Moody St. in Waltham: the New "Little India"

Indian retailers along Moody St. in Waltham, Mass., are contributing to the "Little India" moniker for the area. (photos: Mark Connors, INDIANewEngland.com)

The following article is from INDIANewEngland.com. 

One recent Thursday morning, the customers at the Waltham India Grocery Store (pictured below) clearly overwhelmed the hired help. A long line of shoppers accumulated at the register of the store – located on Moody Street in Waltham, Mass. – waiting for the clerk, who was busy handling a stocking issue out back. Eventually, one anxious customer hollered out for assistance.

“It’s just crazy sometimes,” said clerk Assif Uddin, as he hustled up to the counter. “The customers come in waves.”

The Waltham India Grocery Store stands immediately next to fellow Indian grocer New Apna Bazaar. Just a few storefronts away sits the Patel Brothers Indian Grocery Store and Little India Restaurant, while directly across the street, restaurants like New Mother India and Bombay Mahal beckon new customers.

For the moment, this small stretch of Moody Street in downtown Waltham appears to be a mecca for the region’s Indian community.

“Welcome to our own ‘Little India,’” said Wycliffe Mukire, an employee at New Apna Bazaar grocery store. “The word is out: This is the place to go for Indian businesses.”

The concentration of Indian businesses on Moody Street appears to rival any other business center in New England. While pockets of Indian stores and restaurants have emerged in Boston suburbs like Burlington, Acton and Nashua, NH, Waltham appears to have attracted the most bustling trade. One recent weekday morning, several Indian stores on the Moody Street stretch attract a seemingly endless line of customers.

“The whole Indian community of Boston gathers here [on Moody Street],” said Mukire.

Preeta Banerjee, an assistant professor of strategy at Brandeis International Business School in Waltham, said business clusters like the one found on Moody Street in Waltham are common in virtually all facets of trade.

“It’s called an agglomeration economy, and it speaks to the benefits merchants see when they cluster around each other,” Banerjee said. “When an area attracts enough businesses of a certain type, it garners a reputation in the community as the place to go for that type of business or service. It often gets to the point, that when a new competitor moves in, the other businesses cheer it on, because it only enhances that area’s reputation as the place to go for that product.”

Examples of agglomeration economies are prevalent around Massachusetts, including Boston’s North End, famous for its proliferation of Italian restaurants and bakeries; the Route 128 corridor, known as “America’s Technology Highway” because it has become a magnet for technology-based businesses; and the Automile, a stretch of Route 1 packed with auto dealerships of every stripe.

Banerjee said spillover benefits to agglomeration economies often include a greater ease in attracting labor and suppliers, because multiple stores attract more attention than a single one could and can help drive down prices. The strategy also often results in spinoff benefits for consumers, because the enhanced competition can often lead merchants to lower their prices.

However, during a recent stroll down Moody Street by an INDIA New England reporter, many business owners seemed to downplay the trend.

“We’ve been here for 21 years,” said Joe Coelho, a waiter at Bombay Mahal Restaurant. “We don’t follow these trends.”

Deepak Patel, a manager at Patel Brothers Grocery Store, a national chain of Indian grocery stores, said the concentration of Indian businesses did not affect his company’s decision to open up shop on Moody Street in January 2007.

“We don’t follow what these other Indian businesses are doing,” Patel said. “We have our own approach.  We do the best we can and we don’t pay any attention [to the other businesses]. We attract our own customers.”

Many customers seemed to offer a different take, however, agreeing that Moody Street is convenient as a single shopping destination for Indian products.

“If they don’t have something here, then they’ll probably have it next door,” said Sabita Sandeep of Framingham, a shopper at Waltham India Grocery. “It’s just easy. This is the place I think of when I need to pick up an Indian spice or sweets or something that’s harder to find at conventional stores.”

But agglomeration economies can have drawbacks, too, as the now-shuttered Indus Valley grocery store on Moody Street might demonstrate. Zuber Dugia, an employee at New Apna Bazar, said he heard rumblings when the store recently went out of business.

While the store’s Web site is still operating, phone numbers at both the store's Waltham and Westborough locations as well as its customer service line have been disconnected. Calls to the leasing company of the Waltham location were not immediately returned.

Banerjee said business clusters can sometimes attract excessive congestion and traffic (Hanover Street in Boston’s North End and Route 128 during rush hour are two good examples) and dissuade customers from venturing to some business clusters.

And for some merchants, nearby competition can simply become too stiff. High fuel prices and new planning procedures that promote small, walkable neighborhoods and discourage major business clusters are also working against agglomeration economies.

But for the moment, South Asian businesses on Moody Street appear to be thriving. According to several grocery store owners there, Indians make up about 80 percent of the customer base. Indian restaurants, on the other hand, appear to attract a more diverse crowd. “Look around,” advised a waiter at Little India Restaurant. “We attract all races.”

“The buffet is just that good,” he added.

Source:  INDIANewEngland.com

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