Here’s to Co-Opetition
Business Strategy

Here’s to Co-Opetition

It is with surprise that I read a recent spate of articles in the business press about one of the jewels in our crown – the dairy co-operative sector, of which Amul is the most celebrated offspring of the illustrious parent NDDB. “NDDB: A dream gone sour for Dr Kurien”, says one headline. It contains an interview with Dr Kurien, the founding father of the dairy co-operative sector, criticising the National Dairy Development Board’s decision to float a subsidiary marketing company, which would partner with state level dairy co-operative federations in the form of joint ventures. According to NDDB, this is a move designed to strengthen the marketing capability of the co-operative sector. Dr Kurien agrees that “most federations, unlike Amul, were not professionally managed”, but feels that NDDB should not step beyond its role as a funding agency. I am a bit puzzled. If the marketing arms of the […]

December 14, 2002 0 Comments
Walking the Talk on Service
Business Strategy

Walking the Talk on Service

Services are in. I am told that the only part of our economy that is thriving is services. And that even if you are marketing ‘hard goods’ like consumer durables or office automation equipment, in this new world of product parity, the service package that comes along with it is a bigger driver of market share and margins. However in practice, it appears that the actual design of services is quite disconnected from what the consumer actually wants. A lot of service initiatives seem designed to address the frills but not deal with the fundamentals. And even the frills are not perfectly frilly, if the highly personalised letters I get from hotels and airlines and travel agents and banks are any indication. They press the flesh in print very well, with the almost hand written signature which I am sure costs a lot to print, but they don’t bother to […]

November 14, 2002 0 Comments
Understanding the Low Income Consumer
Consumer Trends

Understanding the Low Income Consumer

It is now well accepted that there are two answers to the question “what is the market size and the appropriate market strategy for the Indian market” One is the low pain – low gain answer and the other is the high pain – high gain answer. The low pain – low gain answer is to size and target the top of the iceberg (from ‘tip’ of the iceberg many companies have inched their way downwards to the ‘top’ of the ice berg!) comprising well off consumers (still far poorer than consumers in most other parts of the world). The game can then be played with comfortable cost and price structures, using obvious, familiar, proven business models and product designs. The good news is that unlike a decade ago, this game is reasonably sized and has the assurance of sustained growth. However, if you have the stomach for it, there […]

November 1, 2002 0 Comments
More on the IIMs
Corporate Governance

More on the IIMs

The articles on the Government ‘take over’ of the IIM directors’ appointment and on why alumni and corporate leaders are merely watching this retrograde step without comment, suggested that the reason for this apathy is that neither group believes that autonomy has done too much” for the IIMs -so why bother, if they are going down the tube any way. As someone who has been closely involved since with one of the IIMs as an alumna, a visiting professor and a member of the last Committee for Future Direction, I would like to discuss some of these issues further. But first, why on earth is the fate of the IIMs such an important topic? Because they are one of the flagships of Indian education, and at some time maybe education from/in India will be as big a business as software; because they have been nurtured with tax payers money; because […]

July 14, 2002 0 Comments
Taking Charge of Perception
India My Land

Taking Charge of Perception

Everyone I discussed this piece with was of the opinion that it was not the thing to write about. In addition to being politically incorrect, it was not really my business, and what good would it do to pontificate from an armchair? However fools rush in where angels fear to tread and I have taken courage from Arun Maira’s earlier piece on this page, asking “is the business of business only business”? I would like to write to all of us in business and say, can we figure out what we can do, individually and collectively, to improve the way we communicate about our country to the outside world and take charge of the way events relating to us get positioned in the outside world? I don’t think we deserve to be painted as the next Gaza strip, where no one in their right minds should want to locate a […]

June 17, 2002 0 Comments
Seeing The Road Ahead By Understanding Demand Segments
Consumer Trends

Seeing The Road Ahead By Understanding Demand Segments

It is the same question that everyone is asking – why are demand patterns so illogical, why do usual predictors of good or bad demand like monsoons or consumer confidence or low GDP growth not apply across the board to all categories? Ask some sectors about recovery and they say, “well its already beginning to happen” and ask others and they are seeing very slow change, if any at all. Why are car and two wheeler and telecom and air conditioner markets growing, but FMCG markets groaning, and that too in a year where GDP growth was quite low? And if the reason is rural market not having money because of poor performance of agriculture, then where did the money come from? The rural market has behaved in a very prima donna-ish manner – it boomed, then it busted, and now it favours some categories and not others. The urban […]

May 1, 2002 0 Comments
Waiting for Kalki – I
Business Strategy

Waiting for Kalki – I

But then India has always been about mixed verdicts. Talk to a lot of business people, and the cynical will tell you “this is the end, send your children out of the country there is no future here”. The more pragmatic will draw attention to examples of pockets of peace and prosperity defined either by business segments or geographic pockets or select companies. As always, everything you say of India, the opposite is also true. Economic and political diversity is increasing between states, and there is every combination of economic performance, political ideology, and business friendliness existing. Even within states there are oases and deserts. Ask any sales manager in any business to analyse the business and he will confirm it. So that’s the first clue to surviving the short term. Waiting for Kalki in the form of 8% or more high quality growth which will bring universal salvation is […]

April 22, 2002 0 Comments
The China Market Opportunity
Business Strategy

The China Market Opportunity

Dominique Turcq, a McKinsey consultant, described India and China as “Asia’s Non Identical Twins” – many similarities, and yet starkly different too. This phrase leapt to my mind on a recent visit to China. While today, the economic differences between India and China are very stark (all we need to do is drive through Shanghai or look at the economic indices), the similarity in the structure and culture of these markets is very real too. This makes for a genuine opportunity (not one that is defined by hype and hope) for Indian companies to leverage their business experience and skills to create businesses in China which can be at least as large as what they have in India. Like India, China is a complex multi tiered market in various simultaneous stages of evolution – the bullock cart to car continuum, and the Government to MNC continuum co-existing, be it healthcare […]

March 18, 2002 0 Comments
The Quality of Market Performance
Business Strategy

The Quality of Market Performance

It is corporate results time again, and stock market analysts are busy analysing the state of the markets – the markets that they spend their time worrying about and the markets that I spend my time worrying about. I used to wonder if there really was a connect between the two, a thought that was wonderfully captured in an Economic Times headline of a few years ago: “The Sensex is driven by neither sense nor sex”! However this is a new age, and I can’t but help notice how much more involved and aware stock market analysts and fund managers are about what is happening in consumer markets. They know their retail audit data very well and have more up to date analyses of segment and category wise aggregate demand than I do; they track market shares with the same tenacity as brand managers, and they ask a gamut of […]

January 14, 2002 0 Comments
The Customer Religion
Business Strategy

The Customer Religion

A business leader with a wry sense of humour recently observed that since the main reason being given by almost all businesses for slow consumer sales was the delay in the festival season and the fewer auspicious dates for marriages, the Hindu calendar should figure as a key variable for annual sales forecasting. I guess a corollary to that is that one of the key routes to stimulating market growth would be to lobby with the Hindu high priests and persuade them to be a wee bit more market friendly in their interpretation of the stars! Having determined that astrology and sentimentality (of the consumer confidence kind) can’t be cured in the short term at least, corporate speak is now about surviving and emerging stronger from this continuing slowdown, through “better customer understanding” and “innovation”. I would have felt a lot better if the connection between the two were made […]

November 14, 2001 0 Comments
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