Tata Magic - Rural Transport Vehicle

Was travelling for the last week so could not update much. Will share some of my travel insights..

I noticed the presence of Tata Magic across the roads in UP, Delhi and Haryana. The vehicle is being marketed as a rural transport vehicle. With a 700 cc engine and a van like design it seems ideal for the passenger tranportation needs in rural India. The vehicle is designed to take 7 passengers, and one who has seen how many more are squezzed knows that the maximum number of people is best left to the imgination of the driver. It seems that Tata would end up using the chassis of its existing Ace ( a huge success) and thus able to optimise on the costs.

Though Tata Magic is not the first to enter this segment, some year back Hindustan Motors came up with a rural transport vehicle called RTV, but it did not succeed much.Today one can seen some of them plying as school vans. But my feeling is that Tata Motors has again hit the right spot in the market going by the number of Magics I have seen on the highways in the country. Obviously the price of around 2.5 lakhs worked in its favor, but will magic follow the footsteps of Ace?

For more details on Magic visit Tata Magic

Mumbai Dabbawala - A Sucess Story

A year back I had an opportunity to listen to a presentation made by Mr Manish Tripathi of Dabbawala from Mumbai. He shared his ideas with us on the working of the model and he kept the audience totally glued to his presentation inpite of limitations of English. Later on he shared with me that he had made similar presentations in many Ivey League schools overseas also.

For more on Dabawabawala visit thier official website, link

I have made an attempt to document Indian success stories in my blog and felt that this one is on top of the pile. The model is totally designed for India and provided its utility and efficiency over many decades. Now many companies are trying to leverage this network for pushing their sales, be it the telecom companies to sell their re-charge coupons to the clients of dabbawala or the insurance companies trying to reach these people during the March end rush. I found a very good presentation in slideshare so thought would upload that here..

But one of the learning's from the model which at times gets unnoticed by people is that there one can achieve record efficiency levels(beyond six sigma)by using simple basic coding. Most of us when told about this level of efficiency would associate it with a extremely sophisticated modern way of working backed with a lot of IT....

Mumbai's Dabbawalas - Amazing Management Success Story India

View more presentations from Paavan Solanki. (tags: lunch boxes carrier)

Indian Consumer buying Habits 2 - Aversion to Credit

Again this is also more of a cultural issue, we have been told since our childhood days "one should spend only within his/her means", so we have had a general aversion to credit and more focus is one savings, as can be seen from our high savings rate.


Now this has changed with the younger consumers, the generation which has started working after liberalisation is more open to idea of taking credit to buy TV, Fridge, Homes. And marketing has also contributed to this shift in consumer habit, with credit card companies and banks aggressively promoting the 'spend today and pay later" philosophy. But if one were to appreciate the values the older generation still holds against the idea of credit one needs to flash the plastic in front of their parents and ................

Though just when one thought the days of being conservative with the use of plastic were gone, the slowdown in the economy has again brought this issue back into focus. The stories of how many consumers took up large loans to buy flats and cars and are now struggling with their repayments either because of pink slips or salary reduction. This would force many consumers into their shells and become more cautious in availing credit and so though not back to square one but atleast a small step back....

Marketing in India Series - 1 'Nature of Indian Markets'

Uploaded a presentation on nature of Indian markets,

Marketing in India Series - Nature of Indian Market

View more presentations from Rajesh Aithal. (tags: indian markets)

Mercedes-Benz E-Class Promotions

I saw a print promo ad for Mercedes-Benz E Class Cars in the newspaper today,

A car which is priced at more than Rs 40 Lakhs and the promotion talks about 0% interest rate. I was left wondering if the buyer of such high priced luxury car be interested in a 0% interest scheme, maybe yes for a TV, fridge I can understand....

But then many I have seen these Mercs being struck in the by lanes of Bangalore , where the owner is trying to take a short-cut to reach his office and save some fuel !!!!!!!!!!

Low Cost Airlines- Yo -Yoing fares

Low Cost Airlines as an industry was at one point in time the poster-child of liberalised India, the example quoted to show people what happens when an industry is opened up to competition and you let market forces take care everything. The results were there for everyone to see, the air fares could be compared with the AC Train fares, and at time it was cheaper to fly than catch a train and spend a whole day travelling. These reduced fares brought people in droves to the airports, pushing the basic primary demand . There were instances when the first-time air travellers brought with them tiffin boxes to eat during the journey, as they use to do in the trains, though the low cost airliners were not amused by this as they wanted to increase their revenues by selling food also.



But the higher fuel prices brought the honeymoon to and end, and we saw the pioneer of the concept Deccan Airways giving way to Kingfisher Red. And in all newspapers the headlines were the stories of the losses which all the airlines were making and the layoffs and all. The fares sky rocketed and the number of air travellers dropped. Add to this the impact of slowing down of the economy and even corporates started rethinking their travel plans.




But then with the drop in the fuel prices the fares were again brought down, infact many of the low cost airlines reintroduced their 99/- fares on popular routes. But consumers do not act just on price tags, especially the first-time travellers , who would be the target for these promos. The perception of what is being charged is what works, in the initial days of the low cost air travel there was so much of hype on the fact that air travel has become affordable. This hype was not the just because of the paid promotions that were being done by the air line companies but also by the positive press coverage it was generating. Now when the prices were hiked this perception has been altered and people have started perceiving air travel to be expensive. This might explain why in Jan inspite of almost 50% reduction in the fares there was a negligible increase in the passengers (from 33.73 lakhs in Dec to 33.76 in Jan 2009 , vs 39.34 lakhs last Jan), though slowdown in the economy might also be contributing to this.



Adding to the mess , low-cost airlines abruptly hiked their fares last week citing drop in passengers , and today they have again reduced it by 20%. This yo-yoing of fares by the airline industry is also not helping the perception issue. The regular traveller would anyway take the best out of the price reduction and you are no longer in the consideration set of the first-time travellers a catch 20-20 situation . a time for a drastic shift in the approach of the airlines companies towards their pricing policies ?????

Pizza Hut in India - Localisation of Menu and Communication

We have come a long way from the initial days when some of these fast food giants like KFC were attacked, to the situation where no mall in the country is complete without the presence of these food outlets. Though many of them made their initial entry with their international menu but today after staying here for many years their menu has changed to serve the Indian palate.

First among them was McDonalds which changed its kitchen and menu to suit Indian tastes, on which I have written earlier too, link. But the same is being followed by Pizza hut , a look at their menu shows us how many special exclusive Indian pizzas they have , for vegetarians they a host of Panner offerings and for Non-vegetarians the Kabaab and Chicken Tikka Pizzas.

Baldness Market in India

Bill Gates says that the amount of money put behind finding cures for baldness is higher than what is spent on malaria research, for more on his TED talk, link .

But I suddenly find that baldness is becoming quite a serious issue in India, especially among the younger lot. One can see the hair loss which use to happen much later happening quite early and this is corroborated by my interaction and observation of many of this young people.

And then this problem of rapid and early hair fall has not gone unnoticed , marketers and entrepreneurs are jumping in to cash in the opportunity or should one say loss. The increase in the number of hair-fall clinics across the country and the positioning of major shampoo brands in the country is a proof for this. Dr Batra's Clinic has grown to their current size mainly based on hair-loss treatment that they offer through their clinics spread across the country. And hair fall reduction has become the new plank on which shampoo brands are competing against each other, from their earlier focus on dandruff , cleaning and nourishing.

There could be many reasons why there is sudden increase in interest on this issue, one the quality of water and food has deteriorated over the years and we actually have people loosing hair early, and alternatively earlier even if some one were to loose hair he would not care much about it , but today with more disposable income and options maybe it is giving rise to that the bald market..

Indian Consumer Buying Habits 1

As Indian's we hold a lot of value for the 'old', maybe it is also culturally driven where we have been asked to respect 'old' rather than look for new. Though this is changing very fast especially among the younger generation of consumers, but it will take a lot of time before we actually catch up with our western counter parts. And it is even questionable whether such a transition is a good one. Anyway without getting into 'consumerism' debate I will like to look into this aspect in detail from a marketer's perspective.

Most of us have an uncle who would proudly show of his old watch, " I have been using this watch for the last 30 years , this was gifted to me when I was in class 10" . This is a nightmare come true for a marketer, if every consumer were to use his watch for eternity then ......

Similarly most housewives collect the used containers of flour, ghee ,,, which she would clean and use it to store cereals , and other items in the kitchen and so on till it is sold to the scrap dealer . Companies like Pilot , when they launched their Pilot pens in India, were surprised by the demand from consumers that they wanted a refill for their pens. This was unheard of in the Japaneses market as the pens were designed as 'use and throw' . The local partner of the company had to produce inks locally which could be used to refill the pens.

This value which we hold for anything old in our house has been quite successfully exploited by many marketers. Their solution to this issue is offer an 'exchange' scheme' to the consumer. By doing so the company is giving some value to the consumers in return for the old. Most successful was Akai and it's exchange scheme which ended up changing the face the TV market in India. Even Bajaj use to bank on this value for a long time, its ads use to exclusively talk about the money one would get when it is sold later.

A more recent example is the annual "The Great Exchange Offer" by BigBazaar, with an offer to buy all the old scrap material (Kabaad) at prices much higher than what prevails in the open market, like Rs 25 per kilo of newspapers , old tires at Rs 50 and so on. The condition being that one has shop four times the value of the old scrap which they sell there to able to redeem the value of exchange.

There are many more unique consumer buying habits which i would try and cover in my later posts, but will look forward to suggestions and observations from readers...

L K Advani a la Obhama !!!!!

With the general election clouds gathering in the horizon, all political parties and their leaders are gearing up for the Mega Event. Historically the role of marketing in an election campaign inIndia has been quite minimal, especially when seen in the context of the US Presidential elections. But the advantages of the leveraging social media and technology to connect directly with people has not gone unnoticed and our political parties , their leaders are trying to ride on the technology wave especially to connect with the 100 million first-time voters who would start voting from this general election.

Though the attempt to connect to people directly is a very good idea on paper, but how does it get implemented is some thing which needs to be seen. All across the internet on most of the websites that one would visit regularly one can see the campaign of L K Adva

ni BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate . I was tempted to write more about it after I read Gaurav's post almost a month back, but resisted it. But the fact is that wherever you go on the net , blogs, websites you have the banner ads of  L K Advani's election campaign floating, estimated at 200 websites. So thought as the blog is supposed to share observations on what is happening the Indian market I thought I should share some of my thoughts with readers.

Starting with what is good about the whole campaign, the idea of having a well designed webpage, a blog and book are something which fits into what is needed to start a campaign like this. But there are a series of negatives which I have observed in the campaign,

Firstly,  I am pretty disappointed at the level of creativity, which can be seen from a 'We Can Do it' to a  'Its Possible' tag line in the banner ads , through this sort of campaign you would want to connect to the younger consumer who are net savvy and this is the best you could think of. How much time does it take to see the similarity ????

At the second level I also see the approach towards the campaign seems to be more of an extension of their mass marketing intrusive approach. With banners ads all over the net they are trying to do what a typical mass media guy will do buy all good spots on the TV and Radio and keep sending the same message over and over again, but that is where social media is different. Though the idea of creating a buzz is right but you cannot create buzz in a Blogsphere by forcing your presence across internet by putting banner ads all over, I see more negative fall out this than anything else... 

But hopefully from a marketer’s angle the campaign would improve with time and realization of how to operate in the internet domain would evolve, and will have more observations to write.