Best marketing practices - By Indian companies

Nirma Girl

Best marketing practices: In marketing, India has always been looking at the West or East for Inspiration. Best Marketing  practices are available where Indian companies have excelled.

Nirma detergent powder: the David who took on the goliath and won hands down. Nirma was seen as a cheap detergent by the leader Surf who dismissed it off saying it had cheap ingredients and harms the hands of the user. Surf ignored the onslaught of Nirma at its own peril. By the time HLL realized its mistake and introduced Wheel, the damage had already been done. Nirma was well entrenched and commanded a decent market share.

Velvet shampoo: Innovated the concept of sachets in the early seventies. Sachets opened the flood gates of consumption in the rural India where the aspiration were high but they were not matched by equally high disposable incomes. Even in this category HLL had to eat the humble pie by introducing similar products paradoxically at an even more cheaper price of 1 rupee or even at 50 paisa.

Jugaad: a means of transportation in north India, made of wooden planks and old jeep parts, also known as kuddukka and pietereda. It’s India’s cheapest personalized four-wheeler. The only thing the Jugaad has in common with any other vehicle with similar functionality are, its four wheels.

A common sight on the pot-holed roads beyond Ghaziabad and near Meerut in western Uttar Pradesh, the Jugaad is the lifeline for everyone from sugar cane traders to entire families. Resembling an aggregation of leftover automobile parts, it’s little more than a diesel pump engine strapped on to a wooden quadricycle. Usually, it can be seen carrying up to 35 people, or huge loads of cane from nearby fields to local sugar factories.

Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation: (GCMMF) is India's largest food products marketing organization. It is a state level apex body of milk cooperatives in Gujarat. With 2.79 million producer members it is the biggest cooperative society in the world. And it has a foot print in 13,328 village societies.

The brand, marketed by GCMMF is AMUL which has become an iconic Indian brand and GCMMF runs one of the world’s most enduring, long lasting and topical OOH campaign in the world. The AMUL girl has become world famous and its hoardings have become a part of Indian culture.

Indica and Nano: The TATA group has many firsts to its credit. The introduction of its first mass produced passenger car, code named  ‘mint’ later popularly as Indica created ripples in the Indian automobile market. Indica is a classic case of bench marking.

The Indica had the roominess of an Ambassador, the styling of a Fiat, the price of a Maruti and was a diesel driven car. It had all the plus points of all its competitors.

But what Tatas did in 2008 January took the breath away of the automobile majors throughout the world. It introduced the world’s cheapest car at 2,500 US Dollars. The industry doyens who predicted an utter failure for the Nano had to eat humble pie. In spite of initial hick ups, the Nano is chugging along and is set to become the beacon light of what Innovative Indian entrepreneurs can do, if they make up their minds.

Incidentally the names choosen Indica and Nano themselves are excellent examples of clear thought processess. Indica stands for Indianness and Nano stands for minute technology or the small car at the cheapest price in the world. Way to go TATAS!