The mudi and the MNC

In Bengal, we call the grocer ‘mudi’. In villages, the mudi is, or was, the moneylender too. The villager, therefore, borrowed from him to buy from him. I don’t know how much margin he kept on the things he sold, but literature is sated with stories of his punishing interest rates. In effect, he sold to lend.

Not at all different from Tesco’s strategy of using a loyalty programme to shift from the low-margin department store business to the high-margin banking business.