"The Serial Problems of Cereal in India"

On the weekend analysts meet, I bumped into quite a few analysts and on my micro-interviews with them, I gathered some glaring examples of why one "Global strategy" concept is a misconception often for the changing landscapes like India.

The popular cereal brand across the globe, got launched in India in the mid 90s, the command came from the headquarters in the US. The company thought, India is US during the late 70's and early 80s trying to catch-up. Thus the strategy that was executed for US during 70's and 80's would be apt for India in 1990's ( First Flaw!).
The cereal wanted to replace the "Breakfast" for Indians. It couldn't, this is 2007 and still not a major % opts cereal, why?

I interviewed about 15 house wives from various states in India, and gathered some interesting facts about India and it's way of thinking.

1. Breakfast- In the south, the preferred breakfast was "Idly", this was considered the healthiest since it cooks on steam and has lots of fiber and easy to cook, the cost of making idly per family relatively in expensive, get the dough prepared and the breakfast for the rest of the week is ready to go, every morning you eat fresh and hot breakfast.

2. Eating boxed food as the first meal is not considered healthy, eating food served hot is considered healthy

3.Milk(in the form of Malted drinks, coffee,tea) are supplements, if breakfast is to be replaced by milk then a significant portion of energy is missing and it might lead to kids under performing in schools

4. Many mothers opined that cereal might be a good snack during the evening, when kids rush back from school, but the perceived "breakfast" cereal does not qualify to be good snack in the afternoon/evening!

Thus clearly the cereal company was loosing the ground. They should try to brand themselves as a healthy snack, that can be savored any time.

India ahead
Last week, I had some work at Allahabad Bank. I hit the website and was glad to see a feature "Locate a Branch"- I located the required branch and called the phone #, no response ! I called another branch an office picked and helped me with the contact number. I wanted to give the feedback on Bank' site and it came back with a broken page-not a good sign !

I got to the bank (took an hour to get to bank-7 Kms an hour?) got done with the transaction and the officer was discussing the plight of Indian infrastructure and how it is impacting their business-his thoughts.

His questions were, when would we have china like infrastructure, when would we have Institutional framework like US- basically- when would we be like some one else- and answer was probably NEVER! definitely not in the life time of most of the late 1900's.

How would India Grow?

• By 2030, close to 20% of the world's population would be in India- the center of gravity is slowly towards the populous India- marketers cannot ignore India-simply because of the numbers
• India is getting less poor- the great Indian middle class is growing- I was talking to one of my friends and the following discussion came-up-" as kids it was a dream to start a life-style that dad's have provided with before their retirement-but most of us start a life style that is slightly above where dad's have ended (don't blame your dad- he gave the best life style possible, praise the liberalization march that is taking us forward)
• The private-public partnerships,the organized charity and innovations in education/health care/micro-finance to help the weaker India is in the best interest of stronger India- taken a collective look at all these efforts, these micro-events are all set to create history;
  
• The concept of gurukulams in AP to empower the rural youth to be employable is an example of innovation. The increasing shares of credit industry(remember a time? when debt was BAD, but for the poor who had no option but loan for survival, today loans are an indication of confidence in tomorrow)
• Most of the MNCs stopped asking whether it is India or China? it is now India AND china-- that speaks of our road ahead
  

Whoa ! All Work and N :( Play !

Work, Work and Work.. all work and no play... on a tremendous high, life has set some high expectations and tough deliverables(they are always tough!). A project with no clear requirements getting into User Acceptance Testing (a strategy to get requirements nailed down AT LEAST before the disaster), completely messed up work-out schedule; rapidly growing books,articles to read. Wow what a roller- coaster ride it had been.

I

1- Clear Direction: Nailed down on going ahead with the Functional requirements and completely put aside the RGE(that was the initial bible), different stakeholders had different versions of the bible!

2. Focused energies on the 20% of the system that drove the rest of the 100%!!

3.Kept pushing for near-perfectionism- pushed the QA to raise issues for the seemingly insignificant issues; pushed the Dev team to the limits of stretching the bouquet of skills.

4. Motivation Refuel- Got the team to party to celebrate small,weekly milestones, the moment I saw the signs of hard work,stress

The project is ready to deliver!

Life is getting back to control, I managed the energies of the team rather than mere time, working during the early hours and investing in some extra-hours over few saturdays(I don't think it is too bad to work on saturdays, it is all about priorities honey!), we kept raising the bars(of course the defects,Isn't it good to have them early?, fail-fast strategy)