From the city of “Nawabs” – Lucknow, Mr. Sameer Asthana, an IIPM alumnus of the 1996 batch has made a strong mark in the retail industry. A passionate individual and an achiever by nature he has established an excellent track record of devising growth and profits in a highly competitive market. Mr. Asthana’s precise conduct and gracious behavior made the interaction wonderful. He has fifteen years of experience in hardcore retail operations and consulting which has made him an expert in his field and led to his joining the elite group of people holding such an experience. His love for retail is clearly visible in the passion with which he talks about the subject and in his vision to become a CEO of a reputed retail organization. He brings to the table the very best of his knowledge, experience, intuition, innovation and contingent based leadership stlye. From ground level operations to distribution to customer retention, he has an interesting insight to share on each. He recollects some incidents where he has been fundamental in retaining the customer having successfuly addressed their grievances. The MBA days at IIPM were great as the learning was not just educationally rewarding, but also a lot of fun. The interactions with Prof. N.R.Chatterjee and Prof. P.K.Jain kept him motivated.
Mr. Asthana graduated in civil engineering in 1993. Post that, his dad wanted him to be an IAS but he was not too keen to join the government sector and MB A was a fascinating field at that time. His career started in 1996 with a campus placement in Usha Group’s phone division as a senior territory manager – retail. Retail at that time was not a promising sector but his passion for the sector kept him going. He then moved to Agrani Switch as a Regional manager in retail operations, where he was awarded the title of “the best retail manager”. He then got an opportunity to work with Reliance Industries Ltd in their petroleum business as senior manager for the city retail business. He then joined Tata for a year taking up the responsibility of Head – retail consulting. Mr. Asthana currently occupies the position of Retail subject matter expert in Accenture. He is among the very few people who have 15 years of experience in retail. He has run an SME , been a part of sales, delivery, training, development and has been involved in hardcore operations and consulting.
Mr. Asthana, during his 15 years of work experience has handled teams of 5 people to groups of 400-500 men. His leadership style is very inclusive and gives a lot of independence to his folks as he believes that the happiness index of folks should always be high. In the retail industry people working at the floor level have to slog a lot since the needs of the industry involves a lot of customer interface. He wants his team members to have complete information about the products and that they always have a lot of excitement and passion towards their work. He thus believes in “leading by example”.
While working with Reliance, his team had to be on the road for 24 hours as they were setting up petrol pumps and wanted to know the traffic pattern since the cost of the set up was very high. He used to give rewards to his team members from time to time to keep them motivated. Mr. Asthana never used any jargons for managing his team. A retail person needs to perform a customer focused role, the way you sell depends on the way a store is presented. <
Retail industry is rewarding and its is at a nascent stage in india as of now…it is a sunrise industry…
Retail sector evolved during the period of 1996-2000, it was during 2001-04 that pure retail started and by the end of 2005 only a few could survive. In 2006, a boom came in the retail sector and every corporate was into retail with the valuation game in mind, where companies used to open up huge retail chains and then sell them off to big MNC’s at huge profits. During the period of 2009-11, the big retail chains had thin margins but were selling products in high volume. Retail organizations have to be efficient to make money and the focus is now towards “optimizing the cost”.
Mr. Asthana shares that, if retail has to make a quantum jump, FDI is very important as it will bring in much needed money, cold storage infrastructure and the latest technology. He finds the low cost retail model the best as there is a control on capital expenses, operating expenses, manpower expenses. Also, he talks about, ATL & BTL in retail and says, ATL in retail is very tough as it involves high cost. Point of sale is when a person takes a decision.
Mr. Asthana has risen very fast in his career. Retail industry is rewarding and it is at a nascent stage in India now. It is manpower as well as technology intensive industry which requires hardwork. Mr. Asthana says, that the industry is very tough as one needs to put in a lot of hours of work.
His current company, Accenture creates a perfect work life balance for its employees as it actually forces its employees to reach home on time and take vacations.. He has two kids Agastya and Aryaman and his wife Pallavi is a homemaker. He is very emotionally attached with his family.
As a student he was into sports and theater. He is fond of reading, specially when he is travelling long distances. His dream is to become the CEO of a retail company
and Cult wishes him all the luck!
