Companies must adapt to new things: D Shivakumar

Aditya Birla Group executive president, corporate strategy and business development, D Shivakumar recently spoke at the FICCI’s retail, FMCG and e-commerce conference. He spoke about the transition of ‘Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) to Small Moving Consumer Goods (SMCG).

He focussed on why the FMCG sector is not doing well in the market. “In the past FMCG led many innovative practices but in the last decade it has dried up”. He challenged the industry to innovate existing business models.

“Small companies, focussed on a digital business model are growing faster than large companies; digital business models make it feasible to reach one consumer or a billion consumers,” he added.

“Businesses that have emerged as a result of e-commerce include privacy, consumer databases, data centers, last mile delivery, packaging and design,” Shivakumar said.

He called India a digital racehorse, with 650 million people on the internet and 500 million on their smartphones.

He urged companies need to change and adopt an attitude to try new things, experiment outside their comfort zone and be willing to let go of an old hackneyed formula.