Apoorva Kulshrestha, KIAMS 2012-14 Batch – “Many lessons learnt and insights gained at the CII Marketing Summit”

It is an experience which I will remember for a long time. At the 12^th Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Marketing Summit held on the 27^th & 28^th of August in Mumbai, I witnessed eminent industry professionals like Thomas Varghese, Chairman, CII Marketing Summit 2012 & CEO (Textiles Business) Aditya Birla Group; Vinita Bali, Managing Director, Britannia Industries; and Rahul Bajaj, Chairman, Bajaj Auto, addressing the audience in the inaugural session: ‘Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance; Marketing to a Billion.’ I have always admired Mr. Bajaj and listening to him speak was indeed an honour. “Today, you cannot have a large national company without any international footprint,” said Mr. Bajaj.  “Success hinges on the ability to anticipate and companies should see how to leverage the market reality to drive change.” In other words, Mr. Bajaj was saying that if the elephant can get its act together, it can give a superlative performance.

‘But can the elephant dance?’ was the prime question to which I sought answers. Mini Menon, Executive Editor, Bloomberg TV,  came to my rescue with a pertinent observation. “Today the market is undergoing much turbulence and new opportunities are arising. Indian consumption of goods and services has grown exponentially in the last 10 years. Today we have 50 per cent less wars than ever before. This is the best period for economic growth, so it is positive turbulence,” she said.

There were several insights which I had gained by the end of the summit. One key thing I learned was that consumers are changing faster than marketers. In the last 5 years, 120 million people in India have lifted themselves out of poverty. Today, the rural people have access to goods and services which they never had before. The time for theoretical and conservative marketing is over. Customers are behaving differently in different situations. Sukanya Kripalu, CEO, Sukanya Consulting, seconded this insight when she said, “The environment is changing very dramatically and today’s need is much more innovation.” In the words of Prahlad Kakkar, advertising guru, advertisers need to run faster than the consumer. “The moment you over-intellectualise, you are dead,” he added.

There were plenty of lessons from the marketing stalwarts too. “India is not an easy market. We need to have local knowledge about culture, tradition, lifestyle, etc. At the same time we need to be fast, humble and innovative. Net penetration in rural area is increasing”, shared Prahlad Kakkar . The second lesson was that advertising is constantly evolving in line with communication. People know how to retrieve information. The third lesson was about marketing and sales given by Sukanya Kripalu- “Marketing means ‘customer in’ whereas sales means ‘product out’. But we cannot overlook the fact that sales and marketing are two sides of the coin with the same convergence point that is the customer; because if you are not taking care of your customer, your competitors will.” In short, marketing is all about creating the right perception before actual interaction, or the moment of truth; and sales ensure that the interaction leads to conversion.

Today the consumer is not simply a consumer but a ‘prosumer’; that is, he is not a user but a developer/creator. Prosumer is ahead of marketers. I was also privileged to be introduced to the concept of neuro- marketing, which is a crucial link between neurofocus and marketing. It helps clients in understanding their customers in more depth, detail and accuracy than was possible ever before.

At the summit, Mr. Bajaj and Ms. Bali released a CII-Nielsen Study, ‘Emerging Consumer Demand. Rise of  Small-town India,’ which captures the growth of smaller tier 2 and tier 3 towns in India, how they drive the Indian market and how consumer demand in small town urban India is growing across categories. A report by Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council for Eurasia & Africa titled, ‘Understanding Shopper Loyalty Within Different Formats’ was also released. So after absorbing all this, am I a pro marketer in the making? Well, all I can say is that having learnt some key lessons from the summit, I can certainly visualize myself as one!

KIAMS’ Prof. V. S. Pai co-authors case study accepted by Asian Case Research Journal

The lessons that Indian companies can learn from Kraft’s acquisition of Cadbury have been highlighted in a recent paper co-authored by Kirloskar Institute of Advanced Management Studies’ professor, Dr. V. S. Pai.

The case study, to be published by the Asian Case Research Journal, University of Singapore, concentrates on the central question: How can a company extract value from an acquisition?

In brief, United States-based Kraft Foods, Inc. (KFI) acquired the United Kingdom-based Cadbury plc, gaining entry into the Indian market. The aim was to use developing markets to achieve a five per cent organic growth rate and hope that Cadbury India’s strong position would expand Kraft’s presence in the Indian market. But nearly a year after the acquisition, Kraft was moving slowly in India and appeared content to consolidate Cadbury’s market presence.

Obviously, change was in the air. Kraft had to decide whether to continue consolidating the Cadbury brand in India or use Cadbury’s strong market presence to launch brands from Kraft’s global portfolio. Kraft bought Cadbury for $18.5 billion, a 70 per cent premium over Cadbury’s stock price. It’s common knowledge that when a company pays a premium rate to acquire another company, the acquisition has to help the acquirer grow and increase its profits.

The paper co-authored by KIAMS’ Dr. Pai examines Kraft’s attempts to grow the India market through its Cadbury acquisition, with a view to: examining the motivations for an international acquisition, evaluating the effectiveness of an acquisition decision, critically examining the value of a firm’s resources and identifying ways to use resources to create value in an acquisition.The authors contend that the Kraft-Cadbury case offers several lessons to be learned by Indian companies considering mergers or acquisitions. According to them, a firm should carefully evaluate an acquisition by using the attractiveness, cost of entry and better-off tests; they noted that  while the Cadbury acquisition passed the attractiveness test, both the cost of entry and better-off tests are still unanswered.

Secondly, they point out, a resource-based strategy calls for carefully evaluating a firm’s key resources and deploying them in the right context. They believe that in all likelihood, Kraft hasn’t fully deployed Cadbury India’s valuable resources to launch its own brands.

And finally, they say an acquisition is only as good as its integration, which is a key to making it a success, and in the year since the acquisition, Kraft has been rather slow in integrating the Kraft and Cadbury units in India.

Dr. Pai has more than 27 years of academic experience and has conducted research in strategic management, guided three Ph.D. scholars successfully, completed an ICSSR, New Delhi-funded research project and published several research papers. His publications, which number around 70, have appeared in refereed journals, business magazines and national business newspapers. The business cases he has written have been uploaded to the European Case Clearing House (ECCH), Cranfield University, UK and have won prizes in international case competitions held in Canada.

Co-author of the paper, Dr. Ram Subramanian is a professor with the Department of Management and Information Systems, School of Business, Montclair State University, New Jersey, U.S.A.

A Ph.D. from the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, he has published research papers in several refereed international journals of repute.

KIAMS defines B-School education with its Professional Personality Programme

Kirloskar Institute of Advanced Management Studies (KIAMS) has added a completely new dimension to its curriculum in 2012. In a first-of-its-kind move in B-schools in India, all individual development needs of an ace future manager identified as a must in the current business scenario, have been put under one umbrella. The programme, known as the Professional Personality Programme or PPP, is a complete 2-year compulsory component of the course for all KIAMS students.

“As a premier management institute, our primary purpose is to prepare young management professionals. Since a majority of the pass-outs start their careers as professionals in industry rather than research or entrepreneurship, our education has a natural industry tilt, with a sharp focus on employability,” says Dr. Gopal Iyengar, Director, KIAMS Harihar. “The real key to the effectiveness of professionals is to deploy their skills in the performance domain. Industry requires young management professionals to hit the ground running and perform from Day 1. Hence, entering industry fully equipped with the skills mentioned above is crucial.”

The PPP, a brainchild of the Management of KIAMS, has been laboriously crafted in great detail by the faculty at KIAMS. It has two main divisions – Personality Development (in the first-year) which has an overall weight of 8 credit points allocated to it; and Professional Development (in the second year) which has 16 credit points.

The Personality Development rests on 4 major pillars (i) Self Awareness which tracks an individual’s attitude and personality, how he or she interacts, observing and knowing one’s beliefs, values, attitudes and style; and most importantly, knowing one’s own body while one is communicating. (ii) Interaction Dynamics which deals with the complete range of relating and interacting with other with emphasis on interpersonal awareness, group dynamics and team working. (iii) Communications – oral and written (iv) Self-Development Orientation, which includes Global Etiquette and Poise, Grooming Corporate Personalities, etc., amongst various other components

“It was just not possible to have somebody from outside develop this programme,” says Professor Priya Venkatesh. “Over a period of time, KIAMS developed the expertise within itself. We had to ensure that the PPP was constructed around the KIAMS values of ‘Nurture, Self-Worth and Self- Esteem for Performance’ and ‘Saluting the Better in Others while Valuing the Good in the Self’. It did take a lot of thought on our part, but we were able to achieve our vision.”

The best part of the PPP is that the Personality and Professional Development segments complement each other beautifully, walking hand in hand. The Professional Development Segment, for instance, starts right from career focus at the entry level to identification of the Interests/ Sectors of each student. Over the year, the programme goes on to build professional awareness in areas like Market Reality, Industry Expectations, Industry Vocabulary, Industry Culture, Industry Report/ Case, Viewing Business Channels and Report Submission. It also turns a keen eye on competencies for various industries, recent recruitment practices, etc.

“Earlier, most of the hands-on exposure activities like SIP, alumni interaction, Individual Industry Project, assisting in KIAMS Project, paper with faculty and competitions conducted by CRISIL, ITC innovation foundation, etc. were pretty much stand-alone, and most of it did not form a part of the formal curriculum,” says Professor Shruti Das, KIAMS, also a part of the Placement Cell. “The PPP has changed that. All these activities now fall under the Professional Development Programme and performance in these activities adds up to the 16 credit points allocated to this programme.”

Most importantly, the programme mandates that each KIAMS student has to interview at least 5 industry personalities and 3 alumni, along with participation in a Community Programme through ‘Pragati’, the much talked-about Rural Fair at KIAMS. Interestingly, the Personality and Professional segments are so tightly integrated that activities in the second year, although categorised under Professional Skills, depend heavily on the Personality Skills that a student has earmarked for himself.  Goal Setting and Prioritising, Time Management, Problem Solving, Planning, PI Skills like making an impact in a corporate interview, Presentation of self as a saleable commodity and a brand ambassador for KIAMS, etc. are all extensively dealt with under the Professional segment of PPP.

In true KIAMS tradition, it is a thorough affair, leaving no scope for ‘ifs-and-buts’. The 24-credit point PPP undoubtedly establishes KIAMS as a thought leader in the B-school education space in India.

Summer internship helped Manindar learn work ethics, industry work culture, sales and operational process

For Manindar Kumar Nayak, his Summer Internship Placement (SIP) was the reason for many adventures through the state of Madhya Pradesh. Originally from Bokaro Steel City in Jharkhand, Manindar took on a summer internship through Kirloaskar Institute of Advanced Management Studies (KIAMS) with TTK Prestige.

Manindar applied for the internship because of his interest in the FMCG sector, and his ultimate aim to work in the area of customer servicing. The research project he undertook helped him understand the kind of work that lies behind building a marketing strategy. This will help him directly with his specialisation in Marketing and Operations at KIAMS.

Manindar’s project with TTK Prestige was to conduct exploratory market research to analyse the market share, competitors, pricing, distribution, quality and perception of buying by dealers and customers. For this, he conducted face-to-face research, and interacted with dealers, distributors, sub-dealers and retailers on the various aspects listed out in the feedback forms given to him by TTK Prestige. The interactions were formal and informal, depending on the situation.

Roaming from town to town, conducting a market research project, Manindar’s accommodation varied between lodges and PGs and found himself eating at local dhabas, restaurants and food courts. The internship certainly was intensive, but so were the learnings that Manindar brought back from it. It helped him learn work ethics, industry work culture, sales and operational process. Working during the summer months, when it is marriage season in some parts of India, also forced him to sometimes pursue dealers and distributors who were unwilling to meet him due to lack of time! While the entire process of surveying was long and exhaustive, this was an unexpected situation that he had to put some effort into working around.

The internship, despite its challenges, provided a steep learning curve for Manindar. He learnt, through practical work, about customer attitudes, beliefs, demands and behaviour patterns and gained other market insights as well. He was also helped by the KIAMS faculty at all stages, especially his mentor, who guided him throughout and help increase his interest in the process of survey and analysis. This hands-on internship will go a long way in helping him secure a job within marketing and operations after he graduates.