A Motivation to my own Agri Retailing efforts in the Hinterland

I am an individual, who eat, dream, sleep marketing by selling marketing ideas.
Yesterday, in a LinkedIn friend's blog I read about an agri-retailing venture, JKS Agrimall located 70 kilometers away from Hyderabad , in a small town called Jangaon. The mall is housed in a 3,000-sq ft space, and houses various brands neatly categorised with displays and price charts. It’s a mall — at least the name says so. The ruse of passing off a supermarket space as ‘a mall’ is quite common in big cities. But one can forgive the owners simply because of the genesis of JKS Agrimall. ‘JKS’ stands for ‘Jantha’ , ‘Kishore’ and ‘Santosh’ , three friends who have come together to start this supermarket retailing pesticides, fertilisers, seeds, sprayers and cement.
Articles of such kinds are a big motivator. The three friends had no B-School graduates to help on positioning, segmentation, etc. Yet 70 kms away from Hyderabad in the drylands of western AP, they have clocked Rs.25 crores of sales from one single unit. With a bit of hand-holding and professional marketing support, this venture can put the biggies to shame.
At present in the interiors of Midnapore in West Bengal, in a place called Hoomgarh near Garbeta, I am trying to hand-hold a 'perfect gentleman' to profitably run a 360* logistics hub primarily in fruits and vegetables trading. The project involves sourcing/ procurement of apples, oranges, pumpkins, tomatoes, carrots, flowers, eggs, etc; stocking them in an only one of its kind in India multi-commodity cold storage of 5000 tonnes capacity divided into 16 chambers; branding and packing them and ultimately selling them in Kolkata and other parts of South Bengal and Orissa.
I should be able to keep readers abreast of future developments through the columns of this blog and also through the pages of my own website http://www.marketingpundit.com/.
Any innovative ideas from readers or brands/ companies looking forward to rural penetration are welcome.

Shakeout inevitable in the 'mall market'

There's bound to be a shakeout in the 'mall mania' in the very near future.

In 2001 - 2002, I used to stay in Veera Desai Road during my routine monthly visits to Mumbai. I haven't visited the area after that ... however, I find it difficult to believe from friends residing in Andheri (West) that there are more than 5 malls and multiplexes in that short stretch of road. The residents must be having a terrible time with so much of pressure on the already crumbling infrastructure.

Most of the mall owners have no clues about 'marketing'. Their concept of marketing is limited to publishing full page newspaper advertisements a couple of times while the construction is halfway through. Its a case of 'me too' jumping onto the bandwagon. These structures need to be positioned as 'destination points' with sufficient, I repeat sufficient open space to laze around. Once the young and not too young lovers and couples get tired of walking all around the place or whispering sweet nothings, they will go for the pizzas, burgers, chais, mochas, icecreams.... That's what I term as market creation.

However, do most of the mall owners care if the tenants earn their money or not? And when business of the tenants start falling, the mall owners waste no time in making statements of self pity - 'market conditions are bad'. Mall owners and tenants should continuously strive to project themselves as happening ones.

Readers in Mumbai, B'lore, Hyd, NCR who have had the fortune of visiting City Centre in Salt Lake and the misfortune of visiting Emami Landmark on Lord Sinha Road, both in Kolkata will know what I wanted to convey.

Castrol taught me the values of 'influencing the influencer'

I myself was with Castrol from mid 1985 - early 1992, fresh out of B-School. I had the great fortune of interacting closely with the great managers of yesteryears Dr.B.K.Barman, Mr.Dilip Kumar Guha, Mr.Ramesh Chandra Mahajan. They taught me hands-on about Castrol's (then, Indrol Lubricants and Specialities Ltd) strategy of influencing the influencer.
Irrespective of our hierarchy in the organisation, we had to visit a large number of roadside mechanics every week, spend time with them chatting about the virtues of multigrade oils, additives, et al and offcourse in their language. I loved getting under the gigantic trucks to help mechanics open the oil sump and collecting lube samples in special bottles for further testing in the labs at Paharpur, Wadala, Patalganga.
I have carefully preserved a couple of oil stained shirts as mementos along with the large number of certificates and trophies and ties. I personally love automobiles, the work in Castrol was a passion for me. I have heard and seen people joining Castrol from office automation companies and leaving in a few months since the system of 'influencing the influencer' was too much for their system.
There were no computers those days, yet the entire strategy was so systems driven. At one point of time in Orissa, I was commanding a 35%+ market share in the commercial vehicles lubricating oil segments. And that too, when the brands were priced 40% higher than the PSU oil company products. And mind it ... we were not even allowed to sell from the PSU petrol pumps.
During the past 8 years, as an Independent Marketing Consultant working closely with Youth and Children as target audiences and as the person behind the ideation and implementation of the only one of their kinds in Child and Youth Marketing activities India, viz. Inter School and College PowerPoint Presentation Contest (Powerplay and IT Kriya contests respectively), I have managed to convey the message and virtues of influencing the influencer to brands like LG Electronics - IT Divn, Nerolac Paints, Osram, TVS Motor Co., Eveready, Power FM, Rasna, General Mills and many more.

Bring back the Maruti Suzuki Esteem

The 1300 cc, three-box Esteem car from Maruti Suzuki was one fantastic machine. It was very low on maintenance costs and extremely good in fuel economy. Driving comfort was just too good. The pride of ownership was indeed an ego booster .... no wonders the little girl after the joyride in daddy's new Esteem (as shown in the TVC) proudly announces that its "My Daddy's Biiiig Car". In the Indian motor-rallying circuits, Esteem still calls the shots.
Why did the company want to bring in a 'forced obsolescence' with effect from early January 2008? In the product life cycle, the car was still in its growth stage, there was nothing to worry.
It is being heard that a three-box Swift is in the offing. However, I am sure that the new product being planned could have been squeezed in between the Esteem VXI and SX4. The media in no uncertain terms have spelt out that the introductory batches of SX4 is very poor in fuel economy.
Maruti Suzuki had earlier made the mistake of withdrawing the jelly-bean shaped Zen from the market for about a year in 2005 and replaced it with Zen Estilo. Estilo has just not been able to create an impact with customers. With competition hotting up in the small car segment, Maruti Suzuki needs to become far more market savvy in the higher segment and that's where Esteem figured.
Past and present 'Esteem owners', 'Esteem lovers' and marketing gurus, can we have a discussion on the topic please?
(Article by: Deep Banerjee dated 14th February 2008)