Sunday, August 14, 2005

Business from the Bottom of the Pyramid


Recently The Taj Hotels group ventured into low-cost no frills hospitality segment by launching Indione Hotel in Bangalore. This so called 'Smart Basics' hotel would be India's first ‘no attitude' hotel where you will find facilities like TV, net connectivity, drinks in the fridge, phone, ATM, gym, etc. Actually speaking it has all the frills found in a star hotel, but no room service. I would say “thankfully, there is one place where the waiters don’t snoop around us!”

This “Bottom of the Pyramid” concept hotel with a tariff of under Rs 1,000 would be affordable to even a ordinary sales executive. Management guru C.K. Prahalad, who created the concept for the Tatas, said the 'Smart Basics' hotel would create a separate category of high tech, high-touch hotel concept which took two years for concept-to-road fruition.

To make this happen, they had to understand the needs of the customer, work backwards to design a product according to need, develop processes to enable with this requirement and ultimately make money by replicating this success. My boss asked, “Does the Tatas need Prahalad’s guidance to get this elementary business principle!?!”

Meanwhile check out the way our media paparazzi swarmed these dignitaries on the dais… They very well know that a static smiling pic of Prahalad and Ratan Tata will not be used by their news editors. Obviously it would be a picture where they are addressing the audience. But then why do our scribes act so cheaply despite the requests of the organisers…

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