The Hindu Business Line : Paths of success

Dear Mr Kedlayya, two factors really. Fatigue and competition.

Fatigue: When a brand has been in the market for a while, and when it has seen and been through successive generations of consumers, it looks and feels jaded. Fatigue sets in. It is this tipping point of fatigue that jolts brands to consider a re-positioning or a re-branding exercise.

Competition: It is the ever-changing format in which brands live and thrive. Most brands are able to remain contemporary, relevant, original and innovative enough to fight competition.

However, there comes a time when the competitive framework changes rapidly and the old brand finds it difficult to sustain itself amidst aggressively young offerings. It is then time to consider a change and re-positioning exercise.

The process can be as scientific as you want it to be. Product re-design, advertising re-design, branding re-design and positioning re-design are all metric-driven processes. Brand strategy and long-term brand sustenance norms are critical aspects of the re-design exercise.

Each of these processes is based on customer perception, expectation and aspiration. Customer profiling is a key part of the exercise. Profiling takes into consideration the existing customer, the lapsed user, today’s new consumer and tomorrow’s new customer as scenarios painted by specific scenario-extension tools.

The process is reasonably scientific and depends on acute sets of sociological matrices that are put together for the brand and its plan.

The India story is in the public limelight again after a brief hiatus. Is this for real? What has been the role of education here?

Shailesh Bhakta, Bangalore

Shailesh, in this day and age of maya, only time will tell what is real and what is unreal. I will, however, attempt a take on this.

The excitement of being Indian is just about being realised by the Indian in specific and the world at large.

India is a success that has been in the making for the past four decades and more. India has been in the work-in-progress mode for decades, and the fructification of the work put in by two generations of Indians, who have sacrificed much in this effort, is here to be cherished and capitalised upon.

Education is the foundation stone of India’s success mantra. Despite our being impoverished for decades, and despite being at the wrong end of the global development index, our investment in education has continued. The Indian, at large, is educated by default; at times, for want of opportunity to do anything else. This has been a boon in itself.

Education is a passion with the Indian. The Indian at large has worshipped many Gods. The two prime ones — Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth, and Saraswathi, the Goddess of education — occupy nearly equal space in the Indian’s prayers. A country with such an equitable religious outlook on education can’t go wrong.

The Indian Government and its focus on primary, secondary and higher education, has done evangelical work. Even higher in the pecking order, post-graduate courses in India have been high quality offerings at the cheapest of prices. In no other country can you get as educated at such a low cost.

Add to this the hunger in the belly of the average Indian. Education has always been viewed as a route to better jobs and prosperity. This hunger has propelled urban and semi-urban India thus far. Now, this hunger promises to invade rural India as well.

To that extent, the world will have to watch out for the Indian and the Chinese, in that order.

A large number of students from India are bound to occupy the best seats in the best universities of the world. The best of jobs will also go to people of colour — they will go to the yellow, the brown and the black, not white alone.

Education is India’s biggest success mantra. It is the ultimate leveller. It is the ultimate weapon that will ensure affirmative action in the new world order.

There is a view that the Indian economy has been saved from the global recession due to the large and insulated rural economy. Do you agree?

Harini Gopal, Mumbai

Harini, I do. India has had 21 successively good monsoons, except for parts of northern Kerala, Kashmir, parts of Gujarat and parts of North Karnataka which have gone without good rains season after season.

Rains mean prosperity. Money literally grows on plants in the rural areas. Every crop is a plant. The monsoons have empowered rural India no end.

The rural market is totally insulated from the global meltdown. The rural part of our economy is un-touched by credit cards and mortgages as known in the West.

Rural India has always believed in buying what it needs, when it needs it. It has never believed in buying things that it does not really need. Consumption has been related to the basic needs, the basic wants, and the basic urges of the people. Not the high-end cravings as witnessed in every part of the developed world and, indeed, in some of the bigger cities of India even.

Rural growth in every category is vibrant. FMCG has seen tremendous growth in the rural markets in India even as the world reels under pressure. Our rural folk have bought a lot more of FMCG — 58 per cent of FMCG sales in India come from the rural markets, and this part of the market has grown at a robust 23 per cent! Remember, more than 12 per cent of the world population lives in India’s rural markets.

As the purchase of durables shrinks in urban India, the rural market is witnessing a 15 per cent growth rate. Sixty per cent of the durables market lies in rural India. Telecom in rural is growing at 31 per cent.

The rural market in India has saved the woes of many an urban man, woman and child in India. The rural market has helped save jobs, it has helped improve revenue flows for organisations and has helped mitigated the impact of the global meltdown on India.

(Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO,Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. askharishbijoor@thehindu.co.in)

More Stories on : Brands | Education | Economy | Ask Harish Bijoor

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
‘We are looking at categories where we can make a difference’

Fortifying Britannia’s brands

‘It’s a fallacy that in India it is always about low price’

A state of surfeit

Building bonds, brands

Growing paints

A run for their money

Paths of success

Negative economics

Traps at work

Celebrate with ‘green’ balloons