Category: Trends

Categories
Trends

Fine dining gets dearer as rupee falls

Sliding rupee hits imports and impacts eating out at five star hotels and restaurants. Drinks and spirits become costly, too.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

It’s not just the prices of onions that are making us cry. Rising inflation and the sliding rupee are taking away the joy of shopping or even going out over the weekend. And among those rethinking their recreational habits are the people who indulge in fine dining quite regularly.

rupee slideAs per a survey conducted by trade body ASSOCHAM (Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry of India), five star hotels and fine dining restaurants have registered a significant decline to the extent of 20 per cent in the last three months due to the falling rupee. Releasing the ASSOCHAM paper on ‘Weak rupee dampens spirits of fine dining restaurants’, DS Rawat, Secretary General, ASSOCHAM said, “Due to a fall in the rupee, five star hotels and fine dining restaurants are revising their menu card rates as the weak rupee pushes up prices of imported food ingredients and spirits.”

With negative market sentiments of an economic slowdown and weak rupee, the fine dine market segment may lose its sheen. The paper further highlights that the fine dining market registered a decline of over 20 per cent than last year in the major metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Chennai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.

The paper further points out, “Due to the rupee depreciating against major foreign currencies, prices of imported products have shot up by as much as 30 to 35 per cent. Some restaurants import 85 per cent of its ingredients from Japan, France, Italy and Thailand for its signature dishes.”

Rawat added that premium hotels and restaurants use imported olives, olive oils, legumes, meats like salmon, tuna steak, porkfish sushi roll pepperoni and turkey ham, Italian and French cheeses, fine wines and spirits to tickle the taste buds of Indians. Nearly 45 to 60 per cent of the food cost of specialty restaurants, depending on their cuisine, accounts for the cost of imported food products. “The rupee devaluation has majorly impacted imports, from meats and seafood to cheese and legumes. Nearly 60 per cent of the food produces at specialty restaurants are imported and does not have local substitutes here in India. As a result, restaurants are bound to revise the prices of their menus,” adds the paper.

The current size of the Indian food industry stands at Rs 2,50,000 crore per annum and is expected to grow at 12 per cent to touch a staggering Rs 4,25,000 crore by 2018. The size of the gourmet food market in India is Rs 7,500 crore, growing at a CAGR of 20 per cent. The market is expected to cross Rs 15,000 crore by 2015. The Indian gourmet food market includes fine dining restaurants, café markets as well as food retail.

The availability of imported ingredients is another factor for growing demand for fine dining restaurants. Ingredients such as truffles, artichokes, asparagus, Australian lamb and Norwegian salmon have found their way into the Indian food and beverage space. The paper also highlights that imported spirit prices increased between 7 per cent and 12 per cent in the last three months, where bars and nightclubs have also seen a similar slump.

                                                                                                                                                           (Pictures courtesy louisekwoods.wordpress.com, www.finediningindian.com, www.theunrealtimes.com)

Categories
Trends

More women are buying jewellery online

Ease of shopping, higher spending power and a plethora of options has helped many women increasingly shop for jewellery online.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Kavita Prabhu (26) leads a very hectic life – she works six days a week at her agency’s client servicing department, and has to travel a lot for work. She has hardly any time or energy left on her one weekly holiday to budge out of her house. “I can barely make a parlour visit once every two weeks,” she says. She can’t even remember the last time she checked out a Plain gold jewellery clothes sale.

So there’s one thing Kavita does to save on time – shop online. Recently, she had to make some quick purchases for an engagement party. “I bought clothes, shoes, and the best thing of all, a pair of dainty gold earrings. I wouldn’t have had the time to go to an actual store to pick these things up,” she says.

Like Kavita, Mumbai’s Mohana Shetty (34) has also taken to online shopping, and she is especially hooked on to jewellery shopping. “To tell you the truth, I love shopping alone, and I hate having an assistant breathe down my neck when I’m trying to select an item of jewellery,” the mother-of-two and Goregoan resident says. “A friend told me about shopping for jewellery online, and I love browsing so many designs at my ease and making the purchase without a fuss.”

Why shop online for jewellery?

According to an April 2013 report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI), jewellery, personal and healthcare accessories have a 3.7 per cent market share at Rs 240 crore out of a total e-tailing market size of Rs 6,454 crore in January-December 2012. The e-tailing market for jewellery, especially costume and office wear jewellery, is only set to grow.

Says Gaurav Singh Kushwaha, Founder, bluestone.com, “We have observed an increase in the number of transactions made by women over the past one year. Jewellery is not an impulse purchase category and women like to take their time to select the right product and design before making their purchase. Online stores provide them the ease of browsing over days without compelling them to make a decision immediately. This comfort is absent in the offline jewellery buying space which becomes a reason for women to shop for jewellery online.

jewellery set“Secondly, industry-wide, more numbers of women have started to transact in the online space due to the ease of getting a credit card. As women have become much more independent and have started earning big bucks, banks have taken special measures to cater to their financial needs.” Naturally, this makes it easier for women to spend more and get the jewellery they want. Kushwaha says that though most women buy traditional jewellery online, the workwear jewellery space is also on the rise.

Says Preeti Shankar (27), “I once had a very bad experience with an online portal, so I am very sceptical about making expensive purchases online.” Preeti’s concern is echoed by a lot of other potential customers, who fear a lack of security for their transaction, and worse, not liking the jewellery they bought. “Sometimes some products look better in pictures, but when you touch them and see them, they may not look so nice,” Preeti says.

Understanding this trend, several online jewellery stores try to remove all obstacles in the purchasing process, so that the Ringscustomer feels assured. “We have to appreciate the concerns and challenges that jewellery as a category poses for the customer. We address the trust issue by making the ordering process smooth,” Kushwaha says. Another step in this process is the handing over of a certificate that clearly discloses the details of any item it accompanies, providing confidence for both buyer and seller.

If you are disbelieving of claims from online shopping portals about stores letting customers try on jewellery at home before buying it, you can breathe easy: reputed online jewellery stores make good on these claims. While they will not only offer you the chance to try the jewellery out before buying it, they will also allow you to return it in a certain amount of time with a refund.

How to make a good jewellery purchase online
– Browse only reputed sites.
– Compare prices of items on different sites.
– Look for user testimonials on the site.
– Ask for recommendations from women who’ve shopped for jewellery online. From them, you can find out how their overall experience with a particular portal was.Bangle
– Don’t be afraid to ask questions and clear doubts. Most reputed online stores will put you in touch with a customer care executive to answer questions.
– Research the overall purchasing process. Some sites promise a full refund on exchange of the purchased item within 30 days, but you may find that they refund only a part of the money, as per prevalent market rates.
– Find out about the portal’s money-back policy, exchange policy, try-before-purchase policy and whether a shipment charge is included in the price of the product.
– On purchase, check for BIS certifications for gold jewellery and certifications from third parties such as GIA for studded jewellery.
– Ask if the portal also has a physical store in your area so you can see the jewellery before you make the purchase.

(Pictures courtesy ripplelinks.com and bluestone.com. Pictures used for representational purpose only)

Categories
Trends

Young and the restless investing in realty

Majority of urban young are shying away from investing in gold and stocks, preferring real estate amidst a global slowdown.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

With the rupee showing further signs of a slide, and stocks and mutual funds becoming a riskier investment proposition, about 85 per cent of the urban working class is preferring to invest in real estate, finds a survey.

The survey, titled ‘Rise in demand for real estate in urban cities’ was conducted by premier industry body ASSOCHAM (Associated Chambers of Commerce) in the metros – Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata – and other cities such as Pune, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. The survey sample included directors of companies, officers/managers in Central/State bodies, teachers and self-employed professionals like lawyer, CAs, doctors, consultants, druggists and small traders. A unanimous thought to emerge from the survey was that a global slowdown and a weak rupee have started casting a shadow on stocks.

The Mumbai city skyline is seen from a s“Over 1,500 respondents felt that investments in real estate, residential and commercial properties are found to be lucrative and much safer these days as such investments are completely insured as against those in gold, stocks and mutual funds,” the survey found. “As many as 82 per cent said that real estate should be the preferred investment option compared to gold and other traditional investment instruments.

“According to them, investment in yellow metal is not as profitable as that of real estate, as they expect that gold prices to further fall. The recent fall in prices has led many to believe that funds can face increased redemption pressures because of the general change in belief that gold is a safe haven. This trend has slowly changed in the country, especially among the investment-savvy class.”

Releasing the survey on Sunday, June 30, the ASSOCHAM Secretary General, DS Rawat said, “About 78 per cent of the urban working class remain keen to park their surpluses in buying residential properties in view of better connectivity, infrastructure and basic facilities and they attach not much preference towards buying commercial properties as these properties are beyond their means which involve higher volumes of investments. On the other hand, about 22 per cent working class and professionals give preference to the commercial properties especially in tier I and tier II cities as they feel that within one or two years, prices of commercial properties will also jump up substantially to get them an attractive premium.”

The survey also revealed that the  maximum concentration of real estate investments from urban working class and professionals are seen towards residential properties in emerging tier II and III cities which include Jaipur, Bhiwadi, Rishikesh, Haridwar, Nainital, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Sonepat, Panipat, Pune, Nasik, Jaipur etc. Moreover, this is also indicative of the fact that buyers in tier II and III cities are looking for quality development and developers with proven track records are reaping the benefits on those given scale of expectations. Over 62 per cent respondents from the professionals’ lot chose real estate properties in Tier I cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, entire NCR, Hyderabad and Bangalore for maximum returns.

Expressing their opinion about the investment in stock markets, a majority of respondents felt that with global slowdown most of the corporations are rationalising the salary structure of their employees with emphasis on cost cuttings, thus dampening the spirit of investment in capital markets.

Nearly 200 respondents, however, still favour stock markets to park their funds and feel that it can give them best returns in a shorter and longer time. They expressed hope that in future, stock markets will bounce back and catch investors’ attention as usual.

As far as urban working class, the investment in gold is concerned, the survey has revealed that the fall in gold and jewellery prices have discouraged the working class to invest in it.

More than half of them said they would prefer to stay in rented apartments and instead, invest in their tier II and tier III city home town for better appreciation potential. About 78 per cent of those working professionals with double income, who bought a house in a metro city, wanted to invest in their home town for a second home.

(Pictures courtesy www.vakilhousing.com, india.nydailynews.com)

Categories
Trends

Dangerous on field, dangerous off it

His IPL antics put fear in the hearts of his opponents and made him the most ‘dangerous’ cricketer in cyberspace.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

The Indian Premier League’s (IPL) sixth edition was concluded very recently, and Mumbai Indians took home the cup after defeating the Chennai Super Kings. However, far from the on-field antics and off-field match-fixing scandals, the IPL’s cricketing stars proved to be dangerous in cyberspace as well.

chris-gayle Yesterday, security technology giant McAfee unveiled results of its ‘India’s Most Dangerous Cricketer’ study which researched this season’s top celebrities of the cricketing world on their risk quotient in the Indian cyberspace.  Christopher Henry ‘Chris’ Gayle took the top slot in the survey, followed by Brett Lee and S Sreesanth.

Such studies are routinely conducted by McAfee; its last big survey a couple of years ago centred around Indian celebrities from film, music, sports and other fields, and found that Katrina Kaif was the most ‘dangerous’ celeb online.

Commenting on the findings of the present study, Venkatasubrahmanyam Krishnapur, Vice-President of Engineering (CMSB), McAfee India Centre said, “Cyber criminals constantly leverage famous personalities and very cleverly time their attacks to coincide with popular events in luring people to websites with malicious software.  In the context of the ongoing cricketing leagues, cyber crooks are leveraging famous cricketers for their nefarious gains. During such events, eager cricket crazy fans are highly motivated to search for photos, videos, scores and stories of their favorite cricketers online, and in that moment of weakness, they are lured into clicking malicious links that puts them at considerable risk.”

Cyber criminals follow the latest trends, often using the names of popular celebrities to lure people to malicious sites designed to steal passwords and personal information. Fans looking for results on search engines using strings such as ‘name of cricketer’ combined with words like ‘free downloads’, ‘hot pictures’, ‘wallpapers’, and ‘videos’ are at risk of running themselves into malicious sites, the study revealed.

The study for ‘Most Dangerous IPL Player’ used the McAfee® SiteAdvisor® site rating which indicates the sites that are risky to search for cricketing celebrity names on the web and calculate an overall risk percentage.

Other ‘dangerous’ cricketers included Yuvraj Singh, David Miller, Mitchell Johnson, Sachin Tendulkar, Dale Steyn, Kieron Pollard, Kevin Pietersen and Virat Kohli.

(Picture courtesy thecricketprofile.blogspot.com)

Categories
Trends

Your office could be checking you out

Companies have started verifying employees’ credentials in the wake of several crimes –  existing employees are included in the checks.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

The recent spurt of crimes, both economic offenses or otherwise, is spurring several companies to quietly check out the antecedents of those in their employment. And it’s not just the ones that companies are hoping to employ that are being given the once-over, a lot of companies are conducting background checks on those working for them already.

Details such as education, residence and personal information are being cross-verified to see if employees have given wrong data on any of these counts. Any misinformation is a potential red flag – companies then probe if the person has a past criminal record.

Employee verification is a routine practice among corporations in the West. Our country has only recently woken up to the threat that a ‘wrong’ employee can pose to the company, in the wake of several crimes being committed by supposedly ‘suitable’ individuals.

A recent survey by the Associated Chamber of Commerce (ASSOCHAM) found that nearly 52 per cent corporates in Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Pune, Dehradun and Hyderabad have been verifying their current and prospective employees at all levels. The verification was conducted by the Human Resource departments of small, medium and large businesses, the survey found. “Companies are fast realising the benefit of doing background checks of prospective employees or risk hurting their brand image in a fraud case. Screening of job candidates at all levels, and even vendors and contract staff is preferred. Previous employment details, academic and professional certificates, identity, criminal records, and credit risk, among other information, are checked thoroughly for authenticity and veracity,” the survey says.

Corporates are certainly becoming more careful and cautious when they are recruiting for the junior, middle and senior level positions, highlights the ASSOCHAM survey. “Many companies hadn’t done any background checks before hiring an employee, mainly at junior levels. The horrendous rape case in Delhi has certainly led to the need for carrying out a comprehensive scrutiny of employees at all levels.”

The survey majorly focused on broad sectors such as BPO, IT/ITes sector, financial and other services, construction, real estate, hospitality, tourism, FMCG and infrastructure, media and advertising, manufacturing and textiles, logistics, transport operators etc. Those companies that cannot conduct checks on their own are outsourcing the work – nearly 25 per cent of the companies surveyed had outsourced the verification work to specialised third party agencies. Under the most intense scanner were jobs that entailed working with children, or in healthcare.

(Picture courtesy www.eharmony.co.uk)

Categories
Trends

Summer cheer for yoghurt industry

Frozen yoghurt industry growing rapidly in metros and Tier II cities; is an alternative to ice cream and soft drinks.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

This is sweet news for the Indian frozen and flavoured yoghurt industry – as per a study conducted by premier commerce body Associated Chamber of Commerce (ASSOCHAM) and released yesterday, the frozen and flavoured yoghurt industry is tipped to grow by 40 to 45 per cent annually, and may touch Rs 1,200 crore by the end of year 2015, up from the current Rs 750 crore.

The study reveals that Indians are waking up to frozen yoghurt, especially its low-fat and no-fat variants, due to rising health consciousness, rising disposable incomes, quality dependence and more awareness about the product and its supposed benefits. Titled Yoghurt Market in India, the study says that the factors that have fuelled this industry’s growth are the wide availability of raw material (milk), a growing willingness among consumers to experiment and increasing disposable incomes.

While releasing the paper DS Rawat, Secretary General ASSOCHAM said, “In India, yoghurt has positioned itself as a healthy dessert option, so the increasing health and wellness awareness will help it gain popularity with some momentum. The branded yoghurt market in India has huge potential with consumers increasingly demanding greater hygiene and quality. The flavoured yoghurt is rapidly becoming a part of regular grocery purchases for many affluent urban households in tier-II and tier-III cities.”

Consuming yoghurt may compete with flavoured milk drinks and fruit/vegetable juice, whilst fruited spoonable yoghurt may emerge as a competition for ice cream as a dessert, the paper finds. Low/no fat and low/no sugar yoghurts are new trends in the market, added Rawat.

Mango, strawberry and pineapple variants, which are common to all brands, are finding takers. Frozen yogurt (plain and flavoured) has already started to replace ice cream to a certain extent. “Companies are also tying up with corporates to target office employees to increase consumption by making it a quick, convenient and healthy substitute for meals. The demand of frozen yoghurt market will see a growth of 70 to 80 per cent each year over the next three years,” adds Rawat.

(Picture courtesy groupon.co.in)

Exit mobile version