MBA Placement Season 2009
Business Strategy

MBA Placement Season 2009

The tough decision for this month’s column was whether to write about the prognosis for consumer demand in India, post the global meltdown, India slow-down, e-sops (as the ET elegantly described vote inducing election expenditure); OR whether to write about what lessons placement committees (mostly comprising students) of top tier MBA schools ought to learn and act on, after the 2009 stressful placement season. This column opted to discuss the latter, because we want to urge future leaders of India Inc. to use their intellect and education to courageously depart from the past and do things differently for the different world of the future. If they are content being status-quo-ist in their placement models with the justification of “hamare khandaan ke purane rivaaz hain”, they are out of step with the mindset that winning companies of India Inc. and the world want and need. Closer home, students running placement at […]

March 3, 2009 0 Comments
The Three Ns of Made for India
Business Strategy

The Three Ns of Made for India

“Nirma, Nokia, Nano: Market creating products that truly understand the India Consumer.” Sasta, Sundar, Tikau, the mantra for success in the Indian market, has just got a new benchmark, and a new poster child: The Nano. Nirma took the Indian market by storm, as did Nokia, and as we hope, will Nano. What they all have in common is that (1) they are market creators unfettered by analyses of what the current market size is and what it is forecasted to grow to, (2) they recognise that current product markets are the size they are not because Indians are too unevolved to have desires, but because they don’t have enough money and (3) they start with a potential customer base (and not a current industry size), they define a price and a quality that customers will accept, and then challenge themselves to deliver it profitably. It is here that many companies, […]

March 24, 2009 0 Comments
Should Ranbaxy Have Sold Out?
Business Strategy

Should Ranbaxy Have Sold Out?

Rama Bijapurkar, Independent Director and Market Strategy Consultant If we want opportunity for Indian companies to grow abroad, we have to open up our backyard Should Ranbaxy have sold out? To begin with, please let us use the phrase “sold”, and not “sold out”. The dictionary meaning of ‘sell out’ is betrayal. That sort of prejudges the case! No, I do not believe that the Ranbaxy sale is a setback to the rise of Indian MNCs. Let’s define what we mean by the emotionally loaded phrase “a setback to the rise of Indian MNCs”. It means that the phenomenon we all desire, of seeing more and more Indian companies expand their business operations to different countries around the world, will not pick up steam and grow exponentially. Worse still, it could slow down, or, even worse, could come to a grinding halt. So the question is, will the act of Ranbaxy promoters […]

June 17, 2008 0 Comments
Testing Times Ahead for the Consumer Goods Sector
Business Strategy

Testing Times Ahead for the Consumer Goods Sector

Consumer goods companies seem to have their work cut out for them in the near future. While consumer demand is on the rise, sustaining margins is becoming increasingly challenging. Having healthy margins to keep the stock market happy but missing out on the investment needed to grab the enormous opportunity offered by India’s economics and demographics is a pyrrhic victory – as is having a healthy and high margin market share today at the cost of investing in brands. We are regrettably seeing more and more high market share, but jaded and eroded brands are unable to stand up to strong or reckless competitive pressure. Per capita incomes will continue to rise across the board and all socio economic strata are well infected with the consumption bug. However, the fight for a share of the consumer’s wallet is more intense now than ever before. EMIs, pension plans, health insurance, entertainment, […]

February 6, 2008 0 Comments
Understanding Our Social Transition
Business Strategy

Understanding Our Social Transition

Over the past five years, ever since the India story started getting more credible, one has been asking annoyingly often by foreign business audiences about the caste system and whether rising inequality would cause severe social tension and breakdown of law and order and constitute a major country risk. One did not believe that this was the correct interpretation of events, and wrote earlier in this column that the anatomy of social tension in India was not street wars and bloody violence, but institutions at loggerheads with each other, through every institutional and constitutional means available. But after reading about the growth of the Maoist belt, one thought that maybe there were things one wasn’t seeing, and started to examine this issue from the other side of the table – the poor people themselves (the politically correct term nowadays, is not poor or have-not, but people at the bottom of […]

November 26, 2007 0 Comments
Winning in the Indian Market
Business Strategy

Winning in the Indian Market

If the ET awards has a category for the non-Indian multinational that built a businesses in India of the scale, scope and profitability of either ICICI, Bharti or Infosys, it is a reasonable guess that the jury would not have had the problem of plenty to choose from. While it could be argued that the same holds true for Indian companies too, the fact is that the golden greats from overseas have far larger war chests, far deeper competencies and all the benefits of an already global business. Why then has Indian market not been over run by MNCs from outside? Why are there not many, many more Nokias, LGs, Samsungs? At a pinch, we can count Honda in that list, although it is the Hero Honda JV that has changed the landscape of personal transportation in urban and rural India. Maybe Hindustan Unilever can also be counted in this […]

October 19, 2007 0 Comments
Retailing Fever: Bring in the Customer
Business Strategy

Retailing Fever: Bring in the Customer

If supply chain perfection leads to a lower cost or better quality or both, then it must be translated into a customer benefit of a unique price performance point, says Rama Bijapurkar THERE is a retail fever raging through India, and as in the dot com days, you cannot go a hundred yards without running into someone who plans to get rich on retail or has got rich on retail. The game, as was the case in dot com, is about a temporary suspension of good sense on current and future valuations because of the blind belief that there is a gold mine accessible to anyone who has made the effort to buy a pick and a shovel. This is further exacerbated by the FDI rules and their mosaic of exceptions. The unquestioned assumption nowadays is that with the creation of more and more supply, more and more consumer spend […]

January 29, 2007 0 Comments
Can India Inc. Build Global Brands?
Business Strategy

Can India Inc. Build Global Brands?

The question is not whether Indian companies have the capability to build global businesses i.e have appropriate products and price points to fulifl consumer needs in markets around the globe, with whatever is the most efficient way to supply to and serve these ma rkets. But of course this capability does exist across several industries, and there are many vibrant examples of this. But the question to debate is whether they have built or have the capability to build global brands. What’s the difference between brands and businesses? Brands are where you talk your business walk. Your customers and potential customers recognize your name and recall it whenever they think about the business arena you exist in. And firmly attach certain positive (and sometimes negative) rational and emotional benefits to the name, which travel with the name, no matter what category of products or services the name is attached to. […]

December 7, 2005 0 Comments
Buying Sales by Bribing Consumers
Business Strategy

Buying Sales by Bribing Consumers

I was reading a very absorbing leaflet about what seemed to be a very good health supplement. It explained what the supplement contained, how totally natural and safe it was, how exactly it worked, why, the research evidence available; it was totally honest and completely professional in tone – all in all it was a great product and a superb piece of branding. Then, suddenly, it said on the last page “lucky draw – win a holiday to Goa”. Made me wonder about everything I had read and thought so far. A potential-to-win brand with a totally un confident brand owner! There is a disturbing trend of marketers of all hues, across all categories, to offer all manner of sops, almost all of the time, to get consumers to buy their products. Disturbing, because the dominant marketing logic of the day seems to be that when there is a slow […]

May 23, 2005 0 Comments
It is time for Version 2 of FMCG Marketing
Business Strategy

It is time for Version 2 of FMCG Marketing

The pundits (pun intended) at the Economic Times have said a lot these past few days about ‘vindis and levers of change’ culminating in the Saturday editorial “will reorganization do the trick at HLL”. I am not sure that is the fundamental question that needs to be debated. The reorganization signals continuity with change, and a renewed vote of majority share holder confidence in the old order (the new management team is the old management team, with some increases and decreases in roles, some departures, no outside additions, and certainly no dramatic experiments with organization structure, as far as one can see). What needs to be debated, is the more central issue facing the company, and indeed the category. As discussed in the editorial, the central issue seems to be that the once famed value advantage that HLL offered consumers, is eroding ( “value” defined simply as “Sum total of benefit […]

April 19, 2004 0 Comments
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