The Marketeer's Web

Moving from one end to another in a predefined pattern, meticulously designing and integrating silk threads together to form a mesh like structure, that is how a spider creates a spider's web. Spiders are known to catch their prey by trapping them in spider's web and once any prey is snared in it, chances of its survival are next to zero. Not only this, spider's web is also the saviour of spider from any enemy attack and calamity.

Humans have always learned from nature, animals, insects and all the other entities of nature. Many product designs and concepts have been outcome of inspirations from nature, so this time what a marketeer can learn from a spider and its web!?

It is something which has changed the whole marketing across the globe. It is not just a marketing tool, but a whole strategy which enables a company to entrap its customers more effectively and efficiently than before. I coin this as "Marketeer's Web", which gives competitive advantage over the other players in market and also adds lubrication, which is required during rough days of market.

Why do Marketeers need Web !?

With increasing awareness among customers and increasing competition in market, it is becoming more and more difficult for the companies to survive on the small share of pie they get out of whole pie. If a company tries to have more share, it had to spend more money which is not always possible and this was the reason for cremation of many companies.

This created need of developing some technique so that a marketer can get more share of pie while spending same amount of money. Earlier marketeers tried to communicate to customers by randomly spending money in different channels by their gut feeling or by industry standards. That might worked in some cases, but in most of the cases customer used to forget about the offering because the communication was not able to sustain in his mind.

What is Marketeer's Web !?

Just like a spider creates web to snare its prey, a marketer creates a marketeer's web to persuade his target customer to buy his offering. Marketeer's web is a timely planned and well integrated exposure of communication about an offering which a marketeer want to sell to his customer. It is planned, designed and executed in order to get a position in the TOM (top of memory) recall of the customer and maintaining the place there until customer himself wants your offering.

Let me explain the idea of marketeer's web by a real life example,

This web starts from a direct mail received by a QSR (quick service restaurant) for trying out an offer on their new pizza. I ignored that mail as likely to be done my most of us. I switched to a new tab of the browser, opened Facebook, was scrolling down and saw the same offer which I got at mail. Then I opened Youtube and clicked on a trending video to watch. What can you expect at this time..Yes!! an advertisement which I could not skip and it was again of the same offer by same QSR. 

I went out to my friend's place and on my way I turned on radio in my car, listened to one song and next thing which comes up is an advertisement of the same offer as that of Youtube. At my friend's place, we switched on TV and saw an advertisement of tasty looking pizza and at the end mentioned same offer which I heard on radio. Before watching this ad, I did not want to have pizza, but after seeing tasty pizza I gave it a thought of having it. In next few minutes, my phone got new notification, it was a cash back offer by an e-wallet company on purchase of the same offer which was mentioned on TV.

The next thing I remember is me and my friend having the pizza from same QSR availed same offer and of course 15% cash-back too.

The above example shows the power of web which marketeer created around customers like me to trap us into their web. This has to be done in a very subtle way so that customer even did not realize that he is going to be trapped in web.

How to create this web !?

To fabricate spider's web, spider uses its silk, in the same manner for creating web marketeer requires some material which is provided in the form of communication channels.

The marketing communication channels includes:

• Advertisements: TV ad, Print media Ad, Radio Ad
• Public Relations: Press Release, Special articles, interviews, Cause activities
• Direct Marketing: Direct mails, Direct messages, Shopping Channels, Telemarketing
• Personal Selling: personal meetings
• Sales Promotion: Loyalty Programmes, premiums, samples
• Internet Marketing: social media marketing

Marketeer should knit his web around customers by utilizing communication channels appropriately.


Once having a consortium of channels to create a web, marketeer should focus on nitty gritties of designing the web, which includes following things,

• Type of Spider and Prey: If a spider does not create its web according to the type of prey it want to enmesh, it should forget its meal and if a marketeer does not use communication channels according to the type of company he represents, type of product he offers and type of customer he is targeting, he should quit the job. Every company's requirement of communication is different, which depends on type of products it is offering and to which type of customer it is catering to. Hence, It is very important to select the right type of channel, in right quantity and at right time.

• Understanding Prey: When a prey lands in spider's web, the spider is already aware of its next step and has prepared itself and its web accordingly. A marketeer has to understand the consumer behaviour and customer journey, both before and after his customer lands into his web.

          A marketeer should be clear about

• What is the most effective channel for which type of customer
• What will be the recall and recognition of his customers when they will be exposed to the communication
• What would be the reaction of his customer on which type of communication channel.

        If he doesn't understand his customers, he will fail to design a good marketeer's web.

• Web Design: Web fabrication, the way it is designed plays the maximum role. He should assess the actions of customers, design the web accordingly to assist customer what to do next, so that he straightway moves towards product purchase. If not designed appropriately, potential customers will be lost and expenditure to have one customer will be higher.

In todays fast changing world, moving with time is crucial for success and tactics like marketeer's web is going to be essential for survival.

Hitting the Bull's-eye..!!

The Mahabharata, Hindu mythology's most interesting literature which teaches strategy of life, success, victory taking down competitor and above all, importance of defining your goal and hitting the bull's eye. When Pandavas went to swayamvar of Princess Draupadi, the task in front of all the princes was to hit an arrow in the eye of the fish, that to by seeing its reflection in water. 

In short, the task will check timing, setting of goal, aiming the desired goal and concentration. To most of the princes, the task seemed to be impossible and out of hundreds of prince, only one was able to hit the fish's eye, Arjun and rest is history. Arjun was married with Draupadi as he was considered to be most determined, goal oriented man among all, which led to his success.

Today's scenario of competition among companies is not different from the case of Draupadi's swayamvar. Here companies are the princes and customer is Draupadi. Do not take the literal meaning, just draw a parallel between the two scenarios. The company which is most determined and goal oriented, hits the bulls eye and wins Draupadi's heart.

History is filled with examples of companies using different promotional channels to promote their brands, products and services, which cater to a very wide audience. The exposure generated through their promotional campaigns was getting wasted on the audience which was not the target market for the company and thus the lot of promotional money was wasted. This led to low ROI in terms of brand awareness, recognition and recall, which in turn led to low awareness of products and services. 

Unfortunately just like hundreds of princes did not get Draupadi, these companies will also not get customers and even if they get, the return of investment per customer obtained will be much lower than those companies focusing on target customers.

Therefore, many companies are now getting inspired by Arjun and the theory of hitting the bull’s eye, and have changed their approach from hit and try method at a wide audience to aiming and focusing on the target segment. Through all the 7Ps of services, these companies are trying their level best to create a cost effective approach to allure target segment.

Among all the Ps, promotion is the most effective P through which companies are hammering the nail head. Promotion is all about creating buzz and if buzz is created among the target audience then it’s like hitting the bull’s eye.

Promotion strategies have taken totally new shape, companies are now using promotion channels which are more focused on tapping their target audience rather than using channels which promote products to full audience. This is approach is like a two blade sword, more efficient and more effective in promoting products or services.

Companies which are launching new products in the same market or product development are following this strategy primarily. These companies which want their new product to be popularized among the target market, create a bouquet of campaigns for the target market, packed in a beautiful outlook with a great fragrance, by which every potential customer is swayed with the tide of campaigns.

Something similar is happening in my own college, where a team of students has been selected by the Indian subsidiary of a Dutch consumer lifestyle-to- durables-to-health care giant, Philips India Ltd. Philips which is the dream company of every management student, has started tapping their potential customer by launching 'The Big Leap- A Live Marketing Challenge', a national level competition among students of various B-Schools.

Philips organized this campaign to promote its newly launched product in the consumer lifestyle category (men), which is named as 'Pro-Skin Advance Trimmer' (QT4011/15). 

It is a titanium blade equipped trimmer which increases its sharpness after more and more usage, and the USP of the product is its Durability...! Which is one of the prime important factor in the price sensitive Indian market.

So it has a perfect product for the target customer which is youth and to target that youth, it picked up B-schools colleges, where youth is in abundance. Moreover, B-School students who are career oriented are easily persuaded by the name of national competition, the experience while working on for the competition and the brand association with their Curriculum Vitaes.

Around 200 colleges across India, are involved in this competition with an average of 1500 students in each college. Thus the total reach of this campaign is more than 3 Lakhs that to the actual target audience. This level of effective reach that to by only spending few lakhs in prize money, promotional material and fees of a third party agency to handle this campaign across the country. What can be a better way to launch a new product than this...!

Company is running various campaigns throughout all the campuses using one of the most important part of integrated market communication i.e. digital media. Company has given phases to students being selected to create buzz among crowd by running various online competitions like #stubbleselfie and #likeabrat, where brat means bold rebellious and trimmed.

In these campaigns, students have to click their photographs and upload it on various social media sites. On-ground collaterals and online collaterals are stuck in the mind of the target customers. This strategy is working like a Disprin (quick action and dissolving fast) and everyone in campus is talking about the product and events conducted by the team. Almost each and every one in the college is aware about the product after the events and those beautiful videos made by the team. This strategy of company is increasing brand awareness in the target market straightaway and conversion from potential customer to real customer is being seen within the campus.

The 'hitting bulls eye strategy' is not confined only to the companies which want to promote their new products, but the companies which are new startups and the companies which are entering into new markets (diversification and market development) are also adopting this cost effective method of targeting.

Again taking the example of my college, Tripda a Brazilian company founded under Rocket internet incubator, which makes carpooling system easy and convenient entered into the Indian market in month of November 2014 and to kicked start their operations and marketing activities in the country.

It appointed their campus ambassadors in various colleges across city. This team of campus ambassadors is promoting the company among the other students in their respective colleges, which is the target audience. By this approach of the campus ambassador programme, it is giving a mutual benefit system to students of colleges and also making them a channel to promote the company,

Aim..focus..fire..Hit the bull's eye..!!

Fortunes of our generation..!!

My last post talked about what was going in the world when we were born. This article will revolve around the fortunes of our generation and how lucky we are to have the things without which life can't be imagined. Let's begin this article from the place where we left, 'the internet'. 

The last article mentioned how the internet came into existence and its early days, but let's start this with how internet transformed the world.

Internet was founded as a better alternative for the pre-existing ARPANET and internet used TCP/IP for establishing the connection between two points. It also connects the whole world together through efficient implementation of TCP/IP and World Wide Web.

Before our generation (1990-91 born), the greatest thing which modified the world was mobile telephone communication. This one thing turned the whole world upside down as it provided immense freedom and accessibility of communicating with other people in different cities, states, countries and continents.

But with the internet, things were much more advanced and has the potential of impacting the world with greater extent than by any other invention. 

It is just like the electricity of 20th century, which has remolded the life of mankind to the same extent electricity recast in late 19th century.

Invention of internet was just the birth of a miracle baby who will now change the way whole world operates..!! With this event, mankind was entering into a new era, digital era and certainly it is the greatest fortune of our generation as today everything is dependent on this one thing, the internet.

But how we can say that the internet is the greatest fortune..!!??

The internet is the foundation of our 21st-century world, everything is standing on the internet. Even the crimes are dependent on internet, extent of the internet is that much in today's world. The internet gave birth to new areas, new industries, new companies, new businesses, new products & services and redefined human needs. The internet today is considered as the basic requirement and no more is considered to be the extra want. Rather, it has become a need which gave rise to different wants.

Internet formed backbone of the whole new family of devices, which is the lifeline of modern mankind..'Smart Phones'..!!

The first smartphone was developed in 1993 by IBM which was named as IBM 'Simon'. 

This was the phone which provided touch screen, qwerty keyboard format, emails, predictive typing, Stylus, send and receive faxes and cellular pages. It was the first phone to provide memory card option of extending memory to 1.8MB. It paved a path for the future phones by allowing people to send and receive emails faxes and pages on their phones. 

The phones of today which have memory of 128GB (Apple i phone 6 and 6+) , flexible expandable memories, stylus (Galaxy Note series) and provides assortment of features including internet, social networking, camera, video conferencing, all were started by Simon, having internet as its backbone.

The world at that time used to go to libraries and referred to tens to hundreds of books, newspapers and magazines to find out anything they wanted to search. This was very time-consuming and boring. But a soon change in the boring world came with the foundation of yahoo.com, a search engine company which revolutionized the way of information search. Yahoo was founded in 1994, just 3 years later since the world wide web was founded.

Yahoo proved to be legendary in teaching the world how to use the internet and make the knowledge management task easy and fast. Information was no more to be considered as the area of differentiation as it was available at yahoo.com that too without any charges. It also organized and provide easy access to emails to people.

This company revamped completely the structure of working of every organization. E-mails were used by people and companies but in a very limited way but with yahoo, companies started using emails for their official communications, within an organization and with other organizations as well. It also restructured the advertisement pattern of most companies, as they started advertising through personal emails to the target market using emails as it was more effective way to advertise than the earlier ways of advertisements, which  included canopies, banners, and other print media.

The internet completely recasts the way of selling and buying goods. Earlier, if anyone had to purchase anything, he/she had to go to retail stores or mega marts or superstores, pick up the things required, pay the money and come back home, then enjoy the benefits of the product purchased. One man redesigns the whole pattern, Jeff Bezos, by founding the first company to sell goods online, amazon.com in 1994. It was completely based on the internet and used the online marketplace to showcase its products. 

It started from selling books but added all sorts of goods later on.

Another company which followed amazon pattern of creating online marketplace was ebay.com in 1995 which was primarily an auction site, where customers can sell their products directly to customers and also business sell their products to customers.

These two companies started the dot-com  bubble and today that bubble is expanding like anything where more and more companies are adding up each day. For companies like them, the internet was their lifeline, their heart which were surviving on the internet. 

There are countless examples of companies which followed the pattern of amazon and eBay, whether its alibaba.com of China or flipkart.com of India, all were leveraging the backbone created by the internet. People across the world started using e-tail more than retail and customer purchasing pattern and behavior changed.

The internet not only changed the way people spend money but also the way people access and carry money with them. It helped people to access their accounts from anywhere in the world with the introduction of net banking in 1995 by a US bank named Wells Fargo. 

This event was the beginning of the transformation of the financial industry. Net banking which was started as an add-on service became the norm and the expected service from any bank. 

It made people spending more as they were having easy and anytime access of their bank accounts. Later on with the development of mobile phones, mobile banking again restructured the financial industry. Mobile banking helped banks to reach untapped rural areas of countries and contributed in countries' GDP.

After net banking, new range of banking or payment method came into market known as digital wallet or e-wallet, which allowed people to keep their money in a digital wallet in digital form and pay for their purchase of goods and services online.

The first company to foray in this area was PayPal in 1998, founded by Elon Musk. It showed the path to various digital wallets across the world and, as a result, changed the payment structure and spending structure of people around the world.

The world was enjoying some last years of 20th century and was getting prepared for the 21st century. But like before, mankind was very fortunate. Before stepping into the 21st century, a company turned the world and divided the world timeline as 'before the Google era' and 'after the Google era'. 

Google founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998 was started as a search engine which works on different principles than what yahoo did. The google's way was much more efficient and fast. It quickly replaced yahoo and became the leader of the search engine. But Google was not just a search engine company, it was a whole assortment of world-changing innovations.

It gave all the products which were required at personal and professional level to make work and life simple and easy such as google online books, news, docs, sheet, forms, presentation, drive and most importantly Gmail, which is the most widely used mailing platform across world. 

These were just a few of the feathers from google's crown. google has always provided out of the box products to mankind. Google Glass which is the new project of the company will transform lives.

It started Adwords, ad sense which revolutionized whole advertising industry and a new marketing medium developed for marketeers. It started search engine optimization which ranked the website of companies according to the organic search by people and keywords included. This made companies realized that they have to take google seriously to gain an edge over their competitors and as more companies started taking google seriously, companies had to invest more and more at 'google management' to stay in competition in industry.

Google redefined the way people lived. It disrupted the smartphone industry with the launch of first android phone HTC Dream in 2008. The story behind the launch of android is long. Android was developed as a company in 2003 but struggled to survive. Google adopted the baby and nourished it to make it software according to the integration with google products and this is how android was revitalized in 2005 and today it has developed to be the most successful software for smartphones.

Google apps provide virtually an infinite number of ways to make your life interesting, easy and more productive, are just one click away from us.

Google has restructured the world completely. It's all products are so integrated with our lives that now we can not imagine a minute without google. Even the place I am writing this article is a product of google. Thank you, google for blog spot. It is the god of the digital world, omnipresent and solving all the problems altogether. Whether it is traveling, information about anything in the world, language problem, the image recognizing, storing & access of data and what not.

Writing about google will take me a whole article dedicated to google only, but for the time being, let's move to our next fortune. It is something which has transformed music listening and purchasing..!! 

It is none other than the Apple Inc. It launched iPod and iTunes, which redesigned the whole music industry and a rest is a history. iPod and iTunes became the best combination for music and every copyrighted piece of music was specially made available at iTunes, as it was the major market. 

Later on apple forte into smartphones and today developed to be the second largest selling smartphones across the world. It made a completely new range of products which people never realized they require, iPad. 

Ipad was a product which was neither a laptop nor a phone, but combined features of both. It provided large screen area, suitable for working on documents and presentations and also watching movies and playing games and was free from any bulky keyboard and thus was easier to handle and light in weight. It started tablet series of products which are now selling like hot cakes.

In starting years of 21st century, one company kicked out the traditional way of mobile telephony. Through mobiles, we were only able to hear the voice of the person on the other side, but this company will provide us with the video of the person with whom we are talking. It enabled us to see the expressions & emotions also of the people as if they are sitting with us and chatting. It added a life to the whole communication process.

It is none other than Skype, founded in 2003. With skype, both personal and professional parts of our lives changed. We could sit at a distant place and still be with our near and dear ones through skype and we can make presentations to a head office in New York while sitting in Mumbai. 

This concept of video chatting and video conferencing was a fortune for our generation. Video conferencing reduced the expenditure on transportation of all the companies to a great extent and also the time wasted in traveling can now be much more productively utilized. This also helped companies to reduce their carbon footprints and thus contributing their share towards a dream of the better world.

Till now the internet has transfigured the world completely with e-tail, search engines, video conferencing, but this was just starters. The main course is still to be served, with the first dish as Facebook. It is a social networking giant founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg. 

Facebook changed the behavior of people. People started updating their facebook status as the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. It created obsession of social networking and provided people a platform to be what they desired to be in actual life as most of the people

faked themselves on this platform to get

more likes or comments. 

Count of friends on facebook was a count of the popularity of a person and thus facebook created a whole world around people in which they were ready to forget the real life.

Facebook also provided an advertisement platform to companies because of the presence of a wide variety of people at a single place, that too totally engrossed in facebook. It started the revolution in social networking and today even one-year-old is on facebook (although against facebook policies).

Facebook paved the way for other social networking sites and there comes the next giant of social media, Twitter in 2006.

Twitter although considered under the same category of social networking but worked on the slightly different pattern. It allowed people to follow their political leaders, actors/actresses, sports icons and what not. It was not as mad as facebook, but slightly on the professional side. 

It was not social networking site, it was more of celebrity networking. It was an easier way to get updates from the people or companies you want to follow and thus is very popular today. 

Above three companies, google, facebook, and twitter revolutionized the digital world, forced companies to started a whole new department, the digital marketing department, responsible for handling online marketing of companies.

Till now there were only thee modes of payment, by cash or plastic money through debit and credit cards or bank accounts through net banking, but with the introduction of a digital currency named Bitcoin in 2009, there was a disruption in whole financial industry. This was the new kind of currency which was never used before and was 

gaining acceptance very fast across the world.

With the all of this in our hands, our generation has been fortunate..!!??

We are fortunate to be obsessed with our digital life, our digital image at facebook, following famous personalities at twitter, thinking every time which song to purchase and which channel to be used to make payment, Paypal or any other digital wallet. Visiting an e-commerce website and spending hours and hours to chose an apparel to be purchased, which later on realized was not required and was purchased because of weekend bonanza offer. Handling accounts of different e-commerce sites, digital wallets, social networking sites and handling the countless offers given by each of these commerce websites and digital wallets is obviously not less than any fortune.

We can do everything on our smartphone which is our fortune and smartphones have become a part of the human body itself. We can not live without our phone for a minute, but can live without people for years. We go crazy if, by chance, we kept our phone somewhere in a room are not able to find our phone for a while. We turn the whole room upside down to search it and what a relief we get on finding it. But we are least bothered if our mother has dropped her ring in the room and asked our help as we are more concerned about what swapping or friends and sending them those stupid jokes and images. Definition of happiness for our generation has changed. It is redefined by increasing likes on facebook profile pic and retweets at twitter, although in reality you are not even asked for by any of your followers. We are getting enslaved by these so called fortunes and we are still happy.

You still think all of the above are fortunes of our generation..!! I doubt that..!!

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’.