The economy of loyalties !

This is a glimpse from a wholesale market in Guntur. If some of you who have lived ever in small towns will know what this is. The bull here is called "Nandi Bull" in Maharashtra. I dont know what it is called elsewhere. This is a tradition where a guy accompanying the bull asks him questions (obviously those whose answers delight people ex: will the shopkeeper become a lakhpati) and then the bull who is trained to nod, keeps on nodding. And his master gets the moolah. Nice way to earn a living !

Two reasons why i started this post with this story. One, this brought back my childhood memories where i have spent about 14 years of my childhood in small town where this was a regular feature and the second is to tell you another interesting story.

I interact with a lot of distributors who are handling varied businesses and its interesting to know how exactly each business operates. A month back i was terminating a distributors services for my company (we parted amicably though) due to conflict in business objectives. There i learnt he had been recrutied for distribution of a dog food brand. Now listen to this interesting part.

This is an area near to where i live and it is one of the upmarket areas in the city. He (the distributor) was also handling a baby food brand. Now this area has around 6-7 big hospitals where maternity wards are present. So the sales of baby food has been very good (say x lac). Interestingly the dog food sales in the same area is 4 x lac. Look at the contrast, i am sure if you get down to more details the number of babies will be double than the number of dogs in the area. So people are spending more per dog than per baby (agreed that the consumers will be different, but still). I also agree that the rate of dog food per kg is much higher than baby food per kg and even the consumption will be high. But still the spending is more on dog food. i was astonished to hear this.

So next time you buy food for your baby (if you have one) and you buy food for your dog (if you have one) just look at how much you spend monthly, would be interesting. No disrespect to dogs as i myself love them and i think they deserve this and more for being a loyal friend to the humans.

Thats why the economy of loyalties :-)

till next time adios !