IT major Infosys needs to sound more confident about its strategy
Business Strategy

IT major Infosys needs to sound more confident about its strategy

What’s wrong with Infosys? But wait, that’s not the right question. What’s right with Infosys and what’s wrong with it that it can’t better communicate what’s right – those are the right questions. To see why these are the right questions for a blue-chip company under so much scrutiny, a broader perspective is useful. It is not hard to recall all the strident criticism of Indian IT majors from industry watchers. That they were not “going up the value chain”, they were merely doing application development and maintenance (ADM), they were not creating products or intellectual property, they were not integrating with their clients’ businesses, they were just a mega labour arbitraging machine. But despite all the criticism it was a machine that was throwing up large and ever increasing amounts of free cash, the darling of the stock market, the definitive gold standard for businesses in India to benchmark […]

July 15, 2012
Jewel in the Crown
Business Strategy

Jewel in the Crown

Tanishq has not only revolutionized the way Indian women buy jewellery, it has also brought in a set of standards and ethical norms into the jewellery trade. Tanishq is not an iconic brand marking big national social and economic transitions like Big Bazaar or Infosys. But it is a very noteworthy brand because it is one of the few Indian examples of valuable businesses built on the foundation of a “brand platform”; and because it has accomplished the herculean task of building trust for a high value item like jewellery, which is loaded with all kinds of cultural meaning, and prying loose the dominating grip of the traditional jeweler with great customer relationships spanning generations of a family. It is an example of how one brand with grit can reprogramme how customers have thought and bought for ages. It is also the only national jewellery retail chain in a country […]

September 1, 2011
India Inc needs a strategy makeover
Business Strategy

India Inc needs a strategy makeover

EXCERPTS from Rama Bijapurkar’s new book highlight a framework for integrating customer centricity into business strategy India Inc, since 1991, has operated with the implicit logic that “if you expand supply and manage operations skilfully, you are sure to win”. As is evident from revenue and profit growths over the past decade and a half, this logic has served it well. Consumption growth rose steadily year on year, riding on the back of significant increases in household income as a result of overall economic growth. Consequently, and understandably, the demand side of business did not occupy a prominent place in business-strategy development for India Inc. The strategic focus has almost entirely been to build an efficient and scalable supply machine that could make the maximum hay while the sun shone. Of course, over the past two decades, there have been several anxious moments when demand blips occurred due to environmental […]

March 11, 2012
New Mindset to Open New Markets
Business Strategy

New Mindset to Open New Markets

Renaming ‘the poor’ as ‘modest-income’ consumers (MIC) helps remind us that these are regular consumers, who do have a little money apiece to spend. The task of making markets work for them is to enable their money to stretch and buy them the things that they need. Some ways to achieve this: Remove additional middlemen, who thrive in MIC areas, where because the total demand is too low for viability, regular company distribution channels stay away; middlemen also provide the service of breaking economically viable large packs and selling smaller parts, but at higher price per gram e.g. biscuits or edible oil. Removing the middle man, yet offering the same quality and price as for other customers, is the challenge to make markets work better for MIC. Financial services are creating techheavy, people-light systems to do this. Hindustan Unilever is creating new, low-cost, company-controlled, lastmile channels like Shakti Ammas. Indian […]

March 2, 2012
Spooking Ourselves into a Slowdown
Business Strategy

Spooking Ourselves into a Slowdown

Dear Corporate India, why is there so much overt panic about an impending “slowdown” and “policy paralysis” at the centre and unfriendly (to whom?) rate hikes by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)? It seems to echo the days of the global meltdown when a puzzled foreign investor asked me how it was that all the companies he had met, collectively said things were in a bad way, but individually and privately said things weren’t too bad. Maybe it’s just the business media that doesn’t seem to have a handle on things! Thursday’s headlines in one paper was about such a collective view of bankers about bad times, but Friday’s interview by the head of HDFC Bank – a balanced and mature high-performing organization by any yard stick – was very calm. He said, “Bad debts come when you have a tremendous fall in growth rate that is unexpected. Half […]

June 18, 2011
In Jugaad Land
Business Strategy

In Jugaad Land

“Taking Jugaad from grassroots to global. The good news is that India now firmly believes that Indians have an innate innovation streak and that it is something worth nurturing.” The world over, businesses are obsessing about innovation. The developed world worries about disruptive innovations coming from emerging markets and hurting them in their home markets; while the emerging world, despite all the domestic challenges they face, is trying hard to prove them right. But what actually is innovation? A good, simple, working definition is that innovation is about new and unusual ways of thinking which, when implemented, can solve the hard-to-solve problems; or more generally, can help improve the outcomes of actions, resulting in greater financial and / or social value. Really successful innovations, by definition, have a larger impact, and can help transform businesses, societies and countries. A combination of greed and fear has forced India Inc. to actively […]

August 31, 2009
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
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
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
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

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