Brand Mindbenders !

Microsoft

The pace of quick footedness in technology development achieved by Microsoft is amazing; the downside being that consumer’s can often on feel out of date as soon as a product is purchase. Just think! You have recently invested in buying Windows XP and out comes Windows Vista – what do you do? The Microsoft brand represents speed and state-of-art and is also perhaps happy that it represents an element of risk in buying the brand. Bad publicity also, at times, works. For instance when they are doubts (and much publicity) about a new version of Windows, sales just keep on rising. It would seem that a lot of consumers out there would prefer to be a part of that leading edge, bugs and all!

What do you think the Apple brand represents?

The Ponds Image…

Pond’s a popular face cream brand was not accepted when it applied its name to toothpaste. In a blind taste most of the people could not differentiate between that of Colgate and Pond’s. However when the Pond’s name or logo were attached nobody was interested. Even though Pond’s had successfully extended its brand name to other products like soap, what they (Ponds) failed to see was that all its extensions were linked with a similar fragrance, whereas the main attribute of a toothpaste was and is its taste. This imbalance between taste and fragrance created a dissonance in the minds of the consumers.

Can you think of a beverages brand that was able to extend its brands to snacks successfully?

Globalization – making India competitive

Financial Services:

In 1990 the Bombay Stock Exchange was a den of thieves, where crooked brokers and companies rigged prices and duped small investors. Once foreign investors entered the Indian market, they paid high prices for companies with good standards. For the first time, honesty actually paid. Indian companies have been forced to maintain clear financial books. We have, in the process, created one of the most efficient capital markets in the world.

Automobiles:

In the old days of self-sufficiency, the Indian auto industry emitted massive pollutants without a second thought. But competition with global auto majors, both in the domestic and export markets, have forced them to adopt Euro emission norms. Today Indian engineers are rapidly churning out new models more cheaply than their US counterparts.

Pharmaceuticals:

To cope up in a globally competitive environment, Indian drug companies have been forced to identify their core competencies. Today Indian pharmaceutical organizations are rapidly evolving into major global players with strengths ranging from reverse engineering to contract R&D, contract ingredient production, clinical trials and most interestingly new drugs research.

Virtual MBA for the Indian corporate sector

Our economic past, characterized by scarcity, has been the driver for today's success. It forced us to be more efficient and do more with less. Not only did we get free lessons in optimizing our resources, but it also challenged us to find creative solutions and then test these in a tough operating environment. It was virtually like getting a free MBA!

If Indian IT learnt to walk in the west, it is now learning to run in India. Technology is helping bridge the rich-poor divide. We are creating innovative products aimed at the bottom of the economic pyramid. Products like Rs. 10,000 PC, a refrigerator immune to voltage fluctuations and a Rs. 100,000 car are all unique, indigenous and cost-effective solutions that could be exported. We are deploying technology to ensure that citizens can avail government services remotely and are manufacturing the cheapest mobile phones with low call rates of just Re 1/ minute. India is also innovating technology products for MNCs like Intel, Texas Instruments, Siemens – for the global consumer market. Take the case of the automobile revolution in India. If about three decades back all we could see we hoards of Ambassadors and Fiat Padminis, today global auto majors are queuing up in India, not only to sell their products, but setup large manufacturing bases. The story is being repeated in almost every other sector.

Our years of hard work, perseverance and innovativeness have forced the world to look to us for both quality and cost effective products and services, catapulting India into a major sourcing destination for a range of products and services. With the global market place shrinking, the need for trained human resources who can operate across economies and geographical boundaries is on the rise. Just think how many Indians today are leading global corporations.

Indian middle class: Origin and Relevance to India Inc.

A lot has been said and written about the great Indian middle class. The sheer number of people that is the source of India’s enormous domestic demand and thereby the promise of a large market for a mind boggling array of products and services.

If one were to characterize and predict the behavior of this middle class, it would be important to understand how it emerged in the first place.

The seeds of emergence of the middle class lay in the one time behemoth public sector units run by the government. A vast number of people enjoyed a government position, with its permanent employment contract, guaranteed pensions and health care and a host of other fringe benefits that translated to security and predictability of income in the absence of any other social security mechanisms. This gave rise to a class of people with its own set of behavior and attitudes which went on to shape what we term as ‘middle class today.

The emergence of the private sector and the rapid decline of public enterprises coupled with a drastic reduction in the annual intake of people proved to be a watershed in the evolution of the middle class – both in its composition and outlook. During the end of the last century, IT services created a rich and wide employment channel for technology graduates and concepts like upper middle class and nuclear family emerged from this cauldron of events. We have seen the emergence of an educated young generation coming out from smaller pocket towns and cities, settling down and acclimatizing to life in the metros. The last few years have witnessed multiple industry verticals creating employment opportunities for this middle-income group, vis-à-vis Insurance, Telecom, Retail banking, Retail, ITES, BPO, Aviation to name a few. This has in turn created a confident young generation with high spending power and life on credit, as in the more developed western world.

Thus a new generation of middle class now straddles India’s social map and almost swamps it by their sheer numbers. The diversity in employment opportunities combined with the absence of a single dominant monolith like the public sector, suggests that the emerging middle class is going to be a lot more heterogeneous in its behavior than its earlier evolutionary avatar. This heterogeneity in consumer demand and expectations will provide shape and direction to future products and services coming out of India.

115, still going strong

Business houses desire to identify the values on which a lasting business can be founded. Shrinivas Pandit, a veteran HR professional, too attempts to find out those values by studying Mumbai's, by now internationally famous, Dabawalas - a 115-year-old business enterprise. The organisation structure of Mumbai's dabawalas who collects home cooked food from homes and delivers them to respective offices during lunch have been the object of various studies.

To most of us it would seem to be a simple, no frills delivery service, but hold your breath and consider the numbers that we are dealing with here; the Dabalwalas collect and deliver 200,000 such lunches every day to people within a 60km radius within a 3 hour time period. Because they collect and return the empty boxes too, this amounts to around 400,000 transactions per day. As for their delivery method, they use people powered hand carts and the public railway system. And the kind of workforce behind this gigantic operations game – a 5000 strong team of dedicated and loyal semi literates!

By any stretch of imagination this simple business is actually extremely complicated.

It is not possible to list all of the lessons that can be extrapolated from the way they do business, but one that sticks in the mind and is a salutary lesson for all service providers is: “……..if you change just enough, you achieve embracive happiness.” With an error rate of one in 16 million transactions, they have clocked in a six sigma performance (99.999999%) without any technological backup. Dabawalas work as a Trust and each one of them is a shareholder to the Rs. 500 million turnover. Thus each one of them is self employed. They work as a team dependent on each other, knowing very well that unless the team works smoothly, they cannot earn a living. What is more fascinating is that an organization of 5000 people has no strike record!!!!!!

The association of dabawalas has a 13 member Governing Council that includes the President, the Vice-President, General Secretary and nine Directors. Under this body are the group leaders who manage the 5000 members of the society.

Each group leader manages 25-30 dabawalas. They are responsible for business development and continuance as well as customer satisfaction. Each group is almost an entrepreneur in its own way. The groups generate their own revenue and manage day-to-day functioning, including arranging for substitutes. Thus each group is a Strategic Business Unit (SBU).

These SBUs collaborate to get new clients. Knowing the operational areas of each group they share information on clients - a superb example of competitive collaboration. This is possible because the common thread between each group is ‘delivery’. Even though the performance of dabawalas depends upon team performance there is scope for individual improvement too. Each dabawala has to exercise extra skill and effort to convert the process into deliverable. The system is built on the collaboration between deliverables and group effort. No single Dabawala can succeed in achieving his target without the help of his group and chain.

The cardinal principle is that the dabba has to be delivered on time, within those three hours, without any excuses. When a dabawala is absent the others share his responsibilities. The whole organization works on the principle of shared responsibility and not allowing the team performance to drop. It is not that problems do not arise, but team work being the quintessence of their job they have also learnt to sort them out.

The Dabawalas have to constantly keep pace with the rapid advancement in technology – as any business would need to do and here lies their forte. With the introduction of faster trains they had to find a way to keep pace with them while keeping an eye on costs. They couldn’t afford motorised transport, due to the huge cost escalation that would have taken place, and had to instead use bicycles. Using bicycles they picked up their collection speed – relying on raw human power to give them that competitive edge. For the dabawalas, monetary satisfaction may not be very high but what matters more to them is the satisfaction of keeping the customers happy at a bearable cost.

In the competitive world, everybody is in a race to win, which has made the work life rhythm go haywire. The stress levels have gone up, causing health hazards for large sections of people.

At the same time, services have become prohibitive in cost, unreliable and inefficient for customers at the middle and the bottom of the social pyramid but it can be reoriented on an architecture of values that nurtures the genuine service mentality. The Dabawalas ability to identify this opportunity ahead of others, and their loyalty to old customers with a dependable delivery service, have provided them a lasting business.

Ref: Dabawalas by Shrinivas Pandit (Tata McGrawHill)