Vejay Anand graduated as a pharmacist but then went into doing an MBA.
Marriage, advertising and product marketing happened.
He joined Cafe Coffee Day during its meteoric rise in India and put in systems and standard
operating procedures to drive efficiencies.
He blew hot and cold, moving from coffee to beer.
His love for teaching and writing led him down the path to becoming a brand historian
and on his blog, he has several stories for those who are interested.
This is episode 13 of My First Job, the podcast that covers engaging career journeys and every
single one is 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 Vejay and welcome to the show.
Thanks Venu.
Thank you so much.
I heard the introduction.
So each person is unique.
You have an amazing following on LinkedIn.
You have over 15,000 followers.
You have 45 recommendations, which is amazing.
Let's start off with the present from a hot beverage like coffee to cold microbrewery
like beer, which is your current assignment.
What is the difference?
Yeah, the hot and the cold, right?
The alcohol and the non-alcohol and very less of alcohol and the caffeine and less of caffeine.
But you know, if you really ask me, the kind of people who drink in a sense are different,
but they're not, you know.
At the end of the day, I think it boils down to the fact that you want to have a good time.
It's not like earlier when alcohol drinking alcohol was like, oh my God, it's like taboo.
I remember when I was a kid.
Is this something, it wasn't always very easy for you to make friends even back in school
in Kolkata was it?
I'm what they call an extroverted introvert.
So I get along with a lot of people, but in a sense, I'm an introvert.
I restrict myself to a certain number of people who I talk to regularly.
So it's a very strange, it's kind of an oxymoron.
I believe it's the way I've been brought up.
So for example, you know, my grandparents' house in Kerala, even strangers could come
and have food at home.
So you had that upbringing that you have to be social, you have to talk to people, respect
everyone and different parts of society walking in.
And everyone was given that respect at home in Kerala.
And so was the case at home, you know, I mean, my father had a transferable job.
So that kind of percolated throughout very comfortable talking to, you know, putting
my arms around my office support or even the, you know, the senior management.
But that's, I mean, I owe a lot to it the way I've been brought up actually to my parents
and my grandparents.
So what were the first glimmers of a career like?
Very, very good question.
I think I can go on and on and on.
I love science.
I wanted to be an architect or do something with biology, very, very differing points,
differing.
But yeah, then I decided that I'll do something with biology, but I didn't want to be a doctor.
So the next next good thing was to be a pharmacist.
So I actually did my graduation in pharmacy.
Okay.
I graduated in pharmacy.
And strangely enough, I enjoyed pharmacy, let's be frank, I like science.
My goal was to do a post-graduation in pharmacy and then probably do a PhD.
So I had got admission in one of the universities in the US for my post-graduation.
I had a year or so to pass.
It might sound very strange, but I was bored.
So I wrote an entrance exam for the MBA / PGDM.
I got through.
So I said, okay, fine.
I have the time.
Secondly, there was another reason also, I had got married very early.
So I said, okay, fine.
Let me study and spend some time with my wife.
I mean, she was my girlfriend prior to that.
So we took up a place and it worked very well.
What really worked for me, what really interested me was marketing.
I was always interested in marketing even prior to joining an MBA.
There's a magazine called A&M and I used to devour that.
I used to read and read and read that.
And I had a cousin of mine who used to buy these every issue and I used to read every
issue, borrow from him and read it.
So that really interested me.
I never thought I'll have a career in marketing.
When I joined my MBA stroke PGDM, that's when I decided that, you know what, marketing is
my true calling and let me get into marketing.
And even within marketing also, I decided I'll not get into pharmacy.
I will get into the consumer side of things.
I found that to be far more exciting.
It is a personal choice.
There are people who got into pharmaceutical marketing and love it.
I decided, no, I want to be in the non-pharmaceutical kind of thing.
And here I am, selling beer for a living now.
I had a maths tutor, Dr. Bharti Banerjee, who incidentally was my mom's professor.
And she was a lady who encouraged me to do a lot of things.
She says, no, be a natural self.
Don't worry.
You got the gift.
You know, do it.
And Dr. Banerjee really guided me, helped me to nurture those inner things, which I
didn't know.
See, I was a kid at the end of the day in my teens.
And Dr. Banerjee was, shall I say, the best in me.
Who could see that something was there in me and dramatics, etc.
All that work, music, I mean, I've learned classical music.
So all this latent things within me.
When people bring it out and there is actually resistance.
Yes.
I don't want to do it.
So then you said you decided that you didn't want to get into pharma.
So out of campus, I joined Balarpur industry.
Thapar group at that time, I mean, you know, Kramping, Veer, Balarpur industries.
So Thapar group had posted me.
I mean, I joined in Delhi, but I got soon posted to Bhopal.
I wanted to start my career in states.
They had an edible oil division.
So they posted me in Bhopal.
You know, and you know, that time MP was MP in Chhattisgarh.
I mean, on one side you had Orissa, on the other side you had Gujarat and UP and places
like that.
So it was, it was like, shall I say, a baptism by fire.
On one side you had Naxals, the other side you had the Chambal Valley.
Okay.
And it used to take, if you just to cross the state, it used to take you two days from
one end to the state to the other end.
So in place like Jagdarpur, which is in the eastern part of now Chhattisgarh, you actually
had tribals and you go down to Mansour, you had people in rifles walking around.
So I'm talking about the nineties, you know, so it was a fantastic learning experience
and each region with an MP behaved differently, the kind of, I would sell edible oil.
You shared the driver's seat, you held on to the three wheeler and you said, and that's
the way I started my career.
Though I was an area manager and a team of six, seven people.
What do you do?
All you sit in the back of the van, you get steamed alive in that tin kind of box.
And that's the way I started my career.
And I used to, I mean, I used to travel three to four days a week and traveling by train,
you never flew.
How important, I think, yes, I learned and unlearned a lot of stuff.
Or I would rather put this way, not unlearned, I learned a lot more in my first job.
You know, the reality of talking to customers, understanding the realities of the market,
the reality, you know, realizing the realities of the market, realizing how the market was,
the dynamics, which some things which you cannot be taught, you have to experience it,
you know, insight into how consumers behave, how retail behave, how shopkeepers behave,
how distributors behave, what are those small things which will make a difference.
It really took me to the innards of the FMCG system.
It was a great learning experience.
I strongly even now, I tell a lot of people, start a career in sales and then move to marketing.
It tells you that you can't come up with strategies that are in the air.
You really have to know what the market is like.
It gave me a perspective which was not in textbooks, beyond which you have to take up
work.
So what happened?
How did you go about making a shift?
They decided to shut the division down for various reasons.
And I also wanted to move back to the South Symposium because my wife was here.
So that's when I moved into advertising.
I joined an agency called Nexus Equity, famous for the Ericsson commercial, but then they're
famous for a lot of other things too.
And Nexus became Enterprise Nexus.
In sales, it's, you know, very salesy guy, you know, you sell, sell, sell, sell, sell.
And then you have a very different perspective, how communication can influence purchase,
consumer behavior, so on and so forth.
I love advertising even now.
It just that the industry can do a lot more changes.
I don't think it moved that much.
So then you moved from advertising to pantaloons?
I worked in a place called Anatasia.
That is the starting of the dot com era.
And I joined them for a year.
As soon as the dot com era happened, the bubble burst.
And then soon after I joined Weekender, it was one of the most happening youthwear brands
at that time.
I was there for four or five years, heading both marketing and retail.
That's when I kind of went, I marketing and retail.
Let me just interject here.
Weekender was one of the earliest young brands, right?
So young people.
So how is it different selling to young people today, a brand like Agio and a brand like
Weekender, because let's say it's 30 years, three generations apart.
See any audience for that matter, you know, what evolved over a period of time.
So the youth of 20, 25, 20 years back is different from the youth.
I mean, but likewise for any brand, you also have to evolve with time.
You cannot be that what worked 20 years back and work now.
It cannot work.
I mean, you know, you're one of the doyens of the business.
So you'll understand what worked then will not necessarily work now.
You have to evolve as your customers evolve, their taste change, behavior changes.
So you have to evolve.
So yes, what probably worked at that time will not work now.
But as a marketing person, since you have to understand the customer, you also have
to work on a strategy and tactics, which will resonate with your customer.
You don't have social media.
I mean, you don't even know what internet is.
So what did you do?
What did you do to launch Weekender in the markets, which were there at that point?
Honestly, I didn't launch Weekender.
It was already there.
I had to just take the, should I say the torch and run with it as far as marketing goes,
extending the concept of where your attitude, which was very popular at that time, being
relevant to them, being seen in the right places with them.
I mean, coffee dates started in 96, cafes were in infancy.
You used to catch them at different places.
And you obviously spoke to them in a manner relevant to where they are and what they wanted
to hear.
Logic holds good even now.
So you have social media, you have microbreweries, pubs, cafes, etc.
The basics don't change.
It's just that the way you execute your strategy and your tactics have changed.
Right.
So quickly after that was when you got into?
I became an operations guy, a retail operations guy and I quite enjoyed it.
So quickly moved to Future Group.
When I was in Future Group, I had no intention of changing when Coffee Day kept calling.
And I wanted to meet Siddharth for a very long time.
So when the HR person called me and said that, you know, listen, we're looking for a marketing
person.
And I always had Coffee Day from, I mean, I was a customer, regular customer and I enjoyed,
I mean, I visited the cafes very often.
I liked the brand.
I saw a passion in it, which was coming from obviously, I never knew Siddharth personally.
So when I got a chance to get interviewed by him and I said, you know what, I have a
business idea.
Let me pitch to him for all you know.
And I knew that he had a VC fund and all that.
So I went, attended the interview and I said, you know what, sir, I have an idea.
So here's the idea.
Would you fund me?
So very strange.
We're getting an entry.
Let me be very frank with you.
So that was his typical style, you know, boss, he calls everybody boss in his close circle.
He said, hey boss, you know what, boss, lot of money.
You join me, boss.
We'll do something good together.
And you'd be surprised.
I joined him without even a role being defined.
So we had around three, four meetings figuring out what I can do for him, what he can do
for me.
And so there's a final meeting.
I still remember he called me to his office.
I remember in museum road and at 10 30, I get a call from a secretary, Veena, that,
you know, what Mr. Siddharth is going to be delayed.
He asked me to take it.
He's going to be delayed by half an hour and he's very sorry about it.
And I said, wow, man, this guy really cares.
I mean, he doesn't ever do it.
So she asked me, do you want to reschedule?
I said, no, anyway, I'm on my way there.
I might as well come and, you know, and I said, you know what, it'll be good fun to
work with a person like this who respects you as an individual, who respects you for
your time.
And, you know, I mean, I've rarely, even now, I rarely see people.
I joined him.
He says, boss, you know what, I think somewhere inside you, you're an entrepreneur.
So I'm not going to give you a marketing role.
I'll give you a marketing plus role, I mean, or a business plus marketing role.
So let you join me.
We'll figure out something.
And I actually joined without a role being defined, but you figured things out.
I joined more as a group resource in the sense that, okay.
I was a part of the cafe.
I was also not a part of the cafe.
So he used to put me on projects, special projects.
So he wanted us to work on it, work on that project.
Did I contribute to Cafe Coffee Day?
Definitely did it.
I ran one of the most profitable businesses for them called airline catering, which contributed
to 150 crores of top line, which was catering to all the low-cost carriers,
like Air Deccan and Go Air.
And then soon, soon we added other airlines.
What is that business like?
To manage the onboard food service, food and beverage services for them.
A lot of work goes into planning at that stage.
Nobody knew the business.
So when we got it and then I took it over, nobody had a clue.
So we pretty much defined the SOPs, defined, and coffee, they define, you know, I do believe
and no credit to me, I give credit to my team and my predecessor.
We kind of define the SOPs and the standards to be followed at that time.
And everything it grew from there.
Coffee Day kind of started that whole thing technically.
Though Deccan started this buy onboard model, we were quickly brought in because we had
a retail understanding because Captain Gopi knew Siddharth and so Siddharth decided to
come in.
We learned as we both of us learned as we went along.
And obviously we became special in this business and became 150 crores a profitable business.
What was also very interesting is that while it contributed to the top line and the bottom
and, we also got exposure to the brand on, should I say in the sky.
Cafe Coffee Day was there across so many flights, across two, three airlines.
I mean, it's a great way to connect to the customers.
So in a sense, we were paid to advertise our own brand.
There's a lot of work to mention, you know, a lot of work when sleepless nights, I used
to get calls at two o'clock at night, four o'clock in the morning, six o'clock in the
morning.
Sometimes there are nights when I'm not slept, very high intensity operations.
So what were the calls about in the sense, was it delivery issues or was something else?
If I go, there's a whole list of things I can get into.
That is not there.
This is not happening.
You know, okay, there's a VIP coming in.
So Vejay, sorry to trouble you, but we couldn't get you upset.
So can you organize things and let's say go hearty and, you know, I just got information
now and, you know, there's a problem.
So sometimes there'll be escalations.
There's a problem now where something's happened with the food.
What do we do?
So I'll have a call, quick con call in the night.
We can let them do this, all that.
So operation, typical operations, you know, what happens.
So certain promoters, I want to disarm my flight and then problem in Guwahati or some
problem in Jaipur.
I think airline catering, if you ask me, what was my key lesson there was the importance
of SOPs.
Everything is SOP driven there, you know.
So if you see, if you really see the air hostess taking a cart, we call it a cart, taking
it through the aisle.
The way food is set, everything is an SOP to it.
So the way it's set, the way the bottle of water is kept in the cart is an SOP to it.
In which drawer is this particular item, there's an SOP to it.
You may wonder, actually, why do we, you know, everything seems so processed in an airline.
Some people call it plasticky, but everything is processed.
These SOPs again are based on efficiency, convenience.
I don't think there's any convenience.
I think you fall in line because see, it's very strange, right?
Airlines probably has the least number of accidents, but people feel really scared going
in an airline.
Everything is SOP driven, everything.
Developing those SOPs among the most challenging assignments.
I think the most challenging assignment all across has been people and people's egos.
Designing SOPs and all that is, it's not easy, but it's not tough either.
But getting people to follow them is a challenge.
I keep saying this, the easiest thing for people is to not follow processes.
Because we always want to take shortcuts.
Following a process is the most difficult thing for a person to do.
Directly I had some 20, 25 people, but indirectly we had around 600, 700 people working for
us.
So that was a lot of work, which they were all from outside contractors.
And honestly, I was a bit of a micromanager.
So it made it all the more difficult for me.
I do believe to a certain extent you have to be that kind of business where every minute
counts.
So it kind of made me that way.
But that was the challenging bit of it.
That's when I started handling the packaged products of Coffee Day.
The coffee, the cookies, the later on we had tea.
See only contributing 2%.
And thanks to my, you know, my, and I think my biggest challenge there was when I took
it over, we had 220 skews of packaged products in the cafes.
I brought it down to 30.
Just don't waste your time on all these small, small ones.
Take your winners, run with it.
I mean, in a sense, it's like a BCG matrix, right?
You have your cash cow stars, et cetera, et cetera.
Take the big, good ones with potential, put your money on it, more resources, time, energy
and let it grow.
And that is what we did.
Then in parallel, what had happened is that we launched our resorts division called the
Sarai.
And that I was involved from the time the foundation stone was laid.
I was involved in everything, you know, even the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the,
the menu room, you know, what, everything, what cosmetics we put in there.
I remember the few of us who were there were like involved deeply, you know, what the restaurant
we called, you know, what's a, what's a uniform.
How many resorts were there?
No, we started off in Chikmagalur and then we were two more in Kabini and Bandipur.
And then later on he added Andamans to it.
And this is where I learned the fine art of customer service, guest satisfaction, because
each room that time it does was 10 to 12,000 bucks a night.
I'm talking about so many years back.
It was frightfully expensive.
That was customer service to the next level actually.
And it's a different ball game.
It's in a remote place.
It's not very easy to maintain standards.
It's not very easy to find people to staff.
Yes.
So, I had a very different perspective on what luxury extra ultra-premium, ultra luxury brand
and also customers who would cater to them.
I mean, who we would cater to.
What about the actual Coffee Day stores?
Yes, we had a kind of a template.
I think when you're reaching between Cafe Coffee Day and Express, you have to run 2000
stores, you had to follow a process and a template.
So there was a process of site selection.
There was a process of food, what food, where, how marketing, how marketing would happen.
L & D learning and development would happen.
So they had to be a process because otherwise without processes and systems, it would just
collapse.
So retail in a sense is very, very process oriented, very excess heavy driven.
So you had to set it up there too.
Vejay, what is the role of marketing once it's set at that particular place?
Your room for maneuver, is it limited?
The process is set.
I mean, the car will run by itself, but you need to drive it, right?
It's like driving by itself.
Unless it's a self-driving car, but there are problems with that.
I think marketing task is A, definitely from making sure that the right communication goes
out.
I mean, primarily is to get customers to come in.
That's the job of marketing, to get a build on the brand and that you have to keep evolving.
You can't repeat the same promotion all the time.
You can't keep discounting all the time.
You have to make it exciting with the customer to come back to you again and again.
You have to create that experience, that excitement, that's a never ending process of keeping the,
I can't use the word titillated, but keeping the customer excited.
So that process never stopped.
People will get go with certain foods.
So you're going to bring in new food.
People go to certain beverages; you have to change the beverages.
You have to keep evolving.
You have to keep changing, taste change, people change.
And so you have to evolve with time.
Do you buy into what the Starbucks CEO made famous, his statement about coffee place being
the third place.
It's not house, it's not work, but it's supposed to be something.
Good question.
I mean, I often I had to Howard Schultz.
I mean, I think he's one of the, like Howard Schultz., I think changed the perspective of
coffee in India.
And I need to interject here.
I think Siddharth changed the perspective of what people had about coffee.
I think if there's a coffee hall of fame in India and before I get into Howard Schultz.
even now coffee is an emotion for me.
A lot of us hats off to the gentleman that he is, Mr. Siddharth.
All of us took it very personally.
We were emotionally attached to the brand.
I was talking to my ex-colleagues last week and we still talk very fondly about coffee
day.
We've still have Coffee Days so many years back, but we still talk very emotional terms
about coffee.
There's a sense of belonging.
And that's something which I don't think will ever go away from any of us.
Whatever has happened.
I think that something which will never go away from any of us.
That's the wonderful thing about brands.
You're looking at it from an internal perspective.
Absolutely.
I think a lot goes to Siddharth.
Don't doubt about it.
I was lucky in that sense to work with Malvika too.
Both phenomenal people.
Very few people know about Malvika.
I think she's a fantastic lady.
Many people wonder what she's doing right now.
And I believe if there's somebody who can turn it around, it's her.
She's more than capable.
Great lady, humility.
I mean, interacting with her has been one of the best things in my career.
She was my boss and I can tell you, I've had a great time.
I've learned a lot from her.
She doesn't have those fancy degrees and all that.
Very common sense in an approach.
She taught me humility.
I mean, you know her pedigree.
But if you really look at it, coffee is a passion for me.
So I can go on and on and bought coffee and I'll go to death.
If you really look at coffee in a sense, again, has been a social lubricant.
So if you know that the French Revolution started in a coffee shop, the Lloyd's insurance
brokers started in a coffee shop.
There are a lot of startups which started in coffee shops.
And it seems to be largely in coffee shops.
That's strange, right?
The tea parlors never took off.
It's always been coffee.
It said that the Naxal movement started off in the India coffee house on College Street
in Calcutta.
It is so.
So, you know, in fact, I think coffee houses are banned if I'm not wrong, because coffee
is to form in trouble.
It's a place where a lot of conversations happen, place where a lot of friends meet
up, animated discussions, etc., etc. happens.
Even now, I don't think the conversation stopped.
So in a sense, it is a third place.
I know there are a lot of other places which claim to be the third place.
But in that sense, I think as far as the US goes, Starbucks really did that very well.
You know, while the office is not a place where social conversations can happen and
people don't feel close enough to some people to invite them home, in which case this becomes
a nice neutral point at which you can continue conversation.
Well, observation, you know, exactly.
You know, you sometimes want to break down those barriers.
You called yourself in the beginning an extroverted introvert.
Yeah.
So did this forming a network come easily to you?
See talking to people is not really a problem for me.
I can strike a conversation most people, but what I strike a very deep conversation.
No, not so much.
I find it easy to have work discussions because there is a topic to be discussed.
I find it far more easier to have talking to strangers on work matters rather than social
matters.
So all that happens.
These days, politics is a minefield.
So you don't exactly, I was going to tell you that.
That could suddenly define the conversation and take it in a different direction.
Yeah, but I do find it a lot more comfortable having striking or conversations in a sense
I do teach.
What is it that students are most worried about?
One thing is that people expect MBA to be the solution for all their problems.
Exactly.
You're starting out your career.
So you know, just chill.
You have to learn, use.
Yeah.
And a typical what will work in a corporate scenario, what will not.
I come in with the luxury of having worked in a, in, you know, corporate.
So I'm able to handle these questions far better than a typical academic does.
So since I read a fair amount, you're aware and I read a fair amount and I write a fair
amount.
Easy for me to bring examples from different businesses and, you know, make it easier for
them to understand.
And I can say, this is what I did.
This is what he did.
This is what competition did to me.
I've had firsthand experience, you know.
How did you get around to writing about brands?
Because I noticed that on LinkedIn, you, you started picking up these brand stories first
about campaigns and then you started writing about brands themselves, which I thought was
a wonderful way of establishing what really happens.
So I'm, I love trivia.
I, and I love consumer behavior.
So I actually started writing.
If you remember the first stages, I started writing on how customers behave as a part
of consumer behavior.
I wrote about something about how advertising influenced customer consumer behavior.
And I put a story to it.
So then somebody asked me, I don't remember who said, why do you stop?
I mean, continue.
I said, okay.
Then I wrote one more.
Then I took, I wrote about something and then why do you stop?
So then I realized that, you know what, people were expecting me to write more than I started
researching.
Then I started writing the stories, how the commercial was made or the advertising was
done.
Then I, you know, I covered it nationally, internationally.
I mean, a lot of it is available online.
Yes.
I just put it together.
Then I spoke to a lot of people.
It started off with that.
I also believe that, you know what I learned on the way, I think 99.9% of the time I learned
something new every day.
It's amazing how you managed to catch so many creative directors.
Yes.
I mean, you know, some of them are extremely forthcoming, the US with UK.
I mean, it's strange.
It makes someone, you know, Honda paper ad, the great national creative director, Ken
Papandros, I wrote to him.
He responded.
He said, I love to contribute.
Rajan Nair who created, you know, Complete Man, great.
There are a lot of, you know, Sumantro who contributed, who wrote about Maharashtra tourism,
Uday.
There are a host of people who were more than happy to, so both of them, I mean, again,
a lot of people are willing to just contribute.
Pratap Suthan and contributed for Ajanta Clocks.
It makes my task of so much more fun, right?
Because they have encountered it.
They have seen it.
End of the day, what I put forward is what a research online and I put it.
But when you have a first hand opinion or impression with somebody saying it's so much
better and so much fun.
For example, she's become a dear friend.
So they have bought by the famous Pan Parag commercial, Pan Parag Pan Masala.
You become great friends.
I hunted her and then she not only did she do this, she gave a blog like Rajan, not only
did he give me an article, he gave me a podcast.
So it's great fun.
It's been a thing.
Yes, yes, yes.
I do.
I mean, I wish I could interview marketing people, but I don't think I have the time
for that.
Wonderful, Vejay, because I think for a story that started way back in the classrooms and
where teachers found your potential and then you found your own potential.
Absolutely.
And then you figured out how to make the changes as far as your own career went, which I think
is the other interesting part about how we arrive at our own destinations because you
make the effort.
Your writing and your work that you put in into not just building your brand, but into
all the other brand stories, which are a collection adds to the tapestry of how marketing works
and how minds work and how all of these things come together.
Great talking to you as always.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
My first job, the podcast is a production from Ideascape Communications.
Host 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.