The Covid pandemic has been an adversity, but the adversity was converted into an opportunity in many sectors, including FMCG, said Venkatesh Vijayaraghavan, Group CEO and Director, FMCG, CavinKare.

He was speaking at the Straight Talk 2021 Brand Summit organised by MediaNews4U on the theme ‘Predicting the Consumer Pulse and Pivoting for Growth- Lessons from the Pandemic’.

During the pandemic, Chennai-based CavinKare concentrated on the 4Ps - process, productivity, product and people, he said.

In the process category, the company automated as much as possible. The time to bring out a new product was reduced to three months from 18-24 months. Sanitizer was brought out in two months and hygiene product in three months, he said.

Promoting innovation

Decisions were made faster, and employees were told to come out with ideas and innovate and not to worry even if the idea failed. For instance, a decision on a ₹10-crore project was taken within minutes while it would have taken a minimum of six months earlier, he said.

Vijayaraghavan said that over 50 products were launched in 3-6 months and five new brands were launched in three new categories, he said. Unlike in the past, what is different today is that the strategy is to go digital, he said.

Global reach and local connect, understanding data and analytics to derive insights, building capacity to understand India by regions and clusters and understanding rural areas better are the key. “Opportunity in the rural market is huge. Ignoring the rural market comes at the cost of opportunity,” he said.

The event, among other subjects, discussed various issues related to pandemic and the lessons learnt from it.

There were panel discussions on topics like ‘are ad dollars following audiences to digital screens commensurately?

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