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In April of this year, I wrote a couple of posts on
It Happened in India” & “Kishore Biyani“.

Since then, I wanted to follow it up with this post, but just never got the time [just like the previous blog entry].

Listening to Sankarson [CEO of FutureBazaar.com], Skanky’s podcast interview on The Kiruba Show, motivated me to write this blog entry. Here goes:

Fact 1:

Number of NRIs [Non Resident Indians] & PIO [People of Indian Origin] worldwide are approx. 31 Million plus. Here’s the distribution country wise. Indians are present in over more than 130 countries worldwide. NRI population country wise

Fact 2:

For last year the remittances [money sent from abroad to India] from these NRIs was 24.6 Billion USD$.
Now this 24.6 billion dollars is split into money coming in form of personal investments into property, securities, equity, mutual funds etc. A lot of this money is also given to relatives as ‘Gift’, for which I guess Gift Tax is levied.

According to a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) survey, about 13 per cent of the funds remitted by Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) in 2006 were invested in equity and real estate. While 20 per cent of the funds are parked in bank deposits, 54 per cent of remittances are used to meet family expenses.

54% of 24.5 Billion dollars is used to meet family expenses, which comes to a magical figure of 13 Billion USD$ <<< WoW !!! Links for the above facts are at the end of this post. Now, that we have the facts in place, here are the theories & strategies. Scenario : Most of you must have seen the Mastercard “Priceless” ads on TV & other media.

Taking that into consideration / perspective, what is the value, associated with sending gifts to your beloved family back home in India? That value is “Priceless”. Till now, NRIs could send, Rakhis, Cakes, Flowers & so on, to their family members back home through ‘ecommerce’ shopping portals. Yes, there are some portals which are strong locally, which offer goods other than those mentioned above, however, none with a national offline presence.

Now, just imagine that majority of these 31 Million NRIs knew that they could purchase online from wherever they are outside India, and that these could be home delivered to their families back home in India.

The USP is “A recognised retail corporatrion which has PAN India offline presence” & not some ‘only online’ ecommerce portal run by ‘wannabe dot com millionaires’.

Strategy: So, can FutureBazaar.com run a traditional media advertising campaign in 130 countries globally & still be cost effective too? Nopes, it won’nt be profitable.

So, which is the most cost effective strategy to reach 31 million NRIs & make them signup on FutureBazaar.com?

The answer to this is an already tried, tested & proved model and it has been successfully executed earlier & is a major case study in MBA textbooks.

It’s no rocket science as such, the crux is in the implementation & smart execution.

Any guesses to what it can be? Let me know.

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Reference Links:

NRI Population;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-resident_Indian_and_Person_of_Indian_Origin

NRI Remittances;

NRI remittance: How it is invested http://ia.rediff.com/money/2007/sep/05nri.htm

Remittance; Remit to India http://www.nrirealtynews.com/nri-remittance/nri-remittance.php

AP tops in NRI remittances http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/08/09/stories/2006080905091900.htm

NRI remittances to rival MNCs as investors in India : Hindustan Times http://in.biz.yahoo.com/070609/32/6gtkf.html

Master Card Pricelss: http://www.priceless.com