Vishwadeep Kuila or Vishy helped build one of India's best-known brand of pens, Reynolds.
A long career journey that went all the way from his first job in a dairy plant near Varanasi
to qualifying for the Indian Institute of Management where he specialized in marketing
and shifted the course of his career.
Welcome to my first job where we find out what drives people, how luck plays a role
and the lessons they've learnt.
This is episode 7 and like every interesting career journey, it's full of twists, turns
and insights.
My name is Venu Gopal Nair.
I'm the host of this podcast and CEO of Ideascape Communications, an advertising agency into
branding, creative and design.
So settle in, sit back and enjoy the conversation.
Hi Vishy and welcome to the show.
Starting off, what is your typical day like and what is it that you do now before we go
into the first?
Okay, today I have a dual role, one where I'm on which is Brand Vectors, which I do
on my own because the proprietary company and we are a very small team.
It's a team of a few people who brand health and everything.
So it's not execution, but more about strategy.
So there's a small team there.
So I'm deeply involved there.
The other one, which is much larger and bigger and much ahead, which is Proklean, which is
one of the founder directors, we've kind of come to a mentorship stage.
We've got professional CEOs, we've got CEOs, department heads, vice presidents, full fledged
structure.
I spend more time there in Proklean, but more mentoring.
And you're into a category which is not, it's basically probiotic bacteria being used for
a number of purposes, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So it's a very unique thing.
In fact, most people don't understand when we tell them what are we doing.
So they think we are selling some health drink probiotic.
But that's been the whole difference.
The difference has been that probiotics was used in human health and animal health all
the time.
But we were one of the first companies across the globe who used it for industrial purposes,
replacing toxic chemicals.
You've come a long way from where you began in several small towns.
Where did it all begin?
What were the kind of career dreams and aspirations you had when you were young?
You know, music and you were very good at sports and you were in the East Zone team
as a goalkeeper.
You know, how did you and music and painting, it's as if you were trying out so many things.
So I don't know, initially, I was just, you just flow along with what happens to you.
As I said, that would pull us out of one place to the next place every two years or three
years.
I was born and brought up in a small town in Karnal in Haryana.
That's where my father was working for National Research Institute.
I started my schooling in Teghobali, which later became famous because of Kalpana Chawla,
then moved on to various places, moved to Mumbai was the only larger town that we moved
to and back to Karnal for second stand and then to Kalyani, which is the suburbs of Calcutta.
That's how we kept moving place to place.
Well, yeah, what it really is that while it, I sometimes feel that if I had been in one
school and focused on a good school because we moved from good government school somewhere,
we didn't get a great school.
So we moved on to some of the CBSEs everywhere that was the challenges which you faced, you
know, trains and we're trying to make friends traveling.
I used to commute 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, I used to commute about one and a half hours
in the morning by local train and again change at two trains and then go again come back
by that because there was no school nearby where dad was, no CBSE school.
So I mean those were challenges, but also I do feel what it really gave me of those days
where that you learn life skills so much more than what you learn if you've got everything
set.
There's a school bus coming taking you, getting bring you back.
Otherwise, you know, you can't, dad's car taking you and bring you back.
You don't, the kind of life skills that we learned was actually, I really feel it's helped
me a lot even till today.
You said when you passed out at 12th, you had to choose between a career in a not so
well known medical and dairy technology.
So that was one of the places where you had to decide one way or the other.
So I moved from Karnal in a very good Convent school to Kalyani where father got transferred
and Kalyani had a very poor school.
So I kind of lost interest in studies.
I went back into, I mean, I used to play a lot and keep playing volleyball, whatever
we do.
So those were not the days that parents used to go after you, study, IIT, AI, and all those.
So whatever we learned from our friends, that's what we figured out.
So we saw that some of my friends are preparing for medical and some engineering and this.
I was interested in medical because I was very good at biology from early days and my
parents thought I should become a doctor.
So I did, but obviously one had no idea about how competitive it can be and appeared for
it got some very small college in Calcutta.
And that really wouldn't have made sense.
And so I was planning to drop one year and prepare seriously for medical when my dad
said, yeah, you can do that.
And there's this, why don't you appear for daily engineering, which is not too bad.
You can also appear for that.
And if you get to the medical next year, you can come back and join this.
I said, okay.
So did that.
I got through to daily engineering.
Engineering always is and daily engineering especially was more fun and little bit of
studies interspersed between fun.
So I mean, one didn't want to come back and leave that place.
So we do realize a lot of things which we learned there is useful even today, especially
today because I'm in handling microbes and all that I learned about microbiology there
and context of dairy is coming very handy here for me to understand how the products
behave and what.
So was the college fairly well set up?
Yeah, that's the college.
Yeah.
National Research Institute is the Asia's best Institute in dairy and the college is
actually known to be the Asia's best dairy college.
That was fine.
Very good facilities.
And then, okay.
So then dairy technology and then you decided that you're going to go ahead and plunge into
it full time or you had some kind of, you know, somewhere at the back of your mind saying,
am I going to do this all my life or what was going on?
It may sound a bit funny, but let me tell you frankly, that even then I had no clue
what I wanted to do in life.
Got into dairy engineering, was doing dairy engineering, had no clue what to do next.
Thought, okay, we'll pick up a job.
And then my father said, we want to do an MS in the US because he was very well connected
in the dairy industry in the US.
And he said, I just have to pick up a phone and talk to them.
They'll you don't even have to pay for GRE and all just one profile should be good enough.
You'll get through.
Okay, again, at the same time, I wanted to just try out a job.
So I said, let me first look at the job.
That excitement that I'm going to start earning was this quite a bit.
So then I got through to, you know, after my dairy engineering, got through to Pradesh
cooperative dairy federation, which is UP dairy federation and Parag dairy.
And that's where I started my career in a factory as a shift in charge.
Tough life, you are 40 kilometers away from Varanasi, which itself is a small town that
time and it was like a village and there you are 40 kilometers.
It was like a, they're quite infested place almost.
So where the dairy plant was.
One of the things that being in a tough environment teaches you is like the life skills part,
which you said in the traveling to school and college.
This one gives you a different set of perspectives.
Absolutely.
I can't forget how much it taught me.
I mean, I was, I was just 21 when I became the shift in charge and I had to manage supervisors
and workers who are 50, 45 that age.
And they used to look at me like this little kid has come here to, you know, try and tell
us what to do is, is, I mean, it was very difficult to even convince them that, you
know, they should listen to their UP is a very militant area.
So in fact I had almost threats of killing and all that stuff.
There was, there were neck threats and everything.
So all that happens.
It is a nice seven, eight months, close to nine months that I was there before I, I had
to, I think it was very difficult.
I mean, well, I was doing it.
I didn't think that I would learn too much beyond a point where they, because I looked
at those supervisors and all they've been doing that for a long time.
They're doing the same thing.
And I didn't see how I could contribute in a big way over there.
That's when I was asking my other colleagues, they say, ah, we're preparing for cat and
I said, Oh, what is this cat?
So let me just look at it.
That, you know, I had no clue what this is.
I knew something called management stuff and then how do you prepare?
There's no nothing is somewhere sitting in, you know, Ramnagar way beyond Varanasi.
There was no way that one could prepare.
So somebody told me, you can take this national school of banking book on this or something
from somewhere you pick up and then you study the GMAT book was available.
And that's how that's, that was the preparation for cat.
So that's how one did.
I tell people, I mean, how I appear for my cat exam.
I would go from Ramnagar to Mughalsarai by bus and night I would catch Mughalsarai, get
into an undeserved compartment, come to Delhi.
My center was in DPS Mathura road.
So can't do anything.
And from there, stick at it on the bus, go to DPS Mathura road, actually use the loo
there, wash yourself and then sit for your cat exam there.
And that's how I did both cat and as well as the interview.
So those are very different days of how one would be.
You got through on your cat in the very first.
Yeah.
So it was, I mean, this is the kind of thing that the quota factories take three and four
years or five years.
Yeah.
Natural brilliance or pure genius.
I think to be very honest, those days were cat was not so competitive.
If I were to give you the statistics, the year which I got through it, there are total
candidates only were 25,000 who appeared for cat.
Today, if you look at it, it's 10 times.
It's at least three lakhs, two and a half, three lakhs people appear for a cat and very
high, very, very high scores.
If it was today, I wouldn't have made it ever.
So that's very clear about it.
So yeah.
So there I think.
But you didn't have any kind of clue as to what the, you know, kind of you had some experience
with the paper and how it, what kind of questions and.
Yeah.
So some of those, I mean, I didn't have too much of a clue as to how it would be.
I knew it was a multiple choice and this is how it is.
I mean, that that's how one went in.
But I think the good part was that a lot of people were clueless like me who appeared
there.
So I mean, unlike today where everybody knows even the nuances, you know, the coaches tell
you everything, they all of us are like completely clueless as to what we are going for.
We are going to appear for an exam, we are going there to appear for it.
Once I got through, it was a very different phase in which.
Do you remember anything of the interview?
Those days we used to have GD and interview both.
So these days GDs have been, I forget the topic, something where not much of clue on
what is happening and GD, I mean, everybody is almost literally screaming and not letting,
allowing you to not used to fighting like that for attention.
I literally was quiet.
So moderator said, why don't you let him say something, few things I think he liked.
So I made it to interview.
Interview was fantastic.
I think I answered only one question.
Technically, all questions were good.
I mean, I answered on Terry and all that.
But after that, he went on to suddenly saw that what is your hobby painting?
He went on into who's painted this one and who's this one?
And then I don't know.
I don't know.
He said, oh, you paint.
You have no, I said paint, but I have no clue about this artist.
So I was very sure that I'm not going to make it.
But somehow I said, it's like, if you imagine a situation where F1 car is at this peak acceleration
and lifted above the road and suddenly you drop it on the road, how it will take off.
If you survive for six months, I didn't know I was, whether I was coming or going, a difficult
time.
I mean, I remember my first day when they're very happy and we said, okay, you've got to
collect your course material.
So I went to the course material section and they said, yeah, here's your course material.
They give you a slip, you have to submit it and they'll give you your course material.
This was about one and a half, two feet of cyclostyle notes and some reference books,
everything and plus books given.
So I barely carried it.
And while trying to carry it, I turned around and said, so is that all for the term?
Told me this is for this week.
That was my first shock of my life that I got it.
I said, come again.
I said, this is for this week.
Next week you'll get your next, you know, but you know, there is no way you can pass
IIM by studying every bit.
That's what I think.
If you want to study from beginning to the end, you'll never pass because you won't even
finish 20% of what they really prepare you for us to read real life.
That's how you're going to be.
You're going to be flooded with information.
There'll be information all around you.
You really need to outsmart the system and understanding what is it that you need to
go through, what you don't need to go through.
How do you quickly make decisions based on what needs to be read, what doesn't need to
be read, how, what you can't be just working like a donkey from first page to the last
one.
That's what, that's what whoever cracked that made it.
But we had very brilliant students.
Also you are actually dropped out after having mental stress and all that.
So then again, the equation really changes how strong you are mentally.
And that's why sometimes I feel I possibly survived.
I am because from small town, you're mentally far more stronger than children who are growing
up in city with a lot of comfort and that's how possibly the mental toughness with them.
So once you wrapped up IMA, obviously then it becomes a question of what is it that you
want to do next?
So dairy and advertising, if I remember right, is that what you decided to take up?
I am, I got very interested in marketing.
I love marketing subject somehow and marketing and advertising both were my favorites.
I maxed those subjects.
I used to get very good marks on that and some of my friends used to tease me saying,
no, no, no, no, it's your handwriting, which gives you good marks because those days we
still used to write our paper.
So that's about it.
I maxed all those subjects, marketing and then I decided that yes, it's going to be
marketing.
So my first choice was if I could, would happen that if I got into levers or PNG or Godrej
or something, so I mean, I'll go in marketing.
If not, second choice would be advertising.
So as it happened, two of us were picked up for Godrej and I was very happy we joined
Godrej.
Most of it was to give a Maluti car at the end of, right in the beginning.
So that was, that was a big happy.
So happened that somehow they decided that no, this year we'll take only one, not take
two after giving them.
So I was suddenly, after having come out of the placement, I had to get back into placement
because it suddenly changed my mind.
So then my second choice was, because Nestle had also selected me, but they wanted me to
go back into production.
So I didn't want to get back to production.
I said marketing, they said few years you'll have to do in production.
Then that didn't look like, you know, that would happen.
So I decided to get into advertising, which was my second love.
And I loved my stint in advertising six, seven years that I was in three agencies.
That was, I loved my stuff.
Why don't we go back to some of those early days and what your experience of learning
and actually on the job and what advertising was like.
Really happened when I came to advertising was I thought, I mean, there's, we've learned
so much and I'm going to apply all that.
I've been being inclined, so I was saying, I'm going to give my clients a lot of yarn
and tell them as to what I've learned in marketing.
And then the, you know, the hammer hit pretty early when it told you, you are a client servicing
the run around, get artworks, make sure that your artworks are on time.
Make sure that, you know, you reach the client's place on time.
Make sure you convince the client that this is okay.
This creative is fine.
And this is your to go back because if you don't convince them, you get creative director
also on the other side.
So, I mean, suddenly I found what like in Hindi, they say, neither belong to the agency
nor belong to the client side.
So you are, you're like hit ball, like a volleyball here and there.
But it was good.
Really learned the basics of advertising.
Those days, there's nothing that one cannot do.
So I've sat and cut to have the fonts.
Yeah.
Letters, I think the one.
Yeah, it's a letter set.
You can paste those and make an artwork.
I've had and does done those.
One 32 in the night and gone and woken up the typeset man from his home and brought him
to the typesetter place because there's a mistake that needs to be corrected.
And there's not like today, you just corrected on the type set.
So I've done those.
I've done those.
I've done those, I've done those, I've done those, I've done those, I've done those.
So I've done those.
And then back to the
What do you mean?
What are they?
Just look at those words, food.
What are they?
Th so what means is what are the names of these guys?
Keep them in.
Don't eat them.
your keyboard wire, you can't do that. There were a lot of things, you were going to make a positive,
if it is a color, then you would give it to for color separation, all kinds of things.
Do you remember any of the campaigns that you presented and some of the interactions
that you had with clients? Oh yeah, I mean, you know, when I was in
Akash Swami, that's where I started my career, Akash Swami B.V.D.O. So I was handling then
Ashok Leiland and Shaw Ellis. So Ashok Leiland being more of a industrial client, that time it
was more we used to do the brochures for various trucks and all those. And we did a corporate
campaign and a corporate, you know, AV and those kind of things. But Shaw Ellis was launching their
first mosquito mat. And we had to shoot a film, we shot a film and, you know, we had to do the
packaging and the creatives. So I remember a very good first time we were doing this shoot. And
that's my first TVC shooting, Tara Mosquito Coil. So the model is there and the kid is there.
In those days, they didn't use dry ice and all that. They used to use kerosene smoke to create
the smoke for the night. The light is coming through the window at night and all that. And
suddenly the kid's mother comes running inside, tum mere bache ko maar doge, maa leke jaa rahe ho.
And she ran away, literally ran away with the kid. We had a tough time trying to, you know,
console her and get back and finish the shoot quite quickly. So I mean, studying from those
kind of thing. And then we had the packaging. The packaging went to this, should say plant-based
repellent, not harmful for kids. That not from the, this dropped, dropped for whatever it is.
That piece only from the artwork had dropped. And that packaging, a few lakh packaging got printed
with harmful for the kids. My God, which is harmful for kids. Because not got dropped out there. So
I mean, imagine the situation. Imagine the tension that would be there to just break the
sleeves to the client and then... Forget about breaking it. Breaking it to Sundar Swami was my
biggest problem. And then I had to go walking to Sundar's room and say, Sundar, this is the goof
that has happened. He looked at me and very quietly said, what? So who was smoking pot?
I said, no one. Sundar just dropped like this. He took care. He spoke to the client and...
Okay. That was a large print run. It was a fairly large...
About a lakh and a half print run. I mean, it was not a small print run.
Yeah. I know.
You learn very early. You're happy in these days of digital where the number of only okay,
but packs still have to be printed. You can't get away from it.
Yeah.
So when did you get to the point where you could start giving clients
Gyan, which is what you dreamed of right to the...
Never. I grew from account executive till account director and did the same thing. I didn't do
anything different than what I was doing as an account executive. Only I had two people whom I
could tell them, I go run around here, run around here, do this or three people. That's the only
difference that happened. Client didn't listen to me as an executive, didn't listen to me as
an account director either. He told me all that is fine, but this is what you do. Whatever you
did tell me is fine, but this is all I want you to do. So we did that all the time.
That's the thing that when you... There's such a huge difference between what is taught in college
and how you're raring to go and you think that you're out to change the world. And then suddenly
you hit this wall where reality bites. Then you realize that, no, but you have to start literally
from the beginning all over again.
So what I would actually grant it to all my education is that they prepared us to deal with
situation. I mean, it's not the information and knowledge that really made us, but they made us
how to deal with situations. I think one thing which IM does to you, or any, I would say,
not just IM, but most of the MBAs, what MBAs do to you is they really sharpen your ability to
figure out a situation quickly and come out with solutions and you're not... You're never going to
have all the information in your hand to come up with that you know everything all the time.
But they teach you how to get your information, how to analyze it, how to get the interpretations
out of it and quickly work on it or even manage situations, how to manage people, how to manage
clients, all that has been great.
Yeah. So you remember, like you said, I think you already answered that. You said early days
of the agency was basically running around and ensuring that things were happening.
Yeah. Most of it was really... And there you had to have physical meetings.
Oh yeah. Yeah. There was no escaping the physical meeting and presenting also. Because I remember
the artworks, getting all that done was actually quite a job. It was very easy and then sending
it off to media. But I think we're getting into the nuts and bolts of advertising, but
let's go back to it. So when did this switch happen?
So actually it was more of an accident. I moved out of Mudra, as you would know, after I got
married and husband and wife are not allowed to be in the same agency. So obviously they
preferred the wife to the husband. So they kept the wife and told the husband to get out. So
I was fortunate enough that David said, okay, will she come with me? We'll stay here. So
I was fortunate enough that David said, okay, will she come with me? We'll start this interact
vision. That's how it happened. So we had a good time in interact vision handling Henkel as a
client that was mostly a sole client, I would say we were handling prominently. There was a lot of
work there. But I think that's the time when I handled the client for about three months or so.
So he kind of remembered me, asked the recruitment agency that, do you know this guy? He was in
between there. He was in Mudra. Where is he? So they said, yeah, he's there, very much there. But
that's how they called me and then said, come over. So I was, as usual, very unsure because it's a
that they were the completely owner driven company run by two gentlemen. I was, I would say,
after Mr. Ishwadas, I was the first professional to attend that. As my luck would have it, I joined
and Mr. Ishwadas left. So I was left holding on to this myself. So that was, but then it was again
another phase of learning how do you grow with an entrepreneur and how you grow the organization
in an entrepreneurial organization. And it was a very tough category, right? At that point,
hardly any brands were there in pens was really difficult to establish a pen brand. So,
Reynolds. Yeah, it was difficult. So the, I would say it was a very difficult category as far as
distribution is concerned and, you know, marketing and distribution is concerned. I was fortunate
that the, this client was very marketing savvy. I think if you know, Mr. Kader has always been
who was that time handling marketing. He was very savvy, native intelligence to the next level. So
he always, he would always, if I say that we'll spend one crore, he'll say, no, that's not enough.
We should spend two crores, two and a half crores. He knew really was to establish a brand and he
believed in brands in our entrepreneurial organization. But what you learn is that you
got to not only grow, but you got to grow the entrepreneur along with you. Grow the entrepreneur.
So here, what exactly did you need to do? Where does the problem come in an entrepreneurial
organization that as professionals, you think differently and as entrepreneurs, they think
different. Both of us have the same objectives. The root to that objective is slightly different
and our root to that objective is like, I also want to grow the brand. Okay. So I would say the
way to go the brand is this way, you know, you will invest. How do you invest? How you do this?
And for them to actually be able to, you know, buy that you need to be able to work with them,
get them in their confidence. So they also grow in the thinking that what you're doing along with
you. So what I mean is if there is gap in thinking between a professional and an entrepreneur, you
always going to have friction and clashes. You've got to bridge that. You'll never be able to do
that 100%, but you've got to bridge that as much as possible. And that's a very large, that's a big
task. So you remember some of the things that, where there would be differences in points of view
and how you change some of those things. Oh, very much. I mean, you know, a lot of areas,
as I said, as far as the, you know, marketing, they're very tuned to marketing. So I would,
I was fortunate there was an issue on that. First time I went there and I looked at, I said,
okay, show me the media plan. Hindu three insertions to be so and so. Then there is this channel,
so many ad, so many insertions at to be so and so. So I asked him, is this the media plan?
He said, huh? Wait, this is not, where in our, so I said, no, no, I want to know what is the
deliverables, what is the reach, what is the nonsense. All those are nonsense. We know what
is doing well, we will tell you. So you do that. So it started with that. And then imagine from
there, I could take the client to where we were the second client in the country to be the AOR,
to adopt AOR, media buying basically. That two initiative media tells me that our facts of
approval was two minutes later than ITC. So ITC was the first client in this country who accepted,
went on for media buying as a separate agency. And we were the second one. So that transition
that you're going to make them to come to is very difficult. They don't easily, you know, accept it
because with no bad intention, they've done the things differently. They need to be able to
convince that yes, this is what this guy is saying. It makes sense once you do that. So I think
after a couple of years, I mean, two, three years, they were pretty convinced about whatever I was
saying. They would listen. I literally was the blue eyed boy then. So it was so where I could get,
I mean, imagine a small company getting Sachin as a brand ambassador on those days and
they heard me out. So what is that like? What was the thinking behind getting Sachin as a brand
ambassador there? You know, various places, things happen. So I always believe you use a brand
ambassador for two reasons. Either there's a brand fit, if not, you can still use him for media impact.
As long as it's the brand ambassadors not giving a negative doing something negative to your brand,
even if it's not doing something very positive to your brand, a good brand ambassador will
have a multiplier effect on the media because of the recall that you make it and those days
it was not so cluttered with. That is the other problem which is there now. Today everybody's
confused as to who's advertising for whom. It was not so much. The biggest advantage that I had at
that point in time was Sachin had been away for close to a year with a shoulder injury and
he missed his best to restore. And so literally he had very few endorsements at that point.
And the third good thing was Harish Krishnamacharya, you know, who was Mudra. So he was heading,
you know, the world sport group WSC and he was handling Sachin's endorsement. So when I called
him and said, actually, I didn't call him. He came and told me once, hey, why don't you consider him?
So I said, oh, I can't afford him. And he said, tell me, you know, what is the budget and all,
because he's right now not being doing much. So we could think of something. And then we spoke.
So initial reaction, of course, of the entrepreneur was, do you think you want to spend this kind of
money? But it didn't take me too much time. And less than a week, I actually signed up Sachin and
then we had an amazing journey for, I think, five, seven, 10 years, close to 10 years.
He was a brand ambassador for 10 years. Yeah. Even after I left, he was there for about five years.
For five years. I left in 2008. I got him in 2004. And then another four or five years after that.
So eight, nine years, he was the brand ambassador. Yeah. Actually, you spent a couple of minutes on
that. Like you said, now it has reached a position where media is suffused with people think of
building brands using brand ambassadors as shortcuts to building a brand. Saying that if I get
a well-known name, I reduce the time required for my brand to get better. Do you subscribe to that or
do you have a different take on it? So it's like this, you know, Venu, if your nail is not sharp,
you need a bigger hammer to hammer it into the wall. Right. So if your brand story is not sharp,
your proposition is not sharp. You will use media muscle. You'll use all other kinds of muscles to,
you know, drive your name with all due respect to Unilever. Most of their strategy is based on
media pressure. They just bang the message home. So I believe that if you have a very sharp
proposition and a great product in the shop proposition, there's no need for any brand
ambassador. Of course, if there is a brand ambassador has got a very, very strong
relatability to the brand, then it always helps. But getting just brand ambassador, just because I
don't know what else to do. So he's doing brand ambassador. Let me also do brand ambassador. I
mean, that's that doesn't work. And very often, you know, it ends up being a waste of.
Okay. So in the eight years that you were there at GM pens, what are the changes you saw in the
overall writing instruments market? Writing is only in school. And I think a predominant part of
writing instruments are based out of school and college sales because offices, it's almost
everything has moved to typing on laptops, even signatures these days.
So I was there for 13 years, by the way. I was there in GM pens for 13 years.
13 years. Okay. Wow.
So as a category, it matured quite a bit earlier. If you looked at it, the Indian writing instruments,
we remember when before Reynolds came in was all those 50 Pesar refills and 30 Pesar refills,
which after writing for a few lines, it will stop and then you'll put it on the candle and heat it.
And again, it will start writing. And again, you're good on it. And that's the quality which
was available. And, you know, with Reynolds, it matured to a level where we could get international
quality writing experience, at least if not the looks and the features. But as it happened,
every business is a good business till everybody knows it's a good business.
Very quickly, a lot of people came to know those who were making unrelated things like Panparag
decided to come into writing instruments, people making all kinds of different things started
coming into writing instruments. With those kind of things, the competition grew, but it also did
a lot of good too in the category. But of course, as we all, we think that, you know,
the writing came down, what happened to the market, did it crash or did it become like high priced and
low volume or something of that sort, nothing of that sort. The prices were going down,
writing instruments were one where the prices remained very, very low for a very long period
of time. Because so competitive category is that there's a five rupee price point, you can't exceed
that. And there's a 10 rupee price point and you put anything in between, it will not sell.
So, you know, those kind of and very, very competitive. But contrary to what people
thought that the writing instrument market is shrinking, it kept on exploding. Why? Because of
very simple reason that there are certain things you can only purchase as much as you consume,
which is like salt, atta, dal, you will only purchase as much you can consume. But if you look
at your garments, your other thing, you don't buy as much as you consume. I mean, today your
cupboard is overflowing with clothes, you don't know what to do. There are enough that you don't
even open the label and you give it off to your maids and servants. That's very different. So that
is the affordability and as the affordability increased, we used to go to for our exam with one
pen and one spare refill. That's all we had with. Now, if you look at a child's instrument box,
it'll have some eight, 10 kinds of pens from 15 rupees, 10 rupees. And, you know, they're all half
of them, they dry up, then they throw it into the dustbin, then they go back and buy another one.
It's not about, you know, usage, but it's about possession. So the possession of writing instruments
kept growing up constantly. Though the writing kept coming down, the possession kept growing up.
That's how that's also done by the industry because what they do is, I mean, when you come
out with new variants, new varieties, people want to own that. And then you go with another one,
they want to own that. That's how it keeps growing. Okay. Now having done so much,
what do you think would have changed if you had started? I'm not able to imagine myself being very
planned about having, you know, I will do this and go after it. Not really. But I know today's world
is very different. So if it is an advice for today's people, I would really say that it's not about
what is a great career choice, what is a great line, what is doing great, you know, where you can
get a big job. I think it's very important for you to figure out very early in life what you like.
In today's competitive world, you cannot be doing something which you don't like and still
do better than the other guy. The other guy who likes that and he's doing it will always outshine
you when you're doing it as a chore kind of a thing. And, you know, every day I'm doing it to
earn money. But the other guy is doing it because he loves it. He'll always outshine. In my view,
I think today's world has also got options. I mean, when we were there, it was engineering,
medical, that's it, the end of the list. Today there's so much of it. Everything is around there.
I mean, anything you do, do it better than most people. And you've got a business or you've got a
career. That's all you need. Nothing that you have to be an engineer. You know, spinning the disc,
you will make a great DJ, you'll earn much more than anybody else, you love it and you'll
you've got a career. So, I mean, I'm very happy to see, you know, my driver earns much more than
what my son started earning once he finished his engineering from VIT. That's good to see that
physical labor is also being respected. It's not just about a degree or course. What is going to
happen in future is it's not going to be education alone. It's going to be, it's going to be skill.
You've got to have skills which your employers really are looking for. Education is fine. That's
the background. But the skills are very, very important. That's what I keep telling people,
develop your skills. Because that's changing. Every day it's changing. Things are changing every day.
It's important to be there. I would say, I mean, everybody tells me and I mean, I also think I love
teaching. I love teaching and a lot of people do tell me that I'm a career and as a teacher,
a professor. So, the option that I had in the US was to do a MS, PhD and get into academics. So,
sometimes I do feel it could have been maybe much more peaceful and laid back, but I wouldn't have
been unhappy even that. That would have been a good option for me because I think that is something
that you can still continue to pursue. It's not, do you feel that this is the one or do you feel?
So, interpersonal skill is a skill which is universal. You can't do anything in an organization
or at home or anywhere without interpersonal skill. So, I wasn't really talking about the
interpersonal skill part of it. That was always required. Even earlier it was required. When we
were there, it was a key thing. It has been the key thing throughout as long as I think jobs and
even before jobs, even at home interpersonal skill is still important. You still need that to survive.
Yeah, maybe even more than job, you need interpersonal skill at home. But what I was
talking about is, if you look at what's happening today, the things are getting specialized. From
specialists, then came the era of MBAs where generalists became the norm and specialists
were paid very little and generalists who managed them got paid very high. It's moving back from
there that generalists are not really required so much as much as specialists are being looked for.
That as they call it, the ICs, the individual independent contributors, that's the stage which
is coming to everybody's talking about independent contributors. I mean, how much can you contribute
into independence? For that, you need to develop those skills. For instance, let me tell you,
I have been into marketing all the time. Suddenly this whole marketing scenario has changed into
digital and performance marketing. Now, I have no clue about what these things are. I'm learning,
I'm acquiring those skills. I'm acquiring those skills and skills that you've learned earlier into
performance marketing or digital marketing. I cannot sit and say, my time marketing was like
this, I'm going to do it that way. So I'm going to keep changing and acquiring those skills. That's
what I mean by skill. So what is it that you see different? I know digital is a whole new ball game,
but what are you struck by? What are the differences and where do you see the change?
So the change is predominantly with the consumer. I wouldn't say as much as with
product or the environment or the marketer as much as the marketer follows what's happening
to the consumer. If the consumer demand is changing, marketer has to follow it. Otherwise,
you're not going to sell. So what's happening to consumer is that consumer has become fickle
because of options. When you look at product, there are hundreds of product options. When you
look at media, there are hundreds of media options. When you look at the pressure for his time,
he is distracted all the time. Attention span is so low. So you are, you're going to understand
who you're selling to. Earlier, you were selling to a guy who would sit for one and a half hours
watching Mahabharat on a Sunday and that's all he will watch through the day. After that, he has
nothing else to watch. So the whole day, he will repeat the dialogues of Mahabharat for,
the kid will repeat for the next one week to 10 days till the next Mahabharat happens. I mean,
that's not what it's going to be today. They're on their mobile. Just constantly information is
flooded at them. So that's a very different animal compared to what it was. I mean, I would say our
generation when we were kids or we were the key consumers at that point in time. So today's
consumer is very different. And the whole challenge is in how do you get their attention in such a
fragmented, there will be two steps ahead on, you know, features all the time, because they,
the information is accurate information is available to them. So they are able to compare
and contrast very easily and then pick the right ones. We will be always ahead. So that's a huge
task for the marketer. And is that good or bad, Vishi? Because today in, if you look at a mobile
phone, you know, there's a huge amount of pressure on companies to come up with a new model practically
every year. And how much can you really change? Because if you look at, yes, it's the processor
speed and it's got down to things like does the phone lag a bit, you know, because essentially
the difference ever since the iPhone came up with the slab or all phones look, smartphones look the
same. The pressure is how do you differentiate and how do you say that you're better than the other?
The differences have become miniscule. Do you think that's true or do you think have a different
take on it? So, so competition is going to be technology is become very easy today. Earlier
technology was a differentiator. Today technology is not a different. You can buy the technology
from wherever you want to. The same guy is ready to make for 20 different people the same phone.
I mean, today, you know, Philips is making electronic products for Samsung. Samsung is making
for Philips. They're interchanging and they're making for each other because technology is not
differentiator anymore. So it's a marketing, it's a product ideas. I mean, some of them which is,
so how do you, how do you, you know, package it and put it across to the customer, those things
are becoming far more important. And that's a good or bad. Well, I am a believer that we need to
simplify our lives, it's getting too complex. But that's a wish, which I don't think is going to
come. I mean, it's going to be fulfilled because change is a one way thing and human nature or
wanting to want something new and different every day is a one way. They're not never going to go
back and say, I'm going to simplify my life. There will be a few sadhus or a few people who
wish that we go back and simplify our lives, but it's not going to happen. Every new generation is
going to keep on pushing that envelope towards more and more variety in our products. It's a
one way thing. Wonderful Rishi. So from that time in Karnal to the dairy factory to getting into
IIM, Ahmedabad to figuring out advertising and then building what is arguably one of India's
best known pen brands to a career as an entrepreneur, which we've not been able to get into, but this is
essentially about my first job. So I think that is where, so thank you for taking the time and
it's been a wonderful session and thank you for coming on board and all the best. Thanks,
Venu. Thanks. It was great. It was a pleasure talking to you and sharing a lot of it. Recall
was wonderful. Thank you. Thanks everybody. My first job, the podcast is a production from
Ideascape Communications. Guest relations, promotions and creative is managed by Deepa Ravi with
occasional support by Venu Gopal Nair. Archiving and technical help is provided by LPS Jayachandran.