For Upleta, where the people you compete with are the people you are related to.
Competing with your own family
Upleta mills oil and trades agricultural produce on a modest scale. In a town this size the commercial network and the kinship network are effectively the same network. Your competitor is your cousin's father-in-law, and your supplier married into the family that undercut you last season.
Business decisions that are never only business
Pricing aggressively has social consequences. Declining credit to someone who is late has social consequences. Expanding into a line a relative already occupies is read as an act, not a strategy.
Clients describe leaving money on the table for years to avoid a family confrontation, and being unable to explain to an outsider why that is rational. In this context it often is.
What the work addresses
Working out what the relationships are actually worth to you, in explicit terms, so the trade-off becomes a decision instead of a reflex. Sometimes the answer is that the peace is worth the margin. That is a legitimate choice once it is made deliberately.
What does not work is sacrificing the margin, resenting it, and pretending neither happened.
Sessions
Online, in Gujarati - which also means the conversation happens entirely outside the local network.
Frequently asked questions
- Everyone here knows everyone. Is this private?
- Completely. I have no connection to anyone locally and nothing is shared.
- Do you work with small traders?
- Yes. Most clients in this belt run something modest themselves.
