Where should I open a new tractor dealership?
While enjoying a Vada Pav at the famous ‘CTO Vada Pav’ located at Flora Fountain in Churchgate, my friend remarked that one of the key reasons for the popularity of this particular outlet, apart from its mouth-watering Vada Pavs, was its location. Located near one of Mumbai’s busiest railway stations, in the vicinity of several top colleges of the city, and serving what is arguably the staple food for the city’s working-class and a quintessential snack for the city’s college students, the business was bound to be good.
This view-point got me thinking. How many businesses are actually set up in locations where there is a high flux of their target customers? Is it possible to identify such locations in the first place? Are these locations as obvious for other businesses as they are for a Vada Pav business? And how much revenue are businesses losing out on just because they are not located correctly? Luckily, with Simha Kit, we get answers to many of these questions in the context of tractor dealerships.
Before commencing on the main story of today’s article, let me share two images with you. Please come back to these images after you finish reading the story.
In September this year, our team member from Mahindra, Sandeep Ravula asked us a rather exciting question, “Can Simha data tell us where should we set up a new dealership in UP?” The Vada Pav anecdote was about to translate into some real business insights. The direction was clear: Identify locations with a high flux of tractor owners.
Luckily, by September, under our SkyTag project, in a bid to understand rural India better than Google, we had developed a rich database of rural business hotspots frequented by tractor owners who had Simha kit installed. We knew which petrol pumps were visited frequently by tractor owners, which fertilizer shops were popular, which brick kilns/ sugar factories were important business hotspots, where the farmers sold their produce, where they took their tractors for maintenance, and a lot more. We immediately plotted these hotspots on the map.
On top of that, we received an important input from Sandeep: the list of villages in UP, along with the number of tractors in each village. So while Simha data showed us the important business hotspots of all tractors with Simha Kit, the data shared by Sandeep showed us the distribution of tractors in UP. We overlayed this data on top of the Simha data.
Next, we looked at the locations of the existing Mahindra dealerships in UP and drew out a 15 km radius circle around them, to mark out the areas served by these dealerships. And voila! We saw a huge underserved market, waiting to be tapped. What we also observed were several dealerships that have the potential to do better business if their locations are given a slight offset. Have a look at it yourself.
To get an idea of the importance of Simha data and the village level data in decision-making, just go back to the two images shown to you before the beginning of this story. Which of the two images would you prefer to have in front of you, in order to decide the location of your new dealership? Check the yellow and red rectangles for a hint ;)
Data helps make decisions better, and Simha data just, once again, provided testimony to that. Enjoyed this article? Then be on the lookout for another two weeks later. Till then, for any data related discussions, feel free to drop us a line at datalabs@carnot.co.in.
