Subhiksha Going Down Under

The discount chain Subhiksha, probably had the best run of its corporate life when they started off a couple years back. They advertised ferociously and aggressively accomplished a chain of stores numbering over 1000. That was then… today things are completely opposite. Most of their 1000 stores have shut down and the bulk of their 7000 employees are still waiting for a paycheck.

Yes! The economy will be blamed for Subhiksha’s present condition but the senior management has to share the blame as well. R. Subramanian the company’s founder and managing director has admitted failing when it came to planning of funds. Last year when Wipro’s founder Azim Premji picked up a 10% stake for Rs. 230 crore in Subhiksha he would not have even dreamt that the company as a whole would not be valued at even Rs 1000 crore in the coming year.

Though the concept of a discount chain was good, the timing was bad… lets hope thing look better for not just Subhiksha but for many others in the retail business too.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 31st, 2009 at 10:22 am and is filed under Cribbin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Subhiksha Going Down Under”

  1. This is nothing new or unexpected happening. Allsuch services providers with commercial intent sooner or later would meet the same fate depending upon their bearing capacity of the service provider in totality of business handled by them in trade in and around the world. The throat cut competetion in such trade on comforts parameters in India is at least not sucessful in next 10 years. The long term investers can only servive who look for business in the long run and is not calculating tangeble profits.