@ the CrossRoads…

Amritsar, the city where the sun shines twice, once of its own glory and the second time as reflected by the tomb of the famous Golden Temple. Whilst the sun may be a far cry for man, people from far & wide come to visit and pay their tributes at the Harmant Sahib, as it is known locally here.

My day here starts with a heavy breakfast of kulchas at the Friends Dhaba below my hotel. Premji, the head waiter whose general attire is grey trousers & a vest, has never attended a class in CRM or JIT, but manages to get my breakfast ready for me even before I reach the place. Having satisfied my stomach for almost the entire day, my next destination is the bus adda. Am the n’th passenger on the autos that ply to the stand; generally the rule is: auto ek, passengers no limit.

The bus stand is quite a place, which is always in a flux of activity; with buses plying to close to 50 destinations from one stand. Enquiring my way through to the bus for my destination, I generally am welcomed into the bus which has an MTV like culture written all over it. The large posters of Guru Nanak & Golden Temple laced with large plastic flowers of all colours & a background music score that is folk Punjabi blended with some new-age Jazzy B & Daler Mehdi peps up the environment for a good 1-2 hr long journey into the rural parts.

Drinking in the scenes of the green & golden with a layer of mist above; spread across the land of Veer-Zaara, my euphoria is broken once in a while by the traffic jams that are generally referred to as ‘Road ki nasbandi’ by the conductor. Often, the protectors of the Khalsa Panth walk in with their spears… kinda scary in today’s age…

On a few occasions, travel during lunchtime has been awarded with a stop at an en-route gurudwara for a langar break. Believe me, the best 5 stars in the world can’t beat the experience of an entire bus getting emptied under a large tree, fresh wheat rotis served with spicy black dal to the entire crowd in a matter of minutes followed by some fresh hand-pump water pulled up; all this without any expectation in return. God bless these selfless souls… On other occasions, lunch generally comprises a plate of Samosas with very sweet imli chutney served out of Castrol cans on a highway dhaba whilst sitting on a charpai.

My project currently involves getting into the direct distribution network, towns with a population of 5000+ - this entails traveling to these pinds (villages) to judge market potential. Most of these are small diversions at a crossroad till where the bus plies. The journey further & back is on cycle rickshaw across fields on kaccha roads.

Waiting for a bus on the ride back, my thoughts reflect on the life at the crossroads… Women folk on their haunches placed on small mud mounds await their respective bus, the village oldies going through the local newspapers for some news that could fuel a discussion, the retailers in stores looking forward to customers, the rickshaw-wallahs awaiting a savari… the silence being broken by the sudden thrust of an occasional urban motor-vehicle or bus passing away in great speed… the fruit-dweller having to pick each apple and wipe the dust that has been thrown off the road. Life at a stand still here, just seems to wait for something… things hardly seem to move, even the mynah prefers to walk across the road rather than fly over it…

Reading ‘Illusions’ by Richard Bach the other day, he says ‘Every individual chooses the world he lives in’ – can’t help but agree with him; for a billion Indians there exist a billion worlds… mental worlds that we all form through our thoughts. But the fact is that the dimensions of the canvas and the palette of colours that we use to paint our individual mental worlds is to a large extent governed by the real world we live in.

Life @ the crossroads is about a world which seems perennially waiting for something to occur… considering the real world that people live in here, its not too difficult to imagine the small size of their mental canvas… or the limited palette of colours at their disposal… but then again, the crossroads lead to numerous places, depending on the path one chooses to take…

Guess my bus has arrived and I’ll soon be out of here… as I look back, the dust has settled down & the apples are being polished again… Bye!

Case-in-Point

This case was developed by me as part of the admissions process conducted by SCMHRD for selection of new candidates into the PGDM course - heartening to know that some students of the batch of 2008 would have been selected on the basis of their response to this case.
A personal experience that I wanted to share and know what you would have done in similar circumstances. Do post your comments after going through the case...


Vishal has recently joined MediaComm, a media company that is engaged in the production & marketing of TV programs for various channels. As an Ad Sales & Marketing Executive, he is responsible for making sales presentations to clients; primarily media planners & buyers at ad agencies and obtaining airtime bookings from them on the various programs.

Apart from the pressure of targets to be met, Vishal also has a non-cooperative senior, Anil to cope with. Since joining 2 months back immediately after graduation, Vishal has been trying hard to please Anil, but to no avail. A task master to the core, Anil has only been concerned with sales & revenues, without being cognizant of the sales training requirements of the new recruit.

The industry is an extremely competitive one with a plethora of channels vying for the public’s attention and new ones being launched almost every fortnight. In such a scenario, the clients have a lot to choose from. For the media planners & buyers, achieving a certain target level of audience exposure is all that matters; which could be through varied combinations of programs across channels. In such a scenario, it is only the relationship with the client and on the spot negotiations, which help to crack the deal.

Given the relationship-oriented nature of the business, Vishal has been working hard at building the same, based on which he can obtain sales in the long-term. Over time, Vishal realizes that Anil’s nature has been that way since he too has pressures to face from the top management on account of high-interest loans taken to run the business.

Rakesh, a media buyer at ADict – one of the top 10 ad agencies, which has had no previous business relations with MediaComm, has been on Vishal’s radar since some time. After tracking him for a period of 2 months, Vishal approached Rakesh with a good deal on a film being marketed by MediaComm. On account of its non-perishable nature, the entire airtime of 300 seconds on the film needs to be sold out for the film project to be financially viable. However, with only a few days to go for telecast, very few clients have confirmed their bookings and a substantial amount of airtime still remains unsold.

Rakesh has shown interest in buying a large chunk of the airtime, but at a much lower rate than that being offered by Vishal. In the meanwhile, Anil too has been speaking to a few clients of his regarding the film. In the absence of confirmations, Anil tells Vishal to go ahead with the deal at ADict and take the bookings from Rakesh at his rate. As such, the entire airtime on the film is exhausted.

However, in a matter of only a few hours, a client of Anil confirms his bookings at a much higher rate than that of Rakesh. Backing out at this point of time would imply severing relations not only with Rakesh, but also ADict. Nonetheless, Anil is insistent on the higher rate offered by his client.

Considering the relation between Vishal & Anil and the long-term implications of the deal, analyse the case and indicate your future course of action if you were in Vishal’s shoes…

Chakan – A window into Rural Marketing

Our journey started early morning at 7.15 a.m. Taking the institute bus, we reached the University from where we took a PMT bus to reach the stop from where we would board the ST bus taking us directly to our destination, Chakan.

The ride in the ST bus was quite an experience – whilst for us it was an experience; it was apparent that a number of passengers were daily commuters making the trip back & forth to make ends meet back home. Most of the male passengers were dressed in the characteristic Maharashtrian attire of white dhoti-kurta & Gandhi topi on the head. On the other hand, amongst the women, the sari and salwar-kameez had an equal popularity.

Some of the noteworthy facts of the journey were the building blocks of what lay ahead for us in terms of the rural experience. It was appreciable that none of the women were standing; as soon as a woman would alight the bus, a male passenger would stand up (as though by default) and offer his seat to the woman. It seems like a paradox, given that the fairer sex is discriminated against in almost every walk of life in a country like India. But, then again, the dichotomy of the Indian male to present himself differently when making private vis-à-vis public appearances may be the cause of such behavior. Whatever be the reason, so long as the trend continues, it shall prove beneficial to the fountainhead of procreation.

The rural population is a very God-fearing or lets say God-loving populace. Most people had a dark red or sindoori tikka on their forehead.

A few people seemed to be traveling a long distance and hence had their large suitcases put up at a corner of the bus. On account of the space constraint inside the bus, the suitcases were used to sit on and not only were the owners seated, they also allowed others to be seated on the same.

On entering the bus, we purchased the tickets and requested the conductor to indicate to us the time when Chakan would arrive. We stood with the other passengers in the bus. After a few minutes the conductor came up to me and whispered to me that there was a group of passengers seated upfront that would be getting off at the next stop and hence we should move forward to secure the seats. A number of passengers had been standing since a long time awaiting their chance to be seated. The point here is that the everyday travelers look up to urbanites like us when we make our one-off trips. But, as the famous saying from Spiderman goes, we need to be cognizant of the fact that “With great power comes great responsibility!”.

A woman seated close by, not wanting her time to get wasted, was reading out of notes that were photocopies of a Marathi script printout. Once in a while, here & there, the beep of a mobile phone would suddenly break the rut of the noise made by the bus speeding away in the direction of its destination on the open highway.
Technology surely is touching people’s lives everywhere & everyday. The best part is that it is affordable enough for all to get access to it and the enrichment that it is bringing to individuals.

After a 50-minutes ride in the bus on the Pune-Nashik highway, the conductor indicated to us that the Chakan village stop had arrived. Once down from the bus, we had a look around to identify whether the rural marketing project had actually got us to a rural area or was it a misnomer for an area that had transformed into a semi-urban region.

On enquiring further, it became clear that Chakan is actually a ‘Rural Oasis’, serving as a feeder market to the villages within almost 50km radius of itself. By no stretch of imagination could it be called a rural market; generating a business volume of nearly 25 lacs every Saturday during the weekly mandi.

As per the requirement, we started gathering information for our study. Our first stop was the Gram Panchayat – the picture of a Panchayat with a group of senior people seated under a Banyan tree was completely distorted in our minds when we came across a building, which had a Reliance Infocomm mobile tower located above it. Well, the shade-providing Banyan was replaced by the communication-providing tower – an indicator of how the power dynamics in the rural areas has been undergoing a transformation with the needs and wants changing over time.
With low recreation facilities, the local politics is a major draw for the rural population – large posters announcing the victory of a candidate in the recent elections at Panchayat level were strewn all over the place with gulal and burnt fire-crackers visible in the compound.
The members of the Panchayat were extremely cooperative and forthcoming with the desired statistics about the village – they handed us a photocopy of the documents available with them.

On the way to the main market of Chakan, a few significant nuances were revealed to us. Poly bags with RIM Prepaid logo were indicative of the need for status orientation of the rural masses. Mobiles are seen as upmarket, with RIM being the more popular brand in the area. Hence, the sale of the polybags to appear upmarket in the area.

Large posters of Shivaji Maharaj & B.R.Ambedkar were indicative of the need of the rural populace for affiliation with national heroes and local posterboys. Some of the other paraphernalia on sale included fake notes like the ones sold outside primary schools. Be it the hero worship of posters or the magic realism of the notes, the take back for us was that the rural population is at the crossroads of a metamorphosis to get transformed but at the same the chrysalis that it is trying to break away from has kept the grips firm – the process is a long-drawn one, both in terms of time & effort; but the fact is that it is occurring nonetheless.

A theatre located in the main market had a poster put up which read ‘Now Showing - Harami’, an Ajay Devgan starrer film that was unheard of until then by any of us. Certainly, going by the popularity of Bollywood and the high aspirations of the rural people, there is no reason why such movies should be on screen at a time when any urban multiplex cinema boasts of not less than 7 screens, each showing a different movie – underserving these markets can certainly cost the producers dearly.

We moved on to the Bazar Samiti, which is the main location for all the trade related to agri-produce as well as animals. The local farmer there was forthcoming, explaining the technicalities and issues involved in trade. He informed that with the increasing need for communication on account of ability to make informed decisions regarding sale of agri-produce, mobile phones had become a rage among the local farmers. He also offered us tea and was not at all cursory in his invitation.

After collecting the requisite information from the market regarding the business & commerce of Chakan, we moved towards the Chakreshwar Temple & Maratha Fort, 2 main tourist destinations of Chakan. The fort was in a dilapidated state with the importance of it being the fort where the last British-Maratha battle was fought, being hidden in the background.

After the fulfilling experience, we made a beeline for the nearest restaurant on the highway for a late evening snack.

All in all, it was a satisfying day for all of us. The lesson that we would like to take back with us is that of humility. Whilst marketing is all about satisfying customer needs better than competition at a profit; in the rural context this definition does not suffice.

The attitude counts a lot – it is not only about commerce but also about the emotion behind the commerce – there has to be an attitude of ‘serving profitably’. The rural masses look upon us as torchbearers and solution providers – you fulfill their requirements and they’ll fulfill yours.