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Regardless of what you think of this (I tend to agree with the others ITT in that the salesmen here are middlemen just barely above rent seeking), there are two

Regardless of what you think of this (I tend to agree with the others ITT in that the salesmen here are middlemen just barely above rent seeking), there are two important points: 1. Middlemen form a large part of India's economy, and ripping the band-aid off can send ripples through the rest of the economy (that this will be a negative isn't guaranteed, though.) 2. Continuing from 1, middlemen are also a large bloc, and just like we've seen with the farm laws a strong push from them could lead to new laws to curb Jio's power, despite Ambani's strong links to the ruling party. We've already seen similar pushes against e-com companies leading to some success.

carlmr 5y ago
#1 was the reason for ALDI's success in Germany and later the world. They cut out some middle-men and created a lot of value for consumers.
- franga2000 5y ago
  And, if it's anything like the ones around here, by selling worse products and intentionally under-staffing their stores. Everything they sell is pre-packaged and you only interact with a human for 30 seconds at checkout (after having waited 20 minutes in line because there's only one checkout open most od the time). They have a "cheap and efficient at all costs" attitude, with the costs being: overworked employees, terrible user experience and a whole bunch of unnecessary waste from packaging (especially with their stupid half plastic half paper bread bags that only exist to cust costs, but that a friend in the recycling industry tells me are basically unrecyclable despite both the materials being recyclable on their own).
  - carlmr 5y ago
    I find the user experience amazing, it's really efficient to go through an Aldi. Check out is fast, shopping is fast due to standardized layout, not so many similar choices to overwhelm you so you don't have to decide which cherry tomato to buy etc. Also I'm not sure where you get the unnecessary waste from packaging. They just put everything on the shopping floor as it's shipped to them. That's not extra packaging. Other stores just hide this from you. On the half plastic half paper bags I agree, but that's the same in the other big chains in Germany, so it's at least not more wasteful than the others. Also I've been to America, the other stores really had a lot of extra plastic packaging. Like unpeeled fruit. That's horrific.
    - franga2000 5y ago
      Funny, it's the exact opposite for me. All our other stores also have their own standardised layouts and I have a far easier time remembering those than Aldi's, even though I've been to Aldis far more times that some of the other ones. Checkout is immensely infuriating for me because it's clearly focused on getting me out of the way asap. I'll be standing in like for 10 or more minutes, then get rushed through checkout at a ridiculous speed. There's like 10cm of counter space so products start falling if I'm not putting them away fast enough. I have to put everything back in the cart and then sort things into bags to take home at the awkward shelf at the exit. It's efficient for them, but inefficient for me. And I do actually like some choice - sometimes I want a cheap tomato because it's getting cooked or put in a salad anyways and sometimes I want the better more expensive one because it'll be used "raw" like on a sandwich. As for packaging, I was talking about retail packaging. Like, in a regular store, even a small one, I can ask for X dag of sliced cheese and I'll get that much in a small light wrapper. In Aldi, it's pre-packaged in hard plastic of an unreasonable size and I just have to buy multiple packs if I need more cheese. Same with everything else, even some vegetables. Even cans are shrink-wrapped together sometimes! I legitimately observed my bins filling up far quicker during the time I used to always shop at Aldi. // if any of this sounds unfamiliar, I'm not from Germany, so there might be regional differences
  - hoseja 5y ago
    Why do you need to be wined and dined when buying groceries? It's the same as RyanAir; I'd be happy to be stacked like a sardine for a three hour flight if it means significant cost savings and I get from point A to point B all the same.
    - franga2000 5y ago
      > Why do you need to be wined and dined when buying groceries? Where did you get that idea? I simply want the experience that used to be the bare minimum just some 10 years ago. Aldi (and other stores with a similar model) fails to deliver that and usually isn't cheaper enough to justify it. If you only care about price and have the time and energy to deal with them, feel free, but for me, unless they have something I need on sale, I see no reason to. Most other stores are faster, less rushed and the quality is better for at most a few % higher price.
  - Bayart 5y ago
    Why would you want to interact with a human ?
pkphilip 5y ago
These are not "middle men". Many of them are the sales people of the manufacturers themselves. Reliance will hold down prices only till they receive a huge consolidation of sales and then you can expect the prices to jump.
- kamaal 5y ago
  >>Reliance will hold down prices only till they receive a huge consolidation of sales and then you can expect the prices to jump. Luddites have been pushing this narrative for anti-modernism for ages now, but it just doesn't come to pass. It's for a simple reason, capitalism wants you to buy more and therefore has it in its interests to sell you things for cheap. Its just that the middle men have it easy, there is very little productive effort involved in buying things from X and selling to Y on K% profit, when compared to working in a factory. This is the real issue. People want it easy.
  - thewhitetulip 5y ago
    Reliance did the exact same thing with Jio First it was free Then it was nominal Then every other month rates rose.. and now everyone is raising rates
  - oldsecondhand 5y ago
    If it weren't true, there wouldn't be laws against predatory pricing.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    5 or 10 years ago, a ton of deals would be at Amazon. Now it has dropped a lot. I have friends buying from Amazon for Black Friday when the deals at other stores are generally better. They are used to Amazon now.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      I am not sure what the point is here. Your friends have freedom and ability to choose to buy from multiple retailers, Amazon has freedom to choose its selling price, resellers on Amazon have freedom to choose their price, and competitors to Amazon have the freedom to choose their price. Who is the harmed party?
dilawar 5y ago
Many Indian billionaires are into rent seeking [0]. Reliance is definitely one of those. I don't think this will augur well for Indian economy even if the customer can make some savings in short run. After the market consolidation, Reliance can easily raise the rates. The margins that would have gone to N middlemen would now go to a few with Reliance taking the larger share. The Indian economy is not known for creating jobs lately. [0] https://www.epw.in/journal/2012/40/commentary/where-do-indias-billionaires-get-their-wealth.html https://www.epw.in/journal/2012/40/commentary/where-do-india...
- jeswin 5y ago
  > Many Indian billionaires are into rent seeking [0]. Reliance is definitely one of those. Reliance made most of their money in Petrochemicals. It is India's largest exporter, accounting for 8% of India's total exports. They have other interests too, but I wouldn't classify them as a "rent-seeking" enterprise.
  - thewhitetulip 5y ago
    Jio totally destroyed the telecom sector. It used to be affordable earlier. Then jio made it pseudo affordable for the rich Companies collapsed and merged and now the duopoly is jacking up prices so much that poor people have to pay 100rs just to keep card active
    - kamaal 5y ago
      >>It used to be affordable earlier. It wasn't affordable earlier. In fact internet/data plans were fairly expensive before the 4G days. It's a lot saner now. >>Companies collapsed and merged and now the duopoly is jacking up prices so much that poor people have to pay 100rs just to keep card active Please stop spreading lies, I still freshly remember the earlier days of paying some 500 rupees for a recharge and getting barely 150 minutes of talk time and that too with some 25 days of validity. And yeah the SMS, and other services were charged like 1 rupee per SMS. One of the big wins Ambani claims to have achieved is how Jio exposed scammy pricing practices were in the telecom sector before.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

carlmr 5y ago

#1 was the reason for ALDI's success in Germany and later the world. They cut out some middle-men and created a lot of value for consumers.

franga2000 5y ago
And, if it's anything like the ones around here, by selling worse products and intentionally under-staffing their stores. Everything they sell is pre-packaged and you only interact with a human for 30 seconds at checkout (after having waited 20 minutes in line because there's only one checkout open most od the time). They have a "cheap and efficient at all costs" attitude, with the costs being: overworked employees, terrible user experience and a whole bunch of unnecessary waste from packaging (especially with their stupid half plastic half paper bread bags that only exist to cust costs, but that a friend in the recycling industry tells me are basically unrecyclable despite both the materials being recyclable on their own).
- carlmr 5y ago
  I find the user experience amazing, it's really efficient to go through an Aldi. Check out is fast, shopping is fast due to standardized layout, not so many similar choices to overwhelm you so you don't have to decide which cherry tomato to buy etc. Also I'm not sure where you get the unnecessary waste from packaging. They just put everything on the shopping floor as it's shipped to them. That's not extra packaging. Other stores just hide this from you. On the half plastic half paper bags I agree, but that's the same in the other big chains in Germany, so it's at least not more wasteful than the others. Also I've been to America, the other stores really had a lot of extra plastic packaging. Like unpeeled fruit. That's horrific.
  - franga2000 5y ago
    Funny, it's the exact opposite for me. All our other stores also have their own standardised layouts and I have a far easier time remembering those than Aldi's, even though I've been to Aldis far more times that some of the other ones. Checkout is immensely infuriating for me because it's clearly focused on getting me out of the way asap. I'll be standing in like for 10 or more minutes, then get rushed through checkout at a ridiculous speed. There's like 10cm of counter space so products start falling if I'm not putting them away fast enough. I have to put everything back in the cart and then sort things into bags to take home at the awkward shelf at the exit. It's efficient for them, but inefficient for me. And I do actually like some choice - sometimes I want a cheap tomato because it's getting cooked or put in a salad anyways and sometimes I want the better more expensive one because it'll be used "raw" like on a sandwich. As for packaging, I was talking about retail packaging. Like, in a regular store, even a small one, I can ask for X dag of sliced cheese and I'll get that much in a small light wrapper. In Aldi, it's pre-packaged in hard plastic of an unreasonable size and I just have to buy multiple packs if I need more cheese. Same with everything else, even some vegetables. Even cans are shrink-wrapped together sometimes! I legitimately observed my bins filling up far quicker during the time I used to always shop at Aldi. // if any of this sounds unfamiliar, I'm not from Germany, so there might be regional differences
- hoseja 5y ago
  Why do you need to be wined and dined when buying groceries? It's the same as RyanAir; I'd be happy to be stacked like a sardine for a three hour flight if it means significant cost savings and I get from point A to point B all the same.
  - franga2000 5y ago
    > Why do you need to be wined and dined when buying groceries? Where did you get that idea? I simply want the experience that used to be the bare minimum just some 10 years ago. Aldi (and other stores with a similar model) fails to deliver that and usually isn't cheaper enough to justify it. If you only care about price and have the time and energy to deal with them, feel free, but for me, unless they have something I need on sale, I see no reason to. Most other stores are faster, less rushed and the quality is better for at most a few % higher price.
- Bayart 5y ago
  Why would you want to interact with a human ?

pkphilip 5y ago

These are not "middle men". Many of them are the sales people of the manufacturers themselves. Reliance will hold down prices only till they receive a huge consolidation of sales and then you can expect the prices to jump.

kamaal 5y ago
>>Reliance will hold down prices only till they receive a huge consolidation of sales and then you can expect the prices to jump. Luddites have been pushing this narrative for anti-modernism for ages now, but it just doesn't come to pass. It's for a simple reason, capitalism wants you to buy more and therefore has it in its interests to sell you things for cheap. Its just that the middle men have it easy, there is very little productive effort involved in buying things from X and selling to Y on K% profit, when compared to working in a factory. This is the real issue. People want it easy.
- thewhitetulip 5y ago
  Reliance did the exact same thing with Jio First it was free Then it was nominal Then every other month rates rose.. and now everyone is raising rates
- oldsecondhand 5y ago
  If it weren't true, there wouldn't be laws against predatory pricing.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  5 or 10 years ago, a ton of deals would be at Amazon. Now it has dropped a lot. I have friends buying from Amazon for Black Friday when the deals at other stores are generally better. They are used to Amazon now.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I am not sure what the point is here. Your friends have freedom and ability to choose to buy from multiple retailers, Amazon has freedom to choose its selling price, resellers on Amazon have freedom to choose their price, and competitors to Amazon have the freedom to choose their price. Who is the harmed party?

dilawar 5y ago

Many Indian billionaires are into rent seeking [0]. Reliance is definitely one of those. I don't think this will augur well for Indian economy even if the customer can make some savings in short run. After the market consolidation, Reliance can easily raise the rates. The margins that would have gone to N middlemen would now go to a few with Reliance taking the larger share. The Indian economy is not known for creating jobs lately. [0] https://www.epw.in/journal/2012/40/commentary/where-do-indias-billionaires-get-their-wealth.html https://www.epw.in/journal/2012/40/commentary/where-do-india...

jeswin 5y ago
> Many Indian billionaires are into rent seeking [0]. Reliance is definitely one of those. Reliance made most of their money in Petrochemicals. It is India's largest exporter, accounting for 8% of India's total exports. They have other interests too, but I wouldn't classify them as a "rent-seeking" enterprise.
- thewhitetulip 5y ago
  Jio totally destroyed the telecom sector. It used to be affordable earlier. Then jio made it pseudo affordable for the rich Companies collapsed and merged and now the duopoly is jacking up prices so much that poor people have to pay 100rs just to keep card active
  - kamaal 5y ago
    >>It used to be affordable earlier. It wasn't affordable earlier. In fact internet/data plans were fairly expensive before the 4G days. It's a lot saner now. >>Companies collapsed and merged and now the duopoly is jacking up prices so much that poor people have to pay 100rs just to keep card active Please stop spreading lies, I still freshly remember the earlier days of paying some 500 rupees for a recharge and getting barely 150 minutes of talk time and that too with some 25 days of validity. And yeah the SMS, and other services were charged like 1 rupee per SMS. One of the big wins Ambani claims to have achieved is how Jio exposed scammy pricing practices were in the telecom sector before.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]