Look What You Can Get for Only 99 Rupees!

Tonight I found an article about the My Dollar Stores, one of India’s most popular American imports. These stores are able to import direct from China to nearby India, and in the big cities they have proven very popular.

One lesson the California-based founders of My Dollarstores learned was that you need to educate the average Indian customer…so there about 20 employees per 1000 square feet, more than ten times the average for a US store. Employees are cheap here, the average store employee paid about $150 a month. So when the customers come in to purchase the thousands of different items, all for 99 Rupees (about $2), they also come with questions.

Many Indians are suspicious of the quality of the 99 Rupee merchandise. There are always plenty of staff to answer the queries. The chain even offers a money-back guarantee if something’s not right, that is unusual in India.

The stores bring in more than 600 customers every day, three times the number who come in to shop in US stores. They plan on building up to 400 stores in the next three years.