Image Courtesy: Chennaionline
TiE Chennai organized a 'My Story' session by Hemu Ramaiah on friday. She narrated her story of how she built Landmark bookstore. A Love for books since childhood got her an assignment at the Danai chain of Hotel bookshops at the Taj Coromandel, as she was a Bachelors student at the Stella Maris College in Chennai. In her nine years with the chain, she set up stores in various other stores in the city.
In the nine years she had pretty much figured out the books market in India, to find a vaccum in the market primarily because importers were not exactly connecting with the end readers, besides the dearth of a general book store in the city. This led her to starting her first store in Nungambakkam. The idea was to have a large multiproduct store with an open display. There would be no hardsell, and visitors could browse books unlimitedly, without any interruption. To Indians, shopping is an entertainment she says. It is a family ocassion mostly, and this led to her decision to have a multi product range to appeal to the entire footfall in the mall. She also spoke of how in 2002, she was excited about the prospect of Koramangala to start a store in the Forum Mall there, way before Koramangala was on the Bangalore city map.
What i respected most about Ms. Ramaiah was the conviction and humility with which she spoke. What was even remarkable was the whole hearted communication she had made during the session. All the audiences' questions and opinions were well recieved by her. Like she says, its when one reads more and more that one realizes that one knows hardly anything in this world. I think it is this heartfelt conviction that she possesses, that made the session remarkable.
I would say that her talk was so unbusinesslike but made a lot of business sense.
From what i could make out from her story, i understand that for her, scaling up was not an ambition, but highly necessary to stay in business. She told how she had to move into trading and importing of books because her existing supplier had started a store of their own and had played foul to put her out of business. This drove her to think of importing books on her own. And to import books directly, she needed volumes, so she had to start supplying to 'competitors'. Now, she is looking at being present at every level of the books business, to cash in on Landmark's existing market position. Again the need for scaling up made her think of an external partner. In 2005, she sold 76% of Landmark to TRENT, while she continued as the CEO of Landmark.
Jaleel Jalaludeen
Posts
