The ones that resembled phone directories are long gone.

They used to be a staple of the big chains for holiday shopping over the years.

The internet ensured that it was no longer necessary to print them.

So why did IKEA move out of a catalog into a podcast?

And why would anyone want to listen?

Put yourself in IKEA's position - catalogs are getting outdated but if they're your most potent marketing weapon, you have to find other ways to get the same traction.

So, how do you make it interesting?

Build it around subjects people care about.

Getting a good night's sleep, for example.

That includes turning off the lights and putting your mind at rest instead of worrying about what you'll need to finish tomorrow.

And throughout that experience of relaxation, product names and descriptions are inserted.

The bed for example. Or the mattress. The bedside lights you need to have if you wake up at night.

IKEA knows podcasts are hot. And rather than schedule an IKEA ad into popular shows, they're trying to create one.

You may not listen to a bland description of products.

But if the benefits are woven into the narrative, who knows?

The Kirana shop list goes electronic

The neighborhood stores were reborn in the pandemic.

Customers discovered they were the lifeline to groceries and vegetables at short notice.

Most are just a phone call away and all it takes to order stuff is  announce which house or apartment block you are calling from - and tell them what is required

The entire shop's CRM probably resides on WhatsApp or the contact list on the shopkeeper's phone.

They don't have the funds or tech bandwidth for anything fancier. 

The same holds true for the small restaurants in neighborhoods who have their regulars calling in on the phone to place orders

So when Google invests $27 million in a one year old start-up targeting this segment there must be a reason.

DotPe enables electronic ordering for Kiranas. The idea is to enroll every single neighborhood shop and then route orders to them through the app.

Like a Shopify on the mobile 

What's promoted on the website is discoverability and ease of use.

They are hoping that it becomes the one app through which customers order everything around the neighborhood.

With global giants courting small shopkeepers in India, the race has well and truly begun

No stone is being left unturned.

The lesser known Covid victories

In March 2020, alarm bells were already ringing in hospitals around the world.

They knew that this was no ordinary virus.

The news reports largely focused on the spread worldwide, vaccine development and clinical trials.

In hospitals, however, doctors were trying out new ways to counter the rampaging virus.

In  UK, Prof Martin Landray, a doctor and designer of large-scale drug trials, and Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, one of the world's biggest funders of medical research -  started a program called Recovery.

It launched within 9 days of their meeting and made it easy to evaluate, track, analyse and publish what was working - and what was not . So doctors could be aware.

Clinical trials are long, bureaucratic and take years before anything is implementable. That changed with the program.

At Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center phase 1 trials of a nasal spray, appear to have helped numerous moderate-to-serious cases of COVID-19 quickly recover from the disease. That could be another long-term solution.

The largest one underway is Solidarity by WHO - where nearly 12000 patients at 500 hospital sites from 30 countries are working together.

It may be the best thing globalization achieved

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