Marketing lessons from home-grown brands

“More companies die of indigestion, than of starvation. If you have capital, use it frugally, rather than burning it inefficiently,” advises Ashish Hemrajani, founder of BookMyShow, India’s largest online entertainment ticketing platform. Sage counsel that stands out in a book full of interesting prescriptions from interesting people.

Booming Brands is a book that crisply tells the stories of 11 home-grown brands, and culls out lessons from their growth, innovations, and marketing strategies.

What is nice about this book is that Harsh Pamnani, a marketer himself, has focused on attainable role models rather than writing about huge corporations that have large budgets for brand-building.

Featured here are all relatively young brands that have spotted gaps and cleverly filled them, and become cult names, thanks to their differentiated product offerings or unique thinking. What makes it a good read is that they are fairly disparate companies so you get a wide range of strategies.

Some are internet start-ups like BookMyShow, Shaadi.com and Zomato.

Then there are social start-ups like Jayaashree, a sanitary pad company, aiming at the bottom of the pyramid, inverter brand Su-Kam, baby and kids products company FirstCry.

There is the full-of-chutzpah FMCG player Paperboat, and wonderfully named chain Goli Vada Pav, learning app BYJU’S, and educational services company PaGaLGuy. And finally, the strategic design consultancy Elephant Design.

Many of these stories are fairly well known — a few are even HBR case studies — yet Pamnani still brings in a fresh perspective by finding a lesson in every aspect of the brand’s journey. Also, the book is refreshingly free of jargon.