hippoBrain

You may know the inspiring story of Amul and the white revolution. You may enjoy their timely, witty ads with the Amul girl. You may enjoy the Amul products too (maybe even stacked it in your kitchens!?)  

But do you really know the story? Did you know, for example, that Amul is one of the rare businesses that buys at a higher price from its suppliers and sells at a lower price to its consumers? Did you know that it launched 57 new products during the pandemic—many of which are beyond the realm of dairy? Did you know that Amul is one of the biggest chocolatier in the country?  

No? Then this HippoBrain episode is one to listen. After a brief hiatus (happy new year!), we're back with Jayen Mehta, the Senior General Manager of Planning & Marketing at GCMMF (Amul), who talks to Rajesh Jain and Jaimit Doshi about the business side of Amul.  

You’ll learn first hand the aggression that a set of motivated employees can bring to the table in a co-operative, even though there are no investors to report quarterly numbers to!

Loyalty is a big buzzword in the world of Marketing. Of course, some would say, brands have run such programmes for decades. But the power of Martech has breathed fresh life into this fundamental concept of deeply respecting your customer.

This week, we speak to the founder of TLC Group, which specialises in loyalty programmes for the hospitality industry. Hear Sudhir Gupta as he speaks to Rajesh Jain and Jaimit Doshi about his experience in the hospitality sector, the economics of a loyalty programme and the 1% rule in entrepreneurship. 

Here’s the map of the full hippoBrain conversation with Sudhir Gupta:

00:00 - Introduction

01:45 - The idea of starting a business

07:25 - The economics of loyalty, dine-in programmes

12:20 - Why outsource loyalty programmes to TLC

14:45 - Entrepreneurship & hospitality

34:55 - Setting the culture & DNA of a company

45:05 - How to set up a loyalty programme 

48:00 - Being 1% better everyday

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Connect with us:

hippoBrain: https://twitter.com/hipp0brain

Rajesh Jain: https://twitter.com/rajeshjain

Jaimit Doshi: https://twitter.com/jaimitd

Your phone buzzes. Your calendar notifies you about an upcoming birthday. It’s a close friend in another city. What do you? You open your browser and search for Ferns N Petals. You book a cake and bouquet of flow and get it delivered at 12am midnight. It’s a close friend, after all!

Now, let’s pause for a moment and consider this:— 

A business worth around Rs 500 crore. Of selling flowers. Online. 

A business that depends thoroughly on the freshness of flowers, of timely, short-notice delivery, of uniformly re-creating the exact design of the bouquet you ordered. Across the world—not just India. 

Now imagine setting the mechanism in the backdrop of the 90s and early 2000s when the internet culture was just setting in India. That too without any external capital or investment.

Get the whole story from the horse’s mouth in our latest hippoBrain conversation with Pawan Gadia, CEO of Ferns N Petals. He speaks to Rajesh Jain and Jaimit Doshi about the FnP story, the challenges they faced both on the supply as well as training side; changing with times and adding more verticals like a wedding business.

Btw, don’t miss out on the part at ~38 mins where Pawan Gadia speaks about how FnP’s cashflow and how does not use its profits at all for regular business dealings.

4.8 stars and 1,200 reviews on Amazon.in—what is it about Hestia cold press juicer that it gets raving fans?

Drop all that you are doing and meet The Legend of Nehal Shah, the Chief Customer Growth officer of Hestia appliances. See how David beat the Goliaths in the cold press market by focusing obsessively on customer delight.

In a beautifully candid conversation, Nehal describes his journey of the education of India towards using a cold press juice. You understand his passion as he sent his service executives to the market to understand the various fruits and vegetables available so that they could best explain to the customers on getting the best juice.

He went about creating a system for service (lean service model) that would reach all districts of India. This was possible with proper planning on reverse logistics, obviously helped by a product that … simply did not fail.

He brings to home appliances this service obsession that he learnt while selling critical medical equipment and is maniacal about passing this on to his team.

He talks about transparency, as he explains how on his website every part cost is broken down and if you buy all the parts individually, they simply still add up to the juicer MRP, not more (unlike most others).

Nehal helps us understand how to best leverage the Amazon ecosystem to grow exponentially, get 30% direct traffic without spending a marketing dollar; expand to every corner of India, focus on customer benefits, grow 8X during a pandemic, with a waitlist!

Like I said – drop all what you are doing and watch the Legend beat the Masters.

Here’s the map of the conversation:

00:00 - Introduction

01:50 - The story of 4.8 stars on Amazon reviews

05:19 - Going to market during Covid-19 for better product experience

07:05 - Training employees for strong customer experience 

08:00 - Educating customers for better experience

11:34 - Looking at every aspect of customer journey 

14:46 - 2.7 - Average rate of referred customers 

17:50 - Tracking pin code-wise sales

18:53 - Covering every pin code in India

19:32 - Selling on Amazon vs independently

31:26 - Dealing with unhappy customers & negative reviews

27:05 - The problem with being on Flipkart 

30:17 - Why Hestia focuses on service despite a high quality product

36:45 - Setting up a lean service model

47:15 - Getting ideas from customers

53:00 - The benefits of selling through own website vs Amazon

An ad-supported business model for a media company is dead thanks to internet advertising, says our hippoBrain of this week—Samir Patil, the Founder & CEO of ScrollStack says.

But there’s something new on the rise—a new internet that will shape the way we consume digital media, much like how eCommerce has changed the retail business. All of this powered by a basic payments infrastructure. 

Hear the whole conversation as Samir Patil, ex-CEO of Amar Chitra Katha talks to Jaimit Doshi and Rajesh Jain about inheriting & modernising Amar Chitra Katha, setting up scroll.in and now revolutionising the online content community with scrollstack.

P.S.: Don’t miss out on the concept of two internets and how even a small content creator can monetise on the new internet in future!

If Kabaddi is India’s original game, then Arjuna awardee Anup Kumar is India’s original Captain Cool. Listen to one of the finest proponents of Kabaddi and India’s first Kabaddi Superstar talk about all things Kabaddi, including analytics! A hippoBrain conversation like no other.

Conversations can be very powerful. Sometimes, all it takes is one phrase or word to change your perspectives completely. That’s what this week’s conversation did to us—changed our perspectives towards economics, markets, pricing, and most importantly—India’s Constitution. 

This week, we have lawyer-turned-economist, Dr Shruti Rajagopalan, who researched about the Indian Constitution and its economic impact for her PhD. How she got there? That is an interesting conversation in itself. It all boils down to the controversy of giving farmer’s land in Singur to produce Tata Nano. 

But here’s the most interesting tid-bit to come out of this hippoBrain conversation—the Indian Constitution is at conflict with itself. 

You want to understand why India is not rich, look at the fault-lines etched in the Constitution. You want to understand the dynamics of Indian markets, look at some of the contradicting rules in the Constitution. 

And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Listen to Dr Shruti Rajagopalan talk to Rajesh Jain and Jaimit Doshi about the economic cost of a loose Constitution. 

She also talks about how we look at markets and pricing isn’t correct. A market, she defines, is an invisible social cooperation. Pricing, meanwhile, is a signal wrapped in an incentive. “When prices are allowed to function naturally, markets coordinate beautifully,” she says.

Seems like Civics & Economics 101? Not at all. These will be ideas that will last a lifetime with you, we can bet.

Here’s the map of the entire conversation:

00:00 - Introduction

02:30 - Journey from law to economics to Indian Constitution

09:55 - Why PhD on economics of Indian Constitution

15:50 - India’s Constitutional backdoor

17:53 - Why India’s Constitution is at conflict with itself

21:55 - The Market as a form of social cooperation

30:00 - Why Price is about signals, not money

36:45 - How Constitution can cripple markets using Tata Nano & Farmer protests as examples

46:40 - Why government should not intervene in markets

52:45 - India’s moonshot entrepreneurship

58:00 - Behind Dharavi’s Covid-19 success story

1:02:00 - Last words and summary

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Connect with us:

hippoBrain: https://twitter.com/hipp0brain

Rajesh Jain: https://twitter.com/rajeshjain

Jaimit Doshi: https://twitter.com/jaimitd

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Here are the books mentioned in the conversation:

- The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy by economists James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock - https://www.amazon.in/Calculus-Consent-Selected-Gordon-Tullock/dp/0865975213 

- I, Pencil by Leonard E. Read - https://fee.org/resources/i-pencil/ 

- Modern Principles of Economics by Tyler Cowen; Alex Tabarrok - https://www.amazon.in/Modern-Principles-Microeconomics-Tyler-Cowen/dp/1319182119 

- Marginal Revolution (Blog) - https://marginalrevolution.com

How do you transform a firm from inside out? Especially when the odds are stacked against you.   

When you transform legacies, being a third generation of the founder just makes the job tougher.  

Watch our hippoBrain, Anant Goenka, talk about how he started building a digital presence for the Indian Express group.  

 There are lessons here for everyone trying to keep up with the digital times—be it executives trying transform their companies, marketeers trying to build relationships with consumers, or even product managers looking to build the right solution.  

Listen to the conversation and tell us which part struck a chord for you.

What’s an Olympian swimmer and Arjuna Awardee doing on hippoBrain?

Meet Rehan Poncha, one of the best swimmers India has produced. He talks about what it takes to achieve the highest level and then restart your life and do it again.

His inspirational story had humble beginnings; he took up swimming as he was too shy to dance with a girl. Then wait till he explains his path to qualification for the Olympics. Shaving one precious second at a time to the point when he had only one fourth of second left to shave off in a day. 

And then after reaching the pinnacle of one sport, Rehan decides to do it again – this time in Golf!

As mortals, we have a lot to learn from these super humans, and none so articulate as Rehan as he breaks it down for us, explaining to us that to achieve greatness, you have to take your goal and break it down into smaller sizeable, achievable units that you can aim for.

Listen to the man as he talks about being driven as a child, missing parties, social interactions and jumping into freezing pools at 5 am just to train for one great goal, one milestone at a time.

After all, as Rehan says: “It is the easiest thing in the world to not choose sport, to not choose a life that demands so much of you in terms of effort, and just be a regular happy kid who goes to school, plays, grows up, goes to parties, dates and has fun.”

We present to you the ace swimmer and professional Golfer as he talks about his inspiring journey through various highs and lows, in our latest hippoBrain conversation with Jaimit Doshi and Rajesh Jain. It has lessons that, in Jaimit’s words, even a 45-year-old can draw some meaning from.

Here’s a map of all that Rehan talks about in this conversation:

00:00 - Introduction

01:44 - From 7 to 22 - The Swimming journey

08:33 - Even 0.25 seconds matter—qualifying for Beijing Olympics

20:48 - The highs and lows of success

23:40 - Setting the right goals to be persistent

30:19 - Is Swimming a lonely sport?

39:58 - Why Rehan chose Golf after retiring from Swimming

51:45 - The 4 pillars of success in sports

1:02:00 - Sport, life and entrepreneurship

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Connect with us:

hippoBrain: https://twitter.com/hipp0brain

Rajesh Jain: https://twitter.com/rajeshjain

Jaimit Doshi: https://twitter.com/jaimitd

#swimming #sports #rehanponcha #olympics #hippobrain #conversationsthatmatter

What can bees teach you about media planning & buying? Quite a lot, it turns out, as per Gautam Surath, Senior Vice President at Starcom. 

When bees fly out of their hives, majority of the bees go out to the regular locations—that’s where the chances of success will be higher. A small portion of bees, however, will go to new places, effectively in search of newer opportunities. 

This, Gautam Surath says, can easily be applied to Media planning & buying. 

While a media planner’s job is to ensure that as many consumers get the Brand’s message in the most efficient way possible, it’s also important to broaden the audience. That’s the only way to lay out the seeds for a fruitful tomorrow. 

This, however, can pose interesting challenges—where do you find the new set of audience? How will you estimate the ROI? How will you convince the client to spend on this new audience?

Listen to the full hippoBrain conversation to get some of these answers, while also enjoying interesting stories and anecdotes. After all, if you spend around two decades in media planning like Gautam Surath, you are bound to pick up interesting experiences along the way! 

Here’s the map of this week’s hippoBrain conversation:

00:00 - Introduction

01:05 - Two decades in short

03:41 - What to learn from China on media planning

07:31 - Why you need just two KPIs

10:54 - Learning media planning from bees

13:56 - Getting more customers for tomorrow

15:40 - New audience for Brand growth

18:38 - The problem with IPL, impact advertising

27:08 - When is impact property effective

32:47 - Using data to drive media planning

38:50 - Making the most of spillover audience

47:31 - 4 pillars of media planning

52:24 - Selecting a good media planner

55:36 - The future: Hyper-targeting vs mass targeting

58:26 - The problem with retargeting

01:01:55 - Focusing on creative vs target audience 

01:04:19 - Conclusion and key takeaways

#mediaplanning #mediabuying #marketing #advertising #conversationsthatmatter #hippobrain