Finding Physics

Had Amit Sharma, Founder and CEO of ShopX, not been running one of the country's leading FMCG distribution platforms, he would probably have been teaching physics, his passion since high school. “I used to take special permission to go to the IIT Delhi library to read research papers,” says Sharma. His passion enables him to come up with better solutions. “In business, we tend to learn a lot by analogy. When you have little bit of a science mindset, instead of analogy, the question you are asking is what are the fundamental principles revolving around the problem you are trying to solve?” In the world of FMCG distribution, offering credit to retailers is a common practice. Instead of doling out credit, Sharma felt it would be better to help retailers digitise. The initiative did wonders for his business, especially during the pandemic, when lakhs of retailers joined hands with ShopX. Even Unilever and Nestle started using ShopX as a complementary distribution platform. “We realised that extending credit from our balance sheet will lead to high NPAs. This approach to problem-solving rather than copying others comes from a physics mindset,” says Sharma.

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