Swiggy, Foodpanda: Restaurant delivery cum directory companies are disrupting the hospitality industry dynamics in Indian metropolises

In the 1960s and the 1970s we had elaborate setups for restaurants in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Bombay (now Mumbai) These were largely housed in the ground floor where the guest was usually a rich person who could approach the entrance or the lobby next to the entrance sitting in his automobile. The car would stop and the gentleman would gingerly step out with a face wrapped in concentration as if the whole world's worries and responsibilities are layered on to that visage. He would put his arm around his wife or any arm candy that he would be accompanied with on that day and enter the restaurant to bows or welcome and declarations of that particular guests' personal tastes.

Then in the 1980s and 1990s, other metropolises started new restaurants. New Delhi was the last one to do so with a non-colonial past unlike the other four viz Calcutta, Bombay, Bangalore (now Bengaluru) and Chennai. Even today, the more successful restaurants in New Delhi sell meat based dishes which carry a distinct touch of the Middle East. Delhi has its Turkish and Samarkhand influence, while the other metros have their Roman or British influence.

It was at this time the the exodus by trained staff to restaurants in Dubai began. Every restaurant would train their newbie recruits only to lose them to destinations abroad in less than a year. This continued for more than 10 years and it has finally stopped with the United Arab Emirates economy slowing down for a few years. However, Dubai and also Saudi Arabia are now pushing themselves as tourist destinations with the end of petroleum supplies looming ahead. So, opportunities for restaurant staff will only multiply in the years to come but the difference in salaries may not be that high as they used to be earlier.

Even then the only successful restaurants that were around till the last one year were the ones with money muscle to take care of distribution, interior decor and innovation in recipes. However, all that is suddenly no longer a factor as distribution companies have now taken over and the only factor that holds good is taste of the food sold along with prices making up a quarter of the reason for a customer to come back.

Companies such as Foodpanda, Swiggy, Freshly, OrderUp, Doordash and FirstBite are now ensuring that the local road side vendor has an advantage over a acre large restaurant with silver cutlery. The same problem that plagued the entertainment industry earlier had made television more popular than cinema until multiplexes came along is now being witnessed in the restaurant industry,

For instance, there is one highly popular burger joint in NOIDA near New Delhi called Wat-A-Burger, which I had discovered while consulting for a company there. The food is amazing and the prices good enough for a school boy's pocket money. Now, that small shop which had few chairs to seat customers sells to more than 50 customers in an hour.

One small hole in the wall in Delhi's Lajpat Nagar sells cholay bature which go for delivery faster than they can churn them out. The price is just Rs 50 for two delicious bature and one large pot of cholay. Welcome to the new age of hospitality.

2017-18; salaries in agri, railway, logistics, retail and infrastructure will go up, media, pharma, advertising, textiles, electronics will dive

2017-18 will finally witness the more decisive effects of India's nationalist government in the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies.

Agriculture will benefit from the crop insurance scheme, Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana and the numerous e-mandis that are coming up spearheaded by Minister for Food Processing Harsimran Kaur Badal's team. I shall not be surprized if agri income increases by more than 45 per cent next fiscal.

Railway related companies such as Titagarh Wagons, IRCTC and Rites will see hike in salaries by not more than 25 per cent. Quite a few of them would be vendors for the Indian Railways. Companies in the retail and infrastructure space will also see the number of jobs rise and the salaries go up by at the most 18 per cent.

Logistics is one industry that will explode exactly three months after the Goods and Services Tax is implemented throughout the country. This explosion will continue like the Big Bang and maintain its momentum throughout the next four years. The logistics Big Bang will be greater if Mr Nitin Gadkari continues his momentum of creating highways and other roads.

The infrastructure industry will grow in size and will give rise to sub-sections within the industry. Every small town and large metropolis needs infusion of funds to create better infrastructure for professional services as well as a better quality of life for its citizens.

Pharmaceuticals will lack innovation and the supply chain will gather a lot of low investment competitors who will eat into the profits of large companies in at least their peripheral products. These peripheral products would be over the counter (OTC) as well as retail prescription drugs.

Media companies in India will slowly get obliterated by the social media and the digital media companies which are supplying innovative and unique content to the reader. For instance, Money Control and CNBCTV18 are steadily scoring against their competitors for this particular reason.

Names in print media which used to be a brand such as Shekhar Gupta and Vir Sanghvi will slowly find themselves hard pressed to maintain brand equity owing to their past records and present activity on similar lines as their past. Shekhar Gupta is already feeling the pinch while Vir holds his own.

Print media men who continue to maintain the hierarchy in functions for digital just as they did in their print days will continue to suffer as that structure throttles the industry's output.

Electronic products will continue to become cheaper and converge on Android tabs or phones. Prices will keep on dipping continuously. DSLR cameras will see a smaller and smaller client base. This will lead to smaller and smaller salary hikes in electronics.

Textiles will suffer from the same fate as it will be treated more and more like a commodity. Advertising will suffer from what the public relations industry has been suffering from during the last 10 years and continues to suffer from it -- a surfeit of small time players most of whom do not deliver.

Hospitality has not been mentioned in the title precisely because it may turn either way. If the industry embraces the good step by Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan of discontinuing the illegal levying of service charges by restaurants and banquet halls, then it will see rising salaries but if it tries to bring back the services charges through underhand means then the subsidizing of inefficient operations will continue and the industry will see another nose dive in salaries.

As BJP is set to win Delhi MCD polls; who will be the chief minister face during next Delhi Assembly elections?

Manoj Tiwari is the head of Delhi BJP. He has announced the team to combat the Municipal Corporation of Delhi elections. He has been authorized in areas where Vijay Goel, Kiran Bedi or Satish Upadhaya have not been. Manoj Tiwari had even announced his political colleagues Shazia Ilmi, Kamaljeet Sehrawat to be part of the BJP executive committee in Delhi. He had been vested with such authority.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has previously handled Delhi with utmost care as he wanted to play a master stroke of confining Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party by allowing him to win the chief ministership of a state where half the authorities were not with the chief minister.

Now Kejriwal has to stick to Delhi to protect his turf and is unable to move on to other states fully to initiate a movement to win elections there. Good examples are failures in Punjab and Goa where he had tom tommed an impending victory even before any news of election results came in.

Results of the Delhi MCD elections are pouring in and right now, the BJP is set to win a landslide victory going with the overall mood of the country and also deservedly so looking at the good work this nationalist party is doing all over the country.

The question now emerges as to who will be the chief ministerial candidate for Delhi in the next elections for the Delhi Assembly? Hopefully, it will be someone who can run the party successfully in Delhi without dissent.

“That’s Awesome! You Should Write About It” and other such pitfalls of a writer

I peg away a living from consulting. This brings food on the table for the family and pays the bills. However, I write in my ‘me time’ and during personal flashes of what I consider to be creativity.

Such ‘me times’ have given rise to a best seller on Kindle in the genre of crime and detection. The heightened sales have brought an offer from Amazon to sell the same book as a paperback. This has brought me much happiness and also drudgery.

Along with congratulations, this success has spread the word that my scribblings on Facebook every now and then are not just flashes in the rusted middle class pan but revealings of a greater being – that mutated animal called a ‘writer’ who writes to earn a living.

No amount of explanation that I am a total unfit for that borrowed robe will convince the hey sayers that I am not he of the purple raiment, the golden goose of pen craft or the poet laureate of pot roast.

The hobbies I pursue immediately give them grist for their mill and they enquire solicitously as to why I do not write about my regular visits to the forests and tiger or bird sightings.

My lunches with friends where I can smell a spoonful of broth and declare whether the cinnamon used is fake or real is suddenly a reason why I should not chase an editor for a fortnight to fill a single column of four inches height after six sessions for corrections.

It is difficult to persuade such well-wishers that I have better things to do with my clients’ time and anything, which does not fill the coffers or brush the cowper’s is useless for a menial like me who has to strain his back to earn a living till he is declared to be in a pitiable state.

Even my penchant for chatting with taxi drivers and street food vendors is not spared if I am accompanied by a peer. Between appreciative chomps on the double egg double mutton roll that I treat them with, they declare, “You are so egalitarian and find out about the lives of poor people in a trice. I say, you should write about it.”

I keep to myself the feeling that I would rather write his dirge after braining him on the spot and burying him at my own expense.

Lately, there have been times when I get the feeling that I have been rid of that quazi-secular, partly educated community, which wants me to write about everything just to satisfy their urges to placate.

It has been sometime since I heard someone asking me to write about it.

When I drive to forests and pass small towns in the process, I seldom hear anybody saying to anyone else that he or she ought to write about it. Rather, that feeling is right aborted as that refrain is silent.

Sitting for a quiet lunch on my way to Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan at the Kesroli Resort, I pause taking in the smell of the fresh spices, herbs and condiments the cook must have used to prepare the buffet. They are so heady to an urban city slicker like me that I shut my eyes and chew lightly.

“Do you like the food, sir?” I am jolted from my reverie with this question close to my ear.

I gulp some water and reply, “yes, very much. Thank you.”

It was the portly manager trying to make a loyal customer feel wanted. “Well sir,” he said, “we have our book of testimonials over there. Please write about it.”

I gave up.