity to be the best version of themselves.

4. Are tough decisions best taken by one person or collectively?

Building consensus is an important part of being a manager but ultimately, no. Truly effective solutions are designed by committee. Part of your responsibility as a person in charge is sometimes, after listening to everyone, you have to make difficult choices.

5. Do you want to be liked, feared or respected?

Liked and respected. AirAsia is a family, and there is no place for fear in this company.

6. What does your support team look like?

I can’t do anything without my personal assistant Jackye and my executive assistants Ben Jie and Jun Ho. They probably know my schedule better than I do and they make sure everything runs smoothly.

7. A business outside of aviation or a business leader that you draw inspiration from?

Elon Musk. He is a rare combination of thinker, dreamer and doer. Few others are willing to take on big problems, propose radical solutions then go all-out to make those a reality, whether it’s electric cars, space travel, Hyperloop or boring tunnels.

8. Which management book has influenced you the most?

I’ve recently been reading Time, Talent, Energy, which talks about how to unleash the full potential of your people by eliminating institutional factors that drag on performance.

9. Do you socialise with your team outside of work?

Sometimes. But if we did, we’d probably just talk about work again and they’d get sick of my face, so I try to keep a healthy distance.

10.  What would your key management advice be?

See the best in people. Everyone has the potential to be amazing at something, and your job as manager is to give them the opportunity to be the best version of themselves.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Online retailers create their own brands

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

In Andrea Bright’s home, Kleenex tissues, Charmin toilet paper and Glad trash bags have all been replaced by one brand: Prince & Spring.

Never heard of it? It’s the 3-year-old house brand from Boxed.com, one among many new lines from online retailers vying to be the next private-label juggernaut. Think Costco’s Kirkland Signature or Kroger’s Simple Truth, but for online shoppers only.

Online retailers are creating their own brands for the same reason brick-and-mortar stores have long done so: They make a bigger profit, and the items help attract and keep customers. Jet.com launched Uniquely J last fall. Amazon now has Wickedly Prime, AmazonBasics and several other brands. And one new website, Brandless.com, has gone even further. Adamant that it’s not a private label, it nonetheless sells only its own goods such as toothpaste, tampons and trail mix.

For shoppers, who may see the new brands atop their search results, the online-only store labels can offer cost savings on basics, organic items they can’t find in nearby stores, or a change from products they see everywhere.

Bright, an academic counselor from Mattoon, Illinois, started buying Prince & Spring products about two years ago. They cost less, she says, and she finds them to be “very good quality.”

Since online retailers don’t have store shelves, they find other ways to get their labels in front of customers. Sites design packaging that pop on screens (Jet, for example, hired a tattoo artist for Uniquely J coffee labels). Some use organic ingredients or recycled materials to stand apart, while others ship boxes of free samples to hook shoppers.

In a box from Jet last December, Rachel Simpson got freebies: two Uniquely J sauces, including a Sriracha one.

“That was a pleasant surprise,” says Simpson, a data entry clerk who lives in Jonesboro, Arkansas. She frequently buys another brand of Sriracha from Jet, as well as other condiments.

Jet analyzes customer data to decide what free samples to send and also what products to make. Sriracha is a hot seller, but it didn’t have an organic version, so it created one for Uniquely J.

Jet says it started to work on Uniquely J before the site was bought by Walmart Inc. in 2016. But while you can find Walmart’s private-label brands on Jet, you won’t find Uniquely J in Walmart stores.

“We evaluate that all the time,” says Dan Hooker, who’s in charge of the online retailer’s private brands. “But right now, it’s an exclusive Jet.com offering.”

Amazon blurs the line. When it bought Whole Foods last year, it added the grocer’s 365 store brand to its site immediately. Wickedly Prime soups showed up at its new Seattle convenience store, and AmazonBasics smartphone chargers are at its physical bookstores.

Store brands typically start out selling frequently bought products, such as toilet paper and napkins, and grow from there. Prince & Spring did that, and now plans to add laundry detergent, almond butter and bottled water.

To make store brands, retailers find manufacturers who can produce the items they want, says Woochoel Shin, a marketing professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business. But sometimes it’s the big brands that also make the private-label goods — something many don’t want to advertise.

“If consumers knew that, who would buy the national brand product?” says Shin, who has studied store brands.

Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kleenex tissues and Huggies diapers, says the private-label goods it makes account for less than 5 percent of its sales, but it won’t say which retailers it works with. Asked on a conference call in January about increasing competition from Amazon’s Mama Bear diapers, Kimberly-Clark CEO Thomas Falk answered a different question: “We haven’t confirmed that we are making Mama Bear; we really don’t talk about any private-label relationships.”

Amazon says it can’t say who makes its diapers, and Kimberly-Clark did not respond to a request for comment.

No matter who’s making them, the new online entries increase the pressure on big brands, which have already been dealing with the growth of private-label brands in stores.

How much of an effect are the new online brands having? Amazon, Boxed, and Jet wouldn’t give sales figures. But brick-and-mortar retailers show that store labels can be very lucrative.

The owner of Albertsons, Safeway and other supermarkets says its O Organics label recently surpassed $1 billion in annual sales, its fourth brand to do so. Kroger’s Simple Truth has passed the $2 billion mark. And wholesale club Costco says Kirkland-branded nuts, milk and other goods made up about a quarter of its $129 billion in annual sales.

Online-only brands are taking inspiration from well-known store brands in other ways. Boxed, often described as the online version of Costco since both sell bulk-sized items, looked to Costco when it needed to come up with a name for its house brand, says Jeff Gamsey, Boxed’s vice president of private brands.

The company considered Prince & Greene, the cross streets of Boxed’s old New York office and a nod to Kirkland, named for the Washington city where Costco was once based. But someone realized that Prince & Greene had the same initials as Procter & Gamble — the maker of Charmin and Bounty, and the very company the brand would be competing with. Greene was replaced with nearby Spring Street.

As for Brandless, don’t take the name too literally. “We’re a new kind of brand,” says co-founder and CEO Tina Sharkey, who says she doesn’t consider it a private label because the site doesn’t sell any other brands.

Its biggest selling point: Everything on the site costs $3, whether it’s the organic virgin coconut oil or the tissues made of sugar cane and bamboo grass. Sharkey says Brandless makes money on every item by working with manufacturers directly. “Nothing costs us more than $3 to make,” she says.

Since the company launched last summer, it has more than doubled the number of items it sells to 250. It doesn’t reveal sales figures, but says within 60 hours of launching, it received orders from all 48 states that it ships to.

Sharkey attributes the demand to young people ready to shed big brands.

“Millennials don’t want to buy the products that they grew up with and their parents use,” she says.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Only 5% of adult Indian population successfully establish own business, says GEM India Report

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

Only five percent of the adult Indian population engaged in “early-stage entrepreneurial activities”, establish their own business, making it one of the lowest rates in the world, finds Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) India Report 2016-17.

The survey which was conducted among 3,400 respondents aged between 18 and 64 years stated that only 11 percent of India’s adult population was engaged in “total early-stage entrepreneurial activity (TEA), out of which, more than 50% have low-growth expectation.

The report prepared by Gandhinagar-based Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI) and its associates also suggested that the business discontinuation rate of the country is among the highest, 26.4 percent. In 1.3 percent cases, bureaucratic hurdles led to the discontinuation.

Whereas, seven per cent of businesses failed due to financial crisis, 6.5 per cent due to personal reasons, 16.9 per cent because of lack of profit and 58.4 per cent due to ‘other’ reasons.

According to the report, around 4 percent of the population accounts for “nascent entrepreneurs” who are believed to be active in setting up businesses. Whereas, seven 7 percent are the owner-managers of businesses existing for less than 3.5 years.

Among the BRICS economies, Brazil has the highest numbers with 17% established business ownership rate and South Africa, the lowest with 3 per cent.

China has a slightly higher rate of 8 per cent.

(With inputs from PTI)

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow