When we were born..!!!

Late 20th Century, the time when our generation started. Yes! I am talking about all of those, born in 1990-91, (count me also). We are very fortunate people and you know why..!! 'Rowan Atkinson's' Mr. Bean started on 1 January, 1990...!!! and after that entertainment was completely transformed.

That was just a humorous beginning of a period which will witness numerous events, going to happen in coming two years which will change things completely all around the world.

The first one was 'the gulf war', started in August 1990 & ended in february 1991, a war between 34 countries on one side and Iran on other side, which was the largest alliance between countries since world war-2.

It turned out be a whole new experience for people around the world because of the first time ever live broadcast of war to people's homes. This marked the new era of media across the globe.

The post world war-2 recession of 1990-1991 was the largest recession after the great recession of 1980s, and it resulted in change of government in the US in 1992, which changed many things in world.The major change of recession was change in buying behavior of people, which resulted in making Wal-Mart the largest retailer in US with opening of its first store in California.

 Even Starbucks became the biggest coffee chain, when it opened first store in California.

Another important event was the release of Nelson mandela after the imprisonment of 27 years and this event is going to make a major mark in the world map by fighting for ending apartheid in south africa and received nobel peace prize in 1993.

World health Organization removed Homosexuality from the list of disease and this marked the beginning of the change of acceptance of different sexual oriented people than so called
 'normal orientation'.


 The period was also important for the rights of environment and human rights as famous Exonn Valdez case of oil spill, which forced US to pass Oil Pollution Act 1990, which forced company to pay $1billion to clean up spill and protect environment. This case proved to be an eye opener for the rest of the world.

One major change in world trade was going to happen by progress in Englishchannel tunnel as the first land connection between Great Britainand the mainland of Europe was established for around 8,000 years. This period was a very important for space exploration with launch of Hubble space telescope in 1990, followed by space shuttle atlantis and columbia in 1991.

This year was very important for Germany as it witnessed German reunification, and victory of west germany in fifa world cup. it also marked the inception of first ever digital HDTV broadcast in world history in fifa world cup.



This period was a  phase changer for India. It changed 3 prime ministers in 2 years, V.P. Singh to Chandra Shekhar to P.V. Narsimha Rao, who became final prime minister of India for the period. Under his Leadership only, India abandoned its policies of conservative socialism and autarky and began extensive neoliberal changes to its economy in 1991, which would increase the GDP but also widen the gap between rich and poor over the next several years.

 Country also witnessed the assassination of former Prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, which was a major turning point in history of country. India is closely affected by any move of Pakistan, which elected Nawaz Sharif as its prime minister in 1990.

This period was the golden period of the modern history of mankind, when world moved out of traditional way of communication and information search. World wide web was going to change the whole world. WWW reached to next level and first server was created and first web page was written. First website was created and world wide web was open for public in 1991. This event was going to change the course of world's future.



The above was just the base being created for the actual fortunes to come to our generation. This was just the beginning of a whole new era of human life, which is not going to be 'simple' and boring as it used to be before 1991, because a complete new experience was waiting for humanity to experience in coming years.

To Be Continued..!!
Discover the fortunes of our generation in next article..!!

India and Bharat

You might be thinking, this man has gone out of his mind and is writing 'India' and 'Bharat' as if they are different countries. But after reading this post you will not think the same way.

The country which is today known by the name of India used to be known from the name of Bharat for several hundreds of years. 

The name Bharat has its origin from ancient literature and the country got this name after the ruler with the name of 'Bharata Chakravarti', who is known for conquering major land of the country at his time.

India on the other hand is of recent origin, 17th century, coined in 'British Raj' era of the country and since then Bharat transformed to India.

Today after 67 years of independence, the difference between British turned India and Bharat is prevailing. There are two countries breathing in the single body with the face of India, which having their own needs, their own aspirations, their own problems and their own way of living. India has been fortunate to get attention of every company, by acting as a high potential market for them, but on the other hand Bharat has always been a source of raw materials, labours and resources and never was treated actually as a market by companies. 

When some companies treated Bharat as a customer, they always underestimated it as illiterate and uneducated customer and try to exploit it, rather than providing it any good product or service. They considered Bharat as a market of non-aspirational customers, who are just living in their world of farms and cattle.

But in past decade, companies realized their mistake of this irrational decision and are ready to do anything and everything to rectify their blunder.

Let’s go back and understand how companies realized their mistake..!!

Bharat has always been exploited by companies to meet the demand of India. Till about few decades back, industries were being set up in cities of India, which resulted in pollution and leaving India not a good place to live anymore. To make it better, so-called laws were passed by Indian authorities to not set up industries in areas of India and that was the time when misery of Bharat started. Parts of land of Bharat, that ware used for agriculture were now being used for production of chemicals, pesticides, rubber and many more products. It is said that every coin has two faces and the same hold true for shifting of industries from India to Bharat. More and more industries set up in Bharat, on one side led to development of infrastructure, facilities and modes of transports increasing job opportunities, increasing income and increasing purchasing power, but on the other side, led to high level of pollution, contamination of their natural resources.

On one face, there was the shift of inhabitant condition from India to Bharat and people of Bharat were now victims of that shift, but on other face, peoples’ aspirations increased and so their ability to purchase goods and services with increase in their disposable income and discretionary income, which acted as an eye opener for companies and forced them to change their growth strategy.

Since India’s growth is saturated, it is easily affected by the economic slowdown and purchasing power is not increasing proportionately to inflation, thus scope of companies in India is now limiting. 

But Bharat on the other side, now providing a flourishing market, whose aspirations are increasing and is willing to spend to fulfil them. May be the usage of products be different from that of India, but the want is there. A hair dye in Bharat may be used to polish skin of buffaloes to make their skin shining. A Punjabi house or dhaba, having a washing machine washes their clothes at the bank of a river and use that washing machine to prepare the famous drink of ‘Lassi’. So the purpose of usage may differ in both the areas, but the aspirations do not.

Although companies have realized that Bharat is the new playground, but they have not understood the method to play at this playground. They think that this playfield has completely different rules and regulations, but actually the way to apply those rules are different and not the rules. Here I am talking about rules of selling product or services in rural India.

Marketers of most companies provide ‘cheap’ products, not only low cost, but which lacks basic features and benefits to Bharat when it expects decent and ‘aspirational’ product or service. Companies expect Bharat to throw money out their pockets without understanding their needs and situation. 

They do not understand the need of inclusive marketing, where they need to make people of rural India earn and enable them to spend to fulfil their aspirations.

They do not realize that these people have similar aspirations as of people of India and they also want to fulfil their aspirations, but always do not have enough resources to do that. Thus companies have to enable them to earn and collect resources to purchase their desired products and services.

Story of Bharat and India doesn’t end here. It will be incomplete without mentioning the pioneers of Bharat and India. Yes..!! There are companies which have understood the way to play and win at both the fields and the first which did that is none other than, “Hindustan Unilever”. 

It is the country’s largest FMCG Company which is having major chunk of its profits from Bharat. More than 40% of company’s products are consumed in rural India. HUL has always thought one step ahead of any other company in reaching out to rural India. It started ‘Project Shakti’, famously known by concept of ‘Shakti-Amma’. This is the company which understands the changing trends of the rural India and following which, it started ‘Kankhajura-Teshan’, which is unique type of marketing in its own and covered those areas which do not have televisions but have mobile phones. It covered millions of people in the marketing o

f its hygiene soap lifebuoy at ‘kumbh ka mela’. This company has always moved from 4P to 4A while moving from India to Bharat and it has achieved unparalleled success.

Another company of prime importance in rural marketing is ITC, which initiated e-chaupal, which is a unique system, where farmers are allowed to sell directly to ITC at better profits than what they get from middlemen. There are few more very good examples of companies working in both India and Bharat and running successfully. 

Another such example is of P&G, a dutch multinational company, which was facing shrinkage in indian market, thus decided to got to rural India and launched Project shiksha. under which, education was given to illiterate children.

India and Bharat, are like two twins having same blood, similar face, same needs, but different wants and different ways to fulfil their wants. Still one thing is common.. and that is ‘aspirations’, kyunki ‘shawnk badi cheez hai’.

Selling or Pitching

Whenever we talk about marketing related activities, we consider sales, branding & promotion, advertising, Customer relationship, marketing research and other assortments of marketing, but we rarely consider one of the most important thing, which can be a differentiating factor for a company, and that is "Pitching".

 Although sales is closely related with pitch, but there is very fundamental difference between both. While former talks about repetitive convincing and persuading customer to buy your product or service, the latter focus on one time shot to hit the target.


Low status selling and high status pitching..!!

Low status Selling:

• Customer is the king. 
• Customer is the prize which you want to win and will do whatever customer expects from you.
• You take terms from customers and follow their order rather than making a win win situation.
• Selling is bending in front of customer to sell your product.

High status Pitching:

• Customer is not the king.
• Establish yourself as the prize for customers, the prize which customers want to win.
• You dictate your terms also instead of just accepting customers'.
• Pitching is standing tall in front of customer to sell your product.

Let us understand this concept more clearly by taking an example.

Suppose you are sales Representative of company X, selling sapphire glass to a mobile manufacturing company Y and your product is unique of its kind, better than competitors, priced at $10/ square inch.



You are making presentation for the mobile manufacturing company and you start by saying, thank you for allowing us to present our product to you. We hope that our product will stand on your expectations and we really look forward to have you as our customer.
In this case, you are clearly taking a low status position for selling your product.
As a result, although company Y is willing to buy your product, but will do so at $8/ square inch.

Now take the same situation, sales Representative of company X pitching same product to company Y, and starts his presentation by mentioning that, product is unique of its kind and due to high demand, company X is not able to meet the demand. We would like to have customers who understand business style of our company and has their principles aligning with ours. 

Here, he had established his product and company as the prize which customer want to win.

As a result, you are able to sell your product at the price you want to give, which is $10/square inch.

What is the idea of Pitching

People want that thing which is scarce in nature.
The things which move away from them, they chase those things rather than those which are readily available.

Neuroeconomics and pitching

Neuroeconomics is neuroscience integrated with economic activities of people, and according to that, there are three broad parts of brain decision making, which is important to understand for making pitch.

1. Reptilian: instinct (survival, breathing/swallowing/heartbeat, startle response)
2. Limbic: emotion ( feelings, relationship/nurturing, images and dreams, play)
3. Neocortex: thought (including planning, language, logic & will, awareness)

Decision process of any buyer starts from reptilian brain, goes to limbic brain and finally ends up at neocortex brain.

Passing through reptilian brain is the most difficult part and most significant also, because initial decision to purchase is done at this part only. It passes information to limbic brain only if it finds it unique or threatened by that information and requires processing of limbic and neocortex brain.
If your information is not different or unique or just normal for reptilian brain, it will simply ignore the message as it doesn't require processing from limbic brain on that waste information.

Limbic brain considers the information passed by reptilian and try to analyze its social relevance, by finding its links with any known and trustworthy source. Here brand plays a role. Once the information is passed by this part to neocortex, it analyzes all the minutest details about that information before taking any decision.

Thus, for pitching passing your information through the gate of reptilian brain is most important and that is done by taking high status position and not by low status.


Is pitching always necessary and more beneficiary over sales?

Although pitching has many advantages, but it can not be generalized that it is better or worse than sales. It all depends on your ability, your company's ability and your customer, and most importantly the industry in which your company is playing.

So, decide yourself, selling or pitching.