Mother Pious Lady- The book on Understanding India

Was reading Santosh Deasi's 'Mother Pious Lady Making Sense of Everyday India, and thought that I should share something about the book. This is not a formal review per se, but more of the first-cut thoughts on the book, which I am doing because I have liked the book immensely and want others to read it..

The name is a bit deceptive , Mother Pious Lady , will not play spoil sport and explain what it means, but spread across 14 chapters and 380 pages , the author shares more than 100 small articles which he had written over a time in various newspapers on India. Each of them not more than 3 pages in length.

The topics are varied, from writings on the street food in the country to Indian Traffic. The best thing in his writings is his ability to see meanings in ritual and practices which one has been following for a long time, he provides us with a different lens to understand ourselves.

To give an example from the book, the author writes about the meaning of thali in one of the write-ups, by drawing analogies between thali and the pluralism which exists in our society, and how it contrasts with the western society. How thali is able to accommodate all in one go. According to him thali tells the story about the Indian ability to create harmony out of discordance and find pleasure in chaos.

Though the number of topics which have been covered can be seen as a strength, it also lends some weakness, because at times one feels not all articles are equally good. And even the common binding thread feels weak in some cases, but then overall the compilation is a good read. And a final word, this book is not one of those which you would want to read cover to cover , in fact I think one can derive more pleasure if it were to be read slowly and randomly.

Indian Mobile Handset Market - Smaller Players Making a Dent!!!

It is predicted that India will have a mobile subscriber base of 1.159 Billion by the end of 2013 and become the world's largest market, from the currently fastest growing. For one who has seen the growth of the market from close quarters (though more as a consumer..) it has been a industry which has come from nowhere and gone on to become huge, though the scene on the service providers front is not very rosy especially looking at the future and the fact that the call rates are among the cheapest in the world make the life even more tough for them.

But what has surprised me in the recent times, is the emergence of strong local players in the Handset market. The structure of the market is very clear, you have a dominant player in Nokia with more than half of the market under its belt and then you have a host of players jostling for the second place. And we would have cover stories devoted to players who would gain 1-2% market share to become the number two player in the market. Just to give you an idea of how competitive the market is, 28 new vendors have been added in a space of one year. So in such a competitive market how easy or difficult is it for a new player to gain market share???

There is a detailed story of How MicroMax Mobile did it in Business Today. The story goes on to tell how Sharma who founded the company saw two features battery life and signal reception being the ones which were the number one priority for many of the low-income consumers, and capitalized on the opportunity. Now this insight is not something for which you need McKinsey's study???

It was not that the emergence of these local vendors was something which happened overnight, they were making their presence felt through local ads, and I could see many people slowly buying them, like my gardner has recently brought a Lava phone. But it was this IPL which brought the focus, with many of them capitalizing on the opportunity to highlight their brands..

We have known about the first mover advantage, though the evidence on the advantage is not very clear, but it seems intuitive that if there is a gap in the price-value equation it should be the existing players who should be able to see it first and capitalize. I can understand when it happens along with a shift in the technology, but....

But it definitely provides a lot of food for thought smaller players suceeding in an extremely competitive market. And the mobile handset market is only going to become more and more crowded with time, and success of MaxMobile is only going to add to the rush...

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Saw this ad in the front page of Lucknow edition of TOI, could not make much sense....

Indian Post and the Internet generation...

Postal services across the world are fighting for their survival, under the combined impact of technology and market savvy courier service agencies. And many of them have made attempts at stemming this decline by doing a re-branding exercises to transform themselves and emerge in a new avatar...

Even Indian Post went through a similar exercise a couple of years back, but then the results ........

If one were to list the strenghts of Indian Post, number one is their reach and volume which is unmatched in the country, more so in the far-flung rural areas of the country. The next on the list would be their staff especially the ubiquitous post man who is their customer facing arm , who interacts with the customers on a daily basis and knows them by name and is more than a messenger. I am not sure if this holds true today in all places in the country. And then comes the range of product offerings from areas in Banking , Insurance, and of course the postal services.

If I were to pick-up one issue which needs to be tackled by Indian Post on a war footing would be how to attract younger generation post offices. I do not know how many of you would have been to a post offices in the recent times. For me today's visit to a post office came after many years, and one of the first things which I observed was we were among the only young people around, we totally surrounded by senior citizens (average age not less than 65), though it might also be influenced by the fact that we went there on a month end. But it was as if young people were not welcome to a post office.

I have identified this as the number one issue because it is essential that the younger generation is able to connect , associate themselves with a post office. I am still part of that generation which even till a few years back was used to waiting for the post man to deliver letters and have copies of many letter which I had exchanged with my friends, but the Internet generation which is used to sending IMs and sending updates on the facebook would feel as if they have landed in a alien land if they were to ever walk into a post office, and this is something which should worry the people at Indian Post.

As with many other things in life, it is easy to say that 'x' needs to be done , but then the moot question is 'How'.............

Simply Fly - Captain Gopinath's Story

The story of Air Deccan is something which is close to many of us, it in a way symbolised the impact of liberalisation on the common man. It was with this curiosity of getting an insiders view into the story of Deccan Air that I eagerly picked up the book 'Simply Fly', though most of my expectations were met , then I wouldn't say I was fully satisfied. I would start with the reasons why I was not happy, then look at the positives, which outnumber the negatives.

First complaint is with the expected coverage on Air Deccan Story, looking at the length of the book, running into more than 350 pages , I was expecting more on Air Deccan , but then Captain Gopinath has devoted about one third of the book to that venture which might be ok looking at the number of new ventures he started from his farm , to hotel, to politics, to aviation , but I personally felt that he could have devoted some more pages to Deccan Airlines, and the abrupt end to Deccan Air story also leaves me unsatisfied with a feeling that he has not shared the story fully , which maybe prudent from his perspective looking at the fact that the story is too recent and some of the details might hurt his image or that of some of his partners. And another minor complaint was the lack of dates and timeline in the book , which makes it a little difficult to read at times.

But then looking at the positives, reading through the book gives one a very good insight into how an entrepreneurs mind works, and the sheer variety of businesses that Captain Gopinath started and succeeded. Through the stories of his various ventures he gives us an overview of the business realities in Indian market and the challenges which are there in the present context. His constant struggle with the bureaucracy is some thing which should serve to forewarn new entrepreneurs, but then he also share the incidents where he could get things done by sheer persistence.

I think what attracts most of the readers to books of these kind if the 'rags-to-riches' angle, but I feel there is much to be derived out of the book in terms of the variety and number of opportunities which exist in Indian market. And I think anyone who wants to do business in India should read this book....

Save Our Tiger Aircel Campaign - Leveraging CSR

"Save our tiger campaign" is one more of the recent campaigns which has generated a lot of buzz . The interest is because it has managed to touch consumers emotionally on the issue of saving our national animal. My interest is more in the CSR angle to the campaign, as it is a campaign by Aircel in partnership with World Wild Life Fund. Actually there have been many more campaigns in the recent past which have tried leveraging social issues to work in favor of their brands, and the Tata Tea Jaago Re Campaign would top the list. Others which come to my immediate memory are, Idea trying to leverage issues like saving trees and 'walk-when-you-talk', Nokia and old mobile...

Though earlier I have been critical of the disproportionate benefit that companies are able to derive out these sort of campaigns, or as put bhat in his post on the issue 'advertising in CSR skin' but now with more and more companies adopting a similar approach, I think one needs to look at the situation more dispassionately. I have made an attempt here,

First and perhaps the primary stake holder in such campaigns would be the company, and though the direct benefits are difficult to pinpoint (which would be true for any ad campaign), but the impact on recall (as in the case of aircel) and awareness would the bare minimal expectations that they would have. For brands with high awareness, they can hope to build a positive brand association , as maybe the case with Tata Tea. Infact Tata Tea has reported growth in the market share across the last few years when the campaign has been running, but then how much of that can be attributed to the Jaago Re Campaign?

And next is the benefit to the cause which they are supporting , be it the tigers or corruption or saving water (HUL had a campaign where they spoke about saving water) . Specifically if one were to look at the save tiger initiative, with many initiatives over the years that have not yielded much results I see so no harm if some wants to make one more attempt, but then saving tigers maybe more of a operational/policy issue than some think linked to increasing consumer awareness . Though the idea would be that increased awareness would mean stronger policies which would help save tigers. But .....

If you look issues like increasing the awareness with regard to voting rights and making it easier for the younger people to register for voting is some thing more concrete.

One thing which is favor of these kind of campaigns is the ease with which these campaigns can be extended on to the Internet, through websites and communities and making it more interactive...

Coming back to the issue of why this sudden interest in linking your brand with a social cause. I think it is driven by the fact that today the traditional ways of differentiating your brand are becoming harder to sustain, and brands are desperately on look out for issues through which they are able to hang of consumers attention.

Rin Vs Tide ad, ethical ?

It took me some time to actually believe that HUL was directly comparing Rin with Tide. Digged the ad out of youtube to see it again and then today's ET had a new item on the same. Link


Not that sort of comparison has not been done at all , Complan vs Horlicks ad controversy is still fresh in our minds. Many years back it was pepsodent versus colgate ads (but even then no direct mention of brands), and it is said that it took the marketing heads of both the companies to sit together to end the money being wasted on comparative ads.


But at a very fundamental level, marketing as an activity which is 'relative', firmly anchored against competition , be it USP or differentiation the point of reference is competition. And what has been happening till now is that companies avoided directly naming the competing brand , but use a similar coloured or looking product in their ads. But in the Rin ad the line has been crossed and HUL has very clearly shown the competing product. And people like Harish B who writes a popular blog on Indian brands, observed that by naming Tide in the ad directly 75% of the time in the ad was devoted to Tide than Rin. Link for more on his post on the issue.


On the legal front praveen , points out the small disclaimers during and at the end of the ads, should help HUL's case in the courts, but then raised the question of why such an ad in the first place. Now that P&G has gone to the court against the ad, other resort would be to go to ASCI , the body which looks into these kind of issue, but it is more of recommending agency, with no regulatory authority..


On the issue of whether it is right or wrong, ethically yes, we question the ad, but then how right or wrong is it to use a similar looking product without actually naming the competitor? or other forms of comparative advertisements that we have been seeing. But as they say too much of anything is bad, even too much of attention or focus on competition is also bad as in the process you might lose focus on your own customer???


Lastly an observation on the maturity of the blogsphere in India, there are more than 5-6 blog posts on the issue , since the ad was aired, so I thought I should also jump into the discussion :). There are discussions going on the issue on facebook, twitter and other social networking sites ...

Rural Marketing Videos

While searching for videos on rural marketing I found this three part video (storyboard) edited by Dalip Sehgal, MD of Godrej Consumer Products limited. The series was shot in Nov 2009 and it includes the interview with Adi Godrej and others of the group who share their insights on rural markets, then a set of interviews with retailers and consumers. Thought it was worth sharing with my readers,

Part One - A reality check in rural markets of Punjab, link
Part Two - Rural Immersion for Top Management at Godrej, link
Part Three - Experiences of Airtel, M&M and Hero Honda, link

Moving beyond sachets to products for rural masses

This post was triggered by the exchanges we had on twitter a few weeks back (@futurescape, @RGambhir) on the issue of whether rural marketing in the country has evolved to the stage where companies have started designing products exclusively for these markets. Till recently most popular approach most urban marketers had towards rural was do some cosmetic changes to the product, mostly the packing (smaller ones) and then push them in the rural markets. And to be fair to them even this sachetization lead to a boom in these markets. But then it was still giving a step-treatment to the markets which has 70% of our population.

In the recent past Nestle and GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare (GSK) have launched products that have been exclusively designed for rural. GSK's Horlicks Asha is — a low-cost variant (40 per cent cheaper than Horlicks) for rural markets only. Asha tastes slightly different and is priced at Rs 85 for a 500-gram pouch pack -– close to half the price of the original. And Nestle has launched Rs 2 and Rs 4 products — Maggi Masala-ae-Magic and Maggi Rasile Chow, meant for rural/semi urban markets to provide low-cost, light meal fortified with iron. There have been more attempts of these kind earlier , but they have been more part of a CSR initiatives, but companies like GSK and Nestle are looking at these products as profit making intitaives. More towards the BOP than the Social Business philosophy.....

A few more examples which would fit in would be 'Tata Swach' the low cost water purifier launched by Tata. For more refer the post @emergingfutures on swach . Even Tata Magic would fall into the same category...

Hopefully with this we can see many more similar initiatives in the future .

Moving on to the Mc and Pizza Generation

I was watching a small kid , not more than three year sitting on a typical stool in a McDonald's restrurant, waiting paitently for the Happy Meal being brought by father. The photo above was taken there which shows that the place is almost full, and the fact is that a large number of these customers are young kids who are coming more and more regularly to these joints . With almost 20 years after the first reformist budget we can see the impact of opening up of the economy, for many of these players have done the waiting period and will plan for rapid expansion in the next decade.

But apart from the growth that these Macs and Pizzas vendors can would look forward to , I was thinking about what would that small kid prefer to eat when she grows up? My guess is that the generation would grow up on Burgers and Pizzas and continue to patronize it heavily, which is a very happy situation for these companies, especially within home markets either saturating or becoming more and more health conscious...