Hello bloggers

I would like to share my experience as an engineering graduate who aspires to become a budding
enterpreneur. I remember the journey to my factory in Sriperumbadur from KMC in the rickety MTC
bus. I travelled almost everyday in that bus. It made me feel very humble but it was very tiring one as
well. In my intial days, I understood how the products were made in the machines, the process was
interesting. I din't do any marketing or sales work basically.

But one interesting product that we manufactured at the factory is the "Comet bed". We were the first
ones to manufacture a plastic top bed in the whole of india. For this we also did a bit of marketing at
the most popular retail store of the south "Saravana Stores" . Me and my friend Rohit, doing MBA in
IFIM currently, put a small stall outside the store where we promoted my product, made people aware
of such a unique product. We did lot of sales gimmicks, like my friend would somehow get people till
the stall and then dramatically I used to give the “sales pitch”, as my MBA friend calls it..! We would
also at times suddenly bring the bed out of the stall and ask many people to sit on it to demonstrate the
strength and durability of the product. This created lot of buzz and people thronged our stall. My friend,
Rohit would high –five and say we did EXPERENTIAL MARKETING..! I never understood his jargons..but
enjoyed the experience thoroughly. The market response now was overwhelming. People were almost
immediately ready to try out this new product. We made a stunning sales in that one week we had the
stall.

As an engineer I got great understanding about the mentalities of a wide range of personalities ranging
from the upper to the lower class of people, how they reacted, responded, what aspects attracted them,
what did not.

This was something new and completely different for me. I always as an engineer, undermined the
marketing and sales guys, but this experience changed my view.

Abhishek Chhalani

Sales job- A revelation

This was at a time when I was working as a management trainee, for a small SME, who were dealers of Raymond furnishings. I was doing all genres and functions of work there. Formulating inventory mechanisms,trying to professionalise processes and systems,working on functional areas like finance, marketing, sales, operations. Designing promotion tactics for creating market awareness. So it was a very satisfying and holistic experience.

Out of the many revelations while working, there is this one instance that still gives me goosebumps when I think about it. It goes this way.

It was a sultry and hot afternoon, typical of Chennai. I was roaming on my bike with a huge bag of fabric samples near T Nagar in search of star hotels who could be interested in our fabrics. As they are called in sales terms,  getting leads. After various visits to star hotels, I was just successful in getting all of their manager's visiting cards, but not successful in closing the deal ( get an order). But in sales, one has to see the glass always half full, even though there are just drops left! I thought of giving a last try and stepped in to this 2 star hotel. As soon as I got in, the doors opened to the lobby, where I was suprised to see a fat old man in white and white  wearing lungi, continuosly coughing. He looked like a typical autowala. My first impression of the hotel wasn't too great. So i ignored him and sat opposite him in a very nonchalant manner slouching in the comfortable sofa, waiting for the manager to come.

After some time, the manager came and I greeted him. He strongly replied saying first wish our chairman and pointed to that guy sitting opposite me..! who I thought was a autowala..! What a comedy of errors..I wanted to hide my face somewhere but had no option but to confidently give my sales pitch. I was showing the samples, when suddenly that old man told me, speaking almost British english, to freeze 2 designs and asked for the price.

Within 20 minutes I had a cheque in my hand, not too heavy but very valuable to me as it was my first order.
Then I realised that in life, especially in SALES - " Never judge a book, by its cover"..!

Rohit Bengani

             The Coldest Sales Call

It was the time, when I had just joined a company V-Tork Controls ( A valve manufacturer),I was travelling across various states to big public and private enterprises of different domains that includes JSW, Appollo tyres, Kochi Refineries..etc, I was a sales guy striving to get at least one order which will the first. I was in Mangalore travelling to Kudremukh Iron ore plant, thinking where to start whom to meet.

Finally I reached Kudremukh I could see no shops there, even a tea shop. I could see only huge walls, giant gates with five to six big security officers with gun in their hand. It was then I got a call from my boss… Sometimes securities are better than bosses. I went closer, there I saw a board in security office that has all the extension numbers of employees working there. Then I told that, I have an appointment with the purchase manager  to the security head and I told him the name of purchase manager which I heard from another sales guy near me, just a minute before.

The security told me to hold on for a minute, and then all of a sudden he gave me the  telephone saying that the purchase manager is in line. For me the crucial part was that I haven’t got his appointment till then . I heard a voice who is this, I told the same what I told the security to the manager, he told I don’t remember so. Then I affirmed that I got your appointment two days back please consider me sir, I have travelled all the way from Coimbatore to Mangalore. Then he told me to give the phone to security. I was tensed when the security  told me to get inside the company. I was a very excited, but the bad part was I coudnt express that. Its very difficult to enter into such a company as a student, as an aspirant but I am inside there as a sales guy.

I went to each and every department, being a mechanical engineer a little curious to know what is happening in the plant. Huge machineries, roller of the size of Giant wheelers running just closer to me, Captive power plants, Huge pipe lines, thousands of Valves which was our product. By then, only one thought struck my mind, Imagine if all these valves are of our brand. A thought of a typical sales guy,a little exaggerated but was the truth. I met some vendor development team members spend some time along with them inside the plant educating them about our product, meanwhile got educated from them. And the best part was , even though  I did something small I had a sense of accomplishment that I could able to forward some enquiries from Kudremukh to our company…

-

Suraj Kumar

Curious Case of the ITALIAN ECONOMY - A Footy perspective

Raj Shekar 
Aditya Raghavan


With EURO 2012 making news everywhere lets take a footy perspective of the Italian Economic Crisis.


Imagine an Italian national football team, with 2 forwards, 4 midfielders, and 4 defenders(and, of course, the goalkeeper).

Consider, a situation, where this football team resembles the country's current economy.The following players will take the positions, as listed:


Forwards-Product market regulation

One can think of two types of (bad) product market regulation:
-Call the First-inward oriented". It aims at protecting incumbent Firms from
potential domestic competitors, through entry restrictions and other means.

The result is the creation of rents, and their distribution to incumbents,                             
to the state, and to politicians. The inefficiencies generated by regulation
may be substantial, but incumbent firms are better off, and the state and
politicians are happy enough to go along.
- Call the second -outward oriented". It aims at protecting domestic Firms
from foreign competitors, through barriers to trade and other means.

 In this case, maintaining the first
type of regulation may become quite costly for incumbent firms. The inefficiencies
generated by inward oriented regulation may make it difficult to compete with
foreign firms. So, from the point of view of incumbents, the best reaction to
a decrease in outward oriented regulation may be to decrease inward oriented
regulation. In other words,One type of deregulation may well trigger
the other.Hence,the goals dry up !!




Midfielders/Playmakers-The country's economy

So why is Italy in soup ?

The reason is because its economy is so weak.The midfield is the heart of any football team, and if it is unable to  play ball, the team is bound to suffer on all the fronts.

Italy is plagued by poor regulation, vested business interests, an ageing population and weak investment, all of which have conspired to limit the country's ability to increase production.

Defence - Labor regulations

There is a clear inverse relation across countries between the degree of employment protection and the degree of unemployment insurance.If unemployment is painful, workers will lobby hard to avoid it, and ask for high employment protection. Governments may go along, thinking that it is much cheaper to have the firms provide employment protection, than having the government to pay for unemployment insurance.Starting from the Italian starting point, more generous unemployment insurance, in exchange for a reduction in employment protection, appears to hold the scope for an improvement in efficiency at little or no cost in social protection.A football team, in a crunch situation,tends to take a defensive approach.As a result, the team has no lead secured, to play for.

Goalkeeper- Financial Framework

In Italy there are a few large banks and many small and medium-sized banks operating on a regional scale. The crisis touched the larger banks, which lost funds as a result of the Lehman Brothers crash, or found their assets devalued by the stock-market collapse. However, Italian banks were  not very heavily involved in highly speculative sectors. The main problem for Italian banks, apart from the reduction in liquidity, came from links with Central and Eastern European countries,where had extended their network of branches.There was a risk of the collapse or illiquidity of this part of the network. Small and medium-sized banks instead reacted to the liquidity crisis by reducing credit to clients and consumers and raising the amount of collateral required for new loans. This policy reduced investment in machinery and houses and threatened the  small and medium sized firms in various sectors, in particular the most export oriented of them.  So, sectors such as real estate, house building and cars collapsed.A weaker financial framework affects the other industries as well.Thus, an incompetent goalie not only allowed goals, but also triggered the collapse of the entire team.

Hence,it is not all that difficult to envisage how and why did Italy, inspite of being such a superpower,land up in such a mess.

Full Time !!! :)


Content : Raj Shekhar
Concept : Aditya Raghavan

TEXTILE INDUSTRY - A VIABLE CHOICE



Hi all,this is the wonderful startup by students.

->I would like to share my views about my ambition.My aim is to start a textile business.Here is some info about textile history.

->India Textile Industry is one of the leading textile industries in the world. Though was predominantly unorganized industry even a few years back, but the scenario started changing after the economic liberalization of Indian economy in 1991. The opening up of economy gave the much-needed thrust to the Indian textile industry, which has now successfully become one of the largest in the world.

India textile industry largely depends upon the textile manufacturing and export. It also plays a major role in the economy of the country. India earns about 27% of its total foreign exchange through textile exports. Further, the textile industry of India also contributes nearly 14% of the total industrial production of the country. It also contributes around 3% to the GDP of the country. India textile industry is also the largest in the country in terms of employment generation. It not only generates jobs in its own industry, but also opens up scopes for the other ancillary sectors. India textile industry currently generates employment to more than 35 million people. It is also estimated that, the industry will generate 12 million new jobs by the year 2010.

As per the facts(http://business.mapsofindia.com/india-industry/textile.html)u can see that this is a blooming industry which has a lot of enterprenurial potential. So i request all buddies to consider this industry as a future business option.

Krishna Kumar

Advantage India- In Pharmaceutical Market 


By Rohan chowdhury                        

The Indian Pharmaceutical Sector has come a long way. Considered to be a non-existing sector during 1970, it has rose to a prominent provider of health care products, meeting almost 95% of the country’s pharmaceutical needs. Currently the Indian Pharma Industry is valued at approximately $8.0 billion. There are some competitive advantages of Indian Pharma Industry such as follows:

• The development of  cost-beneficial chemical synthesis for various drug molecules is excellent and cost effective.
• With a democratic set up, the country possesses a solid legal framework and strong financial markets. This has helped in establishing a cordial bridge between international industry and business community.
• The international pharmaceutical industry has discovered a wide range of  opportunities in India. The process of consolidation, which has become popular in the world pharmaceutical industry, has also taken place in the Indian pharmaceutical industry. The Indian pharmaceutical industry which is worth US $ 3.1 billion is growing at the rate of 14 % annually.

It is a fantastic student initiative. I am sure, through my experiences, that there is a huge demand for these services and more importantly, it can have a huge impact on your applications of marketing fundamentals. Good. Keep going.

Dr.Murthy