Market dominators

ET Brand Equity carried an article on how some brands like Amul, J&J, Nokia, Maruti etc. have been able to dominate the market for long in their respective categories.

The article says that most market dominators stay at the top for the simple reason that they continually work on putting distance between them and the competition through constant innovation.

The article goes on to cite Parachute as a good example of innovation. The brand it says is the leader because it has continually strived to raise the aspirational value of the category by making coconut oil contemporary and relevant to a younger set of consumers. I have a slightly different take on this. How long will hair oil remain contemporary is a challenge and therefore the brand has already started looking at the ‘next’ extensions – hair gel and cream. It’s more important that the younger consumers use ‘Parachute’, whether it's in the form of hair oil should be incidental.

There are plenty of examples of how even innovative companies have being overtaken by challengers not necessarily from their industry. Kodak was taken by surprise by the digital camera wave and then later by the camera phones. It did however try and still find a way to be relevant by literally ‘sleeping with the enemy’ – you can click on digital cameras or even cell phones and get them printed on a Kodak paper. But Google’s Picasa and Flicker still pose a threat as they make sharing pictures so easy without having to print them. Kodak should have owned photography but failed to see the change.

My sense is that it’s not just innovation but the ability to see the imminent change and its competitive implications that has served these brands better. It’s more about having a clear sense of how one can remain relevant despite the change, in fact a step further on how a brand can ride and exploit the change….or can it be the change?

We are like that only

Just finished reading a book by Rama Bijapurkar,‘We are like that only’. The author has some interesting observations about how companies in the past have faltered by overestimating the size of Indian middle class and considering it as a homogenous group. She therefore recommends constructing the picture of India based on your product class / industry and not going by the ‘one-size-fits-all’ estimates.

She also gives it a historical perspective by linking it to the addition of capacities in the mid 90’s and how by 2000, some of these hopes were squashed. She also emphasizes the ‘Great Indian rope trick of numbers’ – how even small percentages in the Indian context can mean large markets.

I'm back!

What a long break!

What was I doing all this while? Well, I changed job and relocated to the silicon valley of India – Bangalore, from Mumbai, which in fact is my first so far. Not just that, I have joined a new industry – FMCG, after a good 4 years in Financial Services. The transition so far has been good and very interesting. The experience of getting comprehension of an entirely new industry with its own dynamics and ways of operating is motivating.

So far so good. Hope to get down to business soon.