All right. Well, hello and thank you all so much for tuning in to another episode of the Professional Pricing Society podcast. My name is Terrence and we have a great conversation ahead of us today.
Today we're going to be talking about the expert guide to retail pricing and that is going to be spearheaded by our good friend Kieran Gangay. Kieran is the CEO and founder of an A I based company called Rapid Pricer and he has done a lot of work around the globe with successful ventures in the Silicon Valley area, Mexico City, Bangalore, Amsterdam and New Delhi, India. Kieran, how are we doing today? Doing great. How are you, James? Doing well, doing well. Good to speak with you once
again. Good friend of PPS. I was able to see you at our at our latest conference which was back in Dallas and it seems like you had a good time while you were there. Absolutely, absolutely. It was a pleasure being with everybody and the session was quite nice also as well. Good, good, good. Now we have you on today to discuss something that's very exciting, which is you have a new book out, correct.
And if you wouldn't mind, let us know what the name of your book is and you know, I'll kind of, I'll kind of go into some questions about what we can expect from the content content of it. Absolutely, yes. The name of the book is the Expert Guide to Retail Pricing. It's about an analytics based approach to maximizing margins for retailer. Nice okay. Now how did you come about writing this book? I know you said it was a long time in the making.
A lot of, a lot of your expertise and insights went into this book. So how did you kind of come about writing it? So I've been in pricing for retail now for about 18 years, right? So after the first few years, what I started noticing is we were going through the same steps. We would go to retail organizations as a consultant. I first used to work with other consulting companies and then I started my own company to do the same.
But time and again, Terrence, in different countries, in different parts of the world, it's the same challenge we would go through. Selection of data understanding strategy. Let's fix the strategy, let's fix the prices, and then let's leave behind the process to do okay. And then I get bored quite easily, right? I want new, I want new challenges. So as much as we could, we tried to make this into a more automated process, build algorithms to do all of the work, so on and so forth.
And then finally, I was like, okay. I need to, I need to do something different and I started doing fresh produce pricing. With all of this knowledge I had gathered with this, pricing was still in my head and I could see that there was still a lot of interest from retailers, from young professionals, from startups, from consulting companies on how exactly pricing is done. So that's when I thought about Okay. I I do enjoy teaching. I teach part time in many universities.
Last year I coached 103 Startups on how to expand internationally. I love this purpose of transferring information basically, right? So this was in the middle of the lockdown where I was getting bored. I I wrote a few books, This was one of them. And then I'm really happy I could get route list to publish it for me. And it kind of feels good like you know, you all these years you spent in learning and perfecting something and now
you're able to leave it behind. And it's not just me, right. It's my colleagues, all the partners I've worked with, all of the employees work with, we've all contributed to it. So that was the goal is to is to kind of you know leave something behind for the new generation of entrepreneurs, startups, retailers to use. What we have discovered, that's
awesome, That's amazing. You mentioned that you've worked with, you know in the past 18 years of your career, you've worked in different countries, worked with different countries regarding pricing. And then of course you've you've recently coached 103 Startups, which is phenomenal in itself. Now, when you think about those who may have interests in this book, who is this book more suitable for or most suitable
for, if I can say it that way? And what can they expect to learn from this piece of writing? Yes. So this book is primarily written for pricing professionals, more so in the retail space. There are lots of elements of it which is also relevant to other B to B pricing, say for example.
But it's mainly for retail and ideally it would be somebody who has some kind of an analytical mathematical exposure or pricing strategy exposure maybe like a pricing analyst, a category manager or a director, VP of merchandising within these functions in a retail establishment, right, Could be anywhere in the world some portions of it will be more relevant to. Let's say for example, if you take the United States, Latin America, this book will be very
relevant in some portions of Europe. If you see a more mature operations of a retailer, they probably might have addressed some portions of it already. And if you go Asia and Africa, these things which are covered in the book have not happened yet in those countries yet. So this might be a learning for them on what might happen in the future. And to answer your questions, pricing professionals from around the world, especially in the world of retailers who this is for.
OK, good, good for retail pricer is interesting no matter what the country. Now, can the concepts from this book be used for B to B pricing as well? Yeah, absolutely. So, So kind of like if you see a book on how to. To ride a car, you will be able to use it to ride, let's say a tractor. Yeah, it's a lot of aspect. It's similar, but it's not exactly the same. Okay. So say, for example, the science behind pricing, how do you put up a strategic framework? How do you measure the results?
How do you react against competition? They're all the same, but there would be some modifications you'd have to do to leverage it in A B to B environment. Gotcha okay. Interesting now because this is your handwritten piece and your essentially your baby cuz you created this back during the lockdown when COVID first started around the world. What would you say are your some of your favorite chapters of this book? Yeah. So I like the base pricing chapter, right. So basically.
This is like the crux of the book. If you, if you wish Terrence so all of the concepts you would have gathered, all of the strategy you put together in place, it's like it's like you know, chopping up vegetables, dicing it up and preparing your preparing your kitchen. But this is when you actually take your first bite and see what it is looking like, right? So.
So I like that after it brings a lot of impact to retailers if you can use the concepts in it. I also like Funnily, the smallest chapter I have is the conclusion. I like it because it talks about what could be possible in the future, and I like. I like thinking about that too. Good. OK, good. Now, are there more venues to learn about pricing through the science that you personally would recommend? Maybe within this book? Or maybe not?
See one of the reasons why I wrote this book right when I was learning pricing, I asked so many people, do you have any books you could recommend that I could learn from? Almost all of them are like wish there was one, right? There is really not many books written about using science and mathematics for would yourself approach for pricing right? We have books about strategy. We have books about pure science. But how do you use these maths and analytics to do pricing on an everyday basis?
I didn't see any book material, but there are lots of very useful blogs, articles written about it from pricing companies which specialize in this space. I do really like all of the content the Professional Pricing society puts out, attending a workshop, meeting, meeting some of the peoples who have done this pricing and in many cases. Actually implementing some of these solutions, whether you do it through a complicated software or an Excel, is the best ways to learn, right?
Is actually to jump into the swimming pool, basically. Sure, jump into swimming pool, Swimming pool head first, if you will. Absolutely, yes. Well, with this book, maybe you can go feed first. Yeah, OK, test the waters. OK, For those who are interested, where can they look to purchase this book or just to read more about it? So if you go to Amazon and search this book up, there is a big sizable chapter which is kind of like an excerpt. You can read about this book
already without having to buy. Then you can purchase this book on any country's Amazon website. It should be in Barnes and Noble. It's definitely also on The Route Ledge, which is the publication Taylor and Francis website, which you could use also as well. Good, good. Now, before I let you go for for today, where can people learn more about you or your story? What the resources are that you have to offer? Where can they learn more about you?
So I do a couple of things actually three or four things is what I do right now. Number one is rapid pricer, right? So we reduce prices of fresh produce before they go bad using a eye. We take a look at what is the color of a banana, say for example, and those from green to yellow, we change the price from $1.00 to $0.75 or whatever it is, right? So that's what I do. Www.rapidpricer.com That's my company. You could also visit.
Kirangangay.com I have more information about what else im up to. I have another startup in India through which we help companies grow internationally and I also like I was saying I teach and coach startups to the Dutch base camp. What I do turn so any of these places or or open me up.