A certain town had some famous hotels that made the best chapatis known to man. Chapati was a local delicacy and never missed out at any meal or occasion worth its salt. A tourist who happened to be a baker in a far off land, visited the town to experience the local delights. As was expected, he came across the famous chapatis in one of his meals.
He was amazed at the taste and texture, nothing like he had experienced before. He asked for the chapati recipe in order to make some when he got back home. Sadly though, much as he tried, the baker and his colleagues couldn’t make chapatis that tasted as good as those in the tourist town. Chapati making was a very specialized skill, he came to realize.
The baker therefore decided to use the chapati dough to make some quick healthy snacks. He chopped various leftover ingredients in the kitchen, spread them over the dough and put it in the oven. He realized this new snack was much easier to prepare than chapatis, so he called it pizza. What more, there was no limit to the number and type of topping ingredients he could use on the pizza.
The pizza quickly became popular due to its range of options and ease of preparation. The pizza industry grew until customers of the chapati hotels started asking for some pizza as well. The chapati hotels despised pizza because it was a strange recipe to them and was not as profitable as the chapati business. In the meantime pizza sales continued to grow steadily, with many options to get it through delivery apps, as frozen pizza at the supermarket or packed pizza dough.
The market for chapatis started declining, though the hotels were adamant that chapati was here to stay. Some hotels started making pizza to boost their sales. A few even paid local goons to harass the pizza outlets, while some petitioned the local council to put a higher license fee for pizza outlets. Pizza consumption still kept rising every year despite these challenging conditions.
With steadily reduced income, some chapati hotels couldn’t meet their large hotel expenses and started closing some locations. Any chapati hotel that started making pizza realized the two meals were similar yet so different. Pizza needed different kitchen equipment, had more menu options and more sales channels than chapati. The hotels which tried using their chapati pans to make pizza realized that customers didn’t like the taste and feel of their pizza. Some hotels decided to partner with pizza outlets in order to have quality pizza on their menu.
Friends, now replace the word chapati with ICE vehicle, and pizza with EV. The moral of the story is, this is a simplified explanation of what is happening in the global auto industry right now. Keep it locked.
CHAPATI & PIZZA
