FLANKING AWAY TO GLORY

At a time when auto majors like Tata Motors have been painted in deep red, market leader Maruti Suzuki has been pulling all stops to move ahead SWIFTly

SHASHANK SRIVASTAVA, CGM-MKTG., MSI

Did you know that the design for Maruti Suzuki’s bestseller Swift was initially rejected on grounds of being far too radical? “Even months after it was launched in 2005, Swift wasn’t able to generate desired volumes for us,” avers Shashank Srivastava, Chief General Manager-Marketing, Maruti Suzuki India. Even Maruti’s long standing dealers doubted the potential of this car. They perceived it as ‘made for tech-freaks’ initially.

Today, honchos at Suzuki must be thanking their stars that they stuck with their plans for nurturing the Swift at that time with a carefully selected team of ‘Swift Champions’ to push Swift sales. Not only has the car delivered Maruti from the bane of being known as a small car maker, but the model also cornered about 70% of the market share in the premium A2 segment, adding significantly to the car maker’s bottomline in FY09. “You may not be the first mover in a particular category but catch that place in the consumer mind, the race is half won,” says Srivastava, referring to the fact that even though Hyundai was the first to launch a ‘premium compact’ car in India (Getz), in popular perception Suzuki Swift wears that honour. The launch of Swift DZire in March last year ensured that Suzuki created more than a splash in the sedan segment too during the last fiscal.

But this is not just about Swift. Fact is that Maruti, which sells every second car in the country, has been driving smoothly for a long time now. The key strategy is to create new segments within segments and flank its own offerings. Market watchers believe that it is this strategy that helped the company to smooth sail even during October-December quarter last year when auto sales saw a steep fall. Sure, like other auto majors, the year on year domestic sales growth for Maruti has been minimal, but the auto maker has registered mind boggling net profits of Rs.12.1 billion. While the steep profits were partly helped by its exports that registered a growth of 32% in the last fiscal, the bulk of the credit for beating the slowdown blues goes to the growth generated from clutter breaking models like Swift DZire and A-star. “DZire has eaten on to the sales of SX4 but overall it has expanded our share in the A3 category,” adds Srivastava.

In fact, experts believe that the A-star can be the next iconic product for Maruti Suzuki as the car is successfully positioned as one for the cool young urban consumer. Apart from creating new segments, the company’s expanded reach in India’s hinterlands has also helped it to maintain its profitability. Going forward, Maruti expects the rural contribution to its total sales to go up from the present 11-12% to 19-20% in the current fiscal. And then there is the high level of consumer trust and reliability that has been working in brand Maruti Suzuki’s favour even in times of slowdown. Just one worry though. Maruti is continuing to ride high on models made on the Swift Platform (DZire and Ritz), which can surely upset the company’s apple cart when a more innovative competitor saunters in. For now, Srivastava is also predicting a robust FY10 for India’s auto czar!

Pawan Chabra

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2009

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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Airtel knows that the key to capitalise on its growth prospects is to provide its customers a consistent, high-quality experience...

Subscriber strength of 100 million and counting… that’s Bharti Airtel for you! One of the oldest and the largest telecom players in India certainly knows how to take good care of their subscriber base and the latest ICMR and 4Ps B&M research data is testimonial to that fact. Being one of the first players in the Indian telecom industry, Airtel got its hands at the la crème of the Indian consumer-base and over the years it has only strengthened its grip further to stay put at its numero uno spot. “At Airtel the customers are always at the heart of all the things that we do and we take extra effort to ensure their satisfaction,” Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman, Bharti Airtel tells 4Ps B&M the reason why the brand Airtel scores high in terms of customer service in the Indian telecom arena.

In the early days of its existence Airtel was seen more as a premium brand that gelled well with the lives of rich and famous. But, as the competition grew and mobile services became more affordable, Airtel did a seamless transition – from a niche brand to a mass brand that not only was known in all nooks and corner of India, but also appealed to all classes in a similar fashion. In fact, Airtel is always known to offer best in class service to all its subscribers irrespective of whether it is a high usage customer or not. What has now added to Airtel’s advantage is its huge network and its growing reach among the consumers. But then, with competition intensifying in the Indian telecom services market, Airtel now needs to focus more on developing new services, so that it could maintain its leadership in terms of subscriber base and set it apart from its competition.

However, in the past few years there are many first that the company has offered keeping in mind the Indian consumers. For instance, Airtel claims itself to be the first player that offered its customers the lifetime validity option. “We realised that there was a big customer base in India that was using mobile handset only to receive calls and that led us to introduce lifetime validity option on the pre-paid cards. This is a unique offering that is available only in India,” avers Sanjay Kapoor, Deputy CEO, Bharti Airtel. Even at the pricing front Airtel claims itself to be the first operator in India to lower the tariffs for the long distance calls (STD) to a flat rate of Re.1.

Certainly Airtel knew that the key to capitalise on its growth prospects was not only to establish deeper and more personalised relationships with its customers, but also to provide them a consistent, high-quality customer experience. Now that’s how they have travelled sea to shining sea!

Surbhi Chawla

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2009

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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H for Hitler, A for arrogant, R for rascal, I for idiot. The campaign with an original yet humourous storyline potrayed the employee’s psyche ‘not quitting their jobs but their bosses’ and succesfully positioned Naukri.com as the No.1 job portal website of India. Hari Sadu,the chief protagnist, a fictitious character, became synonymous with a pesky and arrogant boss. The message was clear, treat your employees well or Naukri is on the prowl. The campaign which defined employees right in terms of choice, won the Effie at Singapore & CASBAA Advertising award.

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The One Cup Coffee Please ad, conceptualised by Prasoon Pandey, was made in an era when wireless telephony had just swept upon Indian shores. Ericsson became a rage and the campaign won India its first metal at Cannes.

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Much before April approaches, corporate honchos start having sleepless nights, crossing off days on the calender. The shivers come as much from the prospect of burning tons of midnight oil to prepare the financial report cards of their overtures (or failures) in the year gone by, as from the mammoth task of ideating and implementing fresh stwrategies for the new fiscal. Some of these strategies pay off and others don’t - waiting till next April to be praised or castigated in the next financial report card. Our team could not resist the temptation of compiling this snapshot of some fool-proof (or foolish) April strategies of the last few years...

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