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Ep 5. Ritesh Ghosal, Croma
154 Plays2 years ago
Our guest host, Ketan Mohile, speaks with Ritesh Ghosal of Croma about what does it mean to be a marketer in 2020. And how the business of omnichannel retail would get impacted as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.
Ritesh leaves us with a store-load of insights. And with a magic mantra to look up to, as we get settled in a new normal!
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Transcript
Introduction to The Marketing Connect Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, this is the Marketing Connect Podcast. Hi, this is the Marketing Connect Podcast. Hi, this is the Marketing Connect Podcast. Hi, this is the Marketing Connect Podcast, a show where we get up close and personal with some of the most celebrated marketeers in the country. We talk to them and discover nuances of marketing that we often miss. After all, we are a show for marketeers by marketeers. Listen in.
Introducing Ritesh Ghoshal
00:00:30
Speaker
Welcome, my name is Kethan Mohile and I'll be your host for today. We're very happy to have Ritesh Ghoshal join us today. Ritesh is the CMO at Infinity Retail, Tata Enterprise, and also better known to a lot of you by their brand Chroma.
00:00:46
Speaker
He is a seasoned marketeer, having spent almost 25 years working across multiple roles, building brands and businesses across a variety of industries. Ritesh, welcome. Thank you so much for taking the time out today. Thanks. Thanks, Kaitan. Thanks for having me.
00:01:01
Speaker
Great. Let's get you started with understanding a little bit more about you and your story. Why don't
Ritesh's Educational and Career Beginnings
00:01:08
Speaker
you just talk us through your journey, where you grew up, a little bit about your education and what is the path that got you to what you're doing right now? So I'm a Delhi boy, grew up in Delhi. Did the usual stuff of trying to become an engineer, trying to become a doctor.
00:01:29
Speaker
landed up in Kirori Mall College with economics as my subject. And actually, to be honest, the first time I really enjoyed any book or really understood why somebody should study is when I was doing my economics course. And that sort of got me started and interested in the area of marketing. So it's economics. And then I went and read my MBA in IAM Bangalore.
00:01:56
Speaker
After I am Bangalore, you know, so I finished my MBA in 95. This is a time when the media scene in India was very fairly interesting, where you had, you know, all the satellite channels just beginning to come in. So it was one industry which was undergoing, you know, tectonic shift.
00:02:19
Speaker
So I thought it's a good way to start my career, you know, get into a field which is small. Therefore, I should be able to move fast and grow into something interesting. So I started my career with lentas in media. And six months later, I was on my way in market research.
00:02:41
Speaker
I spent three years in market research with IMRB. That was the second time in my life I really, really enjoyed myself. So economics was something that really talked to me. It liberated me from the world of 2 plus 2 is 4 and all the chemical equations and the physical equations. Similarly, market research really sort of opened up my mind to the world of
00:03:06
Speaker
you know, human insights and how humans and how people think and behave as humans really affects us as consumers. So, market research three years and after that, you know, series of stints with in the marketing world, decades, Coke, Tata Dopomo and now Chroma.
Evolution of Marketing Techniques
00:03:28
Speaker
And do you fundamentally believe with age that there are some things from this textbook which are still true and some things which have to change or have changed to adapt to sort of this new reality? I mean, for example, let's take with some of the methods, what you would typically do as a call focus group or a quantitative concept product test. Do you think some of those things still hold in today's world as well?
00:03:53
Speaker
See a lot has changed and I mean not naturally for the better in my view.
00:04:00
Speaker
What I enjoy about the world we live in today is this concept of what you call MVP. So you create a minimum viable product and then you sort of work on it. Work as trying to get things picture perfect and then go to market. It's a very liberating concept for marketers. So that's one side of it.
00:04:26
Speaker
At the same time, what I see happening is a lot of people, especially in the world of startups, jumping too far ahead of the queue. In the sense, you don't really have an MVP. You launch with a Big Bang announcement, and you start chasing traffic, and then you try to discover the business model.
00:04:54
Speaker
you know, and then therefore, this entire thing of pivoting, I don't think that's such a smart idea. You know, I think it is fantastic to liberate yourself from the, you know, three year NPD process to start with, you know, think that, okay, this is the minimum viable product.
00:05:14
Speaker
But the core of that product, the idea on which you have zeroed in should still be a relevant and persuasive idea. A lot of time I find that missing in the world of startups. Right. And so which brings me to a second phase in the discussion today. Can
Role and Strategies at Chroma
00:05:36
Speaker
you tell us about your current job and what you do on a day-to-day basis?
00:05:42
Speaker
I am now in retail. As Chroma, we do business with some of the best brands in the country, whether it is Apple, Samsung, Sony, LG, etc. It is a category of retail where the shopping bag really does not carry any value. That is one fundamental truth I realized.
00:06:09
Speaker
I am no longer a creator of demand. In my role at Chroma, my job is to curate the assortment and curate the proposition which will make a customer buy. So that essentially defines how I spend my days.
00:06:33
Speaker
We have a weekly cycle of business planning. So every Thursday, because the weekends are around half the business, that's when people come out and shop. So every Thursday is when we plan the promotions.
00:06:48
Speaker
So, Thursday the new promotion plan goes out, in order to do that what we do is we look at the weekend sales data that there are series of reviews through Monday and Tuesday where you figure out what is working not working.
00:07:04
Speaker
By some time on Tuesday you have a full view of what needs to change from a marketing perspective. Through Wednesday and Thursday you execute that and by Friday evening your digital assets are deployed for the weekend.
00:07:21
Speaker
And by Saturday, your stores are live with whatever you had planned. So that's really the cycle. So it's a cycle where you have a weekly rhythm. Monday is reviews. From Tuesday towards the end of the day, you get into the planning. By Thursday, you get into the execution.
00:07:41
Speaker
Okay, great. And I think the advantage of something like that is the results are also immediately sort of visible right on a Monday, you know how much that weekend has delivered. Yes, that's that's one of the things I enjoy about. Actually, it was true of telecom also, and you would understand that. The entire thing of waiting for four weeks for the market share report to come out is a thing of the past. If you're on to something good, you know by the end of the day. And if it's a dirt, you start planning the next thing.
00:08:09
Speaker
So, that one wonderful and liberating thing that has happened for us marketers that you do not have to wait for the result, the report card comes instantly.
00:08:20
Speaker
Hmm. I think that's the joy of it as well, right? You know, immediately whether the idea that you thought of and executed, did it even carry any merit because you'd right away see how much results it delivers. I think that's the joy. And you also therefore don't waste resources, something grand that's not working.
Importance of Failing Fast and Learning
00:08:38
Speaker
The most important part of marketing ROI
00:08:44
Speaker
you know, is being able to pull back and because you're able to pull back faster, you're also able to, you know, try many more things than you would in the in maybe 10 years ago.
00:08:55
Speaker
Correct. But I think, and sorry, I'm just quickly digressing a little bit, but I think this whole concept of what you're essentially describing is failing quickly or failing cheap with respect to, let's say, a marketing investment. But I think maybe sometimes you also need to let something breathe a little bit for it to really land in people's minds for them to change their behavior. Maybe I'm a little bit biased because I come from a time of selling
00:09:24
Speaker
physical goods where people actually had to walk to a store and buy them. Do you think some of this has changed because people can instantly sort of open up a website or an app and take a decision right on the spot? No, no. So don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about sales necessarily. I'm just talking about the feedback loop being shorter. Okay.
00:09:43
Speaker
So if you have planned something and you have to be able to identify lead variables for it. So for instance, if it's a campaign with the call to action as a visit to the website or call to an IVR.
00:09:58
Speaker
The first measure is how many people are calling. So the speed will happen later, but at least the indicator should move. And when you're planning, you have to identify the lead indicator way carefully. That's what I'm going to say. Sure. No,
Chroma's Marketing Focus and Consumer Behavior
00:10:12
Speaker
I think that makes perfect sense. And I think for a lot of our listeners, and I faced this problem personally when I had to sort of describe what I do to my parents or people in my family, I think
00:10:24
Speaker
It's really difficult to explain what marketing really does. I think one aspect of it is to really be the sort of the growth engine for an organization.
00:10:35
Speaker
In your case, is it challenging when you know that a lot of the demand generation is sort of dealt with by a lot of the brands that you work with? A lot of the execution is sort of driven by operational efficiencies and sort of store logistics and store placement and so on. Other times where you sort of struggled from your earlier days to
00:11:00
Speaker
describe for your team or for yourself, what are the two, three biggest things that the marketing team at Chroma has to work on? Okay, so that's a very interesting question. And you are absolutely right. When I walked into Chroma, people really did not understand what marketing can do in a retail.
00:11:18
Speaker
And if you look at the work Kroma had done till five years ago, and what some of our competitors still do, you know, there is a confusion between what the retailer does and what the brand does. So sometimes you end up celebrating the product, but only enjoying the margin if the product succeeds. And then that is silly.
00:11:42
Speaker
What we have defined the role of marketing as and like you rightly said it's about being the growth engine. See in any business the job of marketing and I think telecom again was a great learning ground for me in that sense because it sharply defines what you really do. It's not about communication. It's not about advertising.
00:12:02
Speaker
which is what FMCG can you know lead you to believe sometimes. It is really about owning the top line and the middle line. It is not just in retail, it is not just about footfall, but it is about bringing people in with the intent to buy.
00:12:17
Speaker
in coke lingo or Pepsi lingo, it's about activating demand. So what marketing does in chroma, there are two ways of seeing it. At a very banal level, it's about saying, what we have focused on is actually bringing people to chroma
00:12:42
Speaker
more bringing more of the people who have active intent to buy into chroma, which is why the conversions we enjoy are way higher than the industry. I mean, for perspective, our football versus tickets ratio is around 16 to 100.
00:13:01
Speaker
And then given that, you know, typically there are two people to a ticket, as in husband and wife in the case of a home product, or even if it's a phone, typically, you know, it's one plus one, two people come in. Given, you know, that's the thing, your conversion is upwards of, you know, one in four, which is really, really good.
00:13:24
Speaker
So this is one of the things we work on as a marketing team. And there are various strategies around that, whether it is tying up with banks and cash for cashbacks, or it is putting a little bit of extra money in the wallet for people, or whether it is actively targeting shoppers in their digital searches. So there is the sense the focus is on finding people who are activated shoppers.
00:13:53
Speaker
these strategies follow from there. So, that is one part of it. The second part and that is I think a bigger reason for Chroma's success is unlike most other retailers who buy for margin, Chroma sets up its contracts with brands to realize the margin on sale, which means the inventory we work with at any point in time is far leaner.
00:14:23
Speaker
So, for perspective now when we have been out of business for 50 days, my inventory position is still decent and therefore I am able to pay all my salaries and so on and so forth. Otherwise, I would have thousands of crores of inventory sitting in the
00:14:48
Speaker
Your money would have been locked up in inventory rather than taking care of operational stuff. Yes. So that's really the secret of Chroma Success. This is based on something someone had done in 2011. I had nothing to do with it. But what this allowed me to do is therefore understand what marketing can do for retail much better. So one way to see retail is there's a certain amount of money being deployed.
00:15:16
Speaker
to procure inventory and make things available in the store. The speed at which the wheel turns and inventory is rotated is really where marketing comes in. So how much growth and how much business can you get out of let us say 1000 crores of inventory is the task of marketing.
00:15:39
Speaker
a couple of examples about what kind of interaction you have to do with some other stakeholders in the business. I understand retail will be slightly different as compared to a digital consumer brand or maybe some other industries. So it'll be great to get your perspective.
00:15:58
Speaker
Right. So I was talking about the weekly rhythm. So essentially what starts on Monday is, you know, based on what has sold well or not sold well, there will be an inventory position which the finance guy will inform us on. There will be, you know, feedback from the stores in terms of what sold well or did not sell well over the weekend. You know, things like where maybe my next store, the retailer was selling something cheaper.
00:16:26
Speaker
the buying team would come with, you know, whatever the fresh offerings are from the brand in terms of, you know, excellating there of takes and stuff like that. And then we'll sit together and bake it over Monday and Tuesday to create the offers that will go live for the next weekend, starting Thursday.
00:16:43
Speaker
So, that's really the weekly rhythm. The more important part and that really comes from the special status of Chroma with the brands because all leading brand CSS are stored as a theater for their new releases, so to speak. So, it's about planning the new launch of an Apple device in Chroma. It's planning the launch of the Samsung Flip when it comes in and stuff like that.
00:17:10
Speaker
where you probably have a 30-40 day cycle with the brands where you figure out what all assets at the store and what all assets in digital would you commit to the brand and against that what's the customer offer they will run for you specially or give you access to and stuff like that.
00:17:32
Speaker
So there are two key stakeholders, the brands and on the other hand, you have the internal stakeholders. Third large set of stakeholders is the payment ecosystem. So whether it is wallets like Paytm or the banks or the NBFCs, that's another ecosystem that we work with very closely in terms of making the proposition for the customer.
00:18:01
Speaker
Great and there is of course a stakeholder outside who is the consumer and the shopper who's actually coming to your store.
Tracking Consumer Insights and Behavior
00:18:10
Speaker
What kind of work do you do to really understand or uncover some of the insights behind who's really walking into the store? What are they looking for? I mean me for one and again it's a very personal perspective but
00:18:23
Speaker
I always think that is there really space for a physical retailer to exist out there when you have, you know, electronic retailers who are there and now the whole delivery sort of a fulfillment and delivery chain is also now getting streamlined. But I also appreciate that I am like in a different subset of people, there are a whole lot of other people out there. So what kind of work really goes into understanding who these consumers are? What do they really want? And how can you as Groma help them?
00:18:53
Speaker
So, we do a number of researches on an ongoing basis. Number one is tracking active shoppers. So, we do a monthly online survey to understand of the
00:19:10
Speaker
hundred people who are looking to buy something electronic, how many considered chroma, how many actually came to chroma's website or came to chroma store, and then how many of them did I convert or not convert. So that's really the sizing the funnel, so to speak. The second part is an exit survey, which is to trace back the path to the store. What helped me get the business so that I can do more of what I did right.
00:19:38
Speaker
And this is the two regular researchers that happen. There is a lot of social listening we do, one at three levels. One is at the level of what are the things people are excited about in the world of electronics. Second is what are, so that's really listening in on the electronics brands. Second is about listening to conversations around our competition.
00:20:07
Speaker
both online and offline. And like you just highlighted, our bigger competition today is online rather than offline. And finally, the conversations around chroma itself, whether they are positive or they are negative. So, this is the social listening that happens on a, you know, 24 hour basis.
00:20:28
Speaker
And one other critical piece is tracking the online prices of both online and offline retailers so that we are not caught by surprise in terms of the pricing on a particular product. So, these are some of the research tools that we deploy.
00:20:53
Speaker
Beyond that is the standard stuff, which is if you are creating a new brand program or a new branding asset for the stores, you take it to a few customers and you get their feedback. So the call research and concept testing kind of stuff. But frankly, we do pretty little of that.
00:21:20
Speaker
don't really need to because see we got 170 odd stores. So it's very easy for us to do set up experiments. So you run a program in a city, do a before after, or you run it in one store but not the other, do a side by side comparison. And then you get a sense of what's working or not working.
00:21:44
Speaker
So, coming to the point of is there a role for physical retail, actually the there is no electronics retailer online, what you have online are marketplaces.
00:21:59
Speaker
And therefore, their ability to sell electronics targeted to a customer in a certain manner is fairly limited. Case in point is if you look at the way Best Buy operates in the US today and there are a couple of other examples from other markets. If there is a expert retailer in electronics, there is room for him.
00:22:24
Speaker
Because an online marketplace will always you know while they also collect a lot of data on consumers and able to you know customize, the basis on which they are customizing also has a hell of a lot of noise. So, if I look at my example.
00:22:44
Speaker
I buy groceries, food items, household merchandise, etc., 20,000 kind of things from Amazon. Therefore, their understanding of me as a customer is covered in a hell of a lot of noise versus if I have a clean conversation which is around electronics with customers, I'm able to understand the customer much, much better.
00:23:09
Speaker
and therefore you know I'm able to manage your life cycle far better. So that's really the premise on which we are working. Besides in our category because you know there is a tactile part to the product so whether it's a smartphone
00:23:32
Speaker
or it is a laptop, there is how it looks, feels, weighs physically is still a factor. And therefore, typically people while they search, they start their searches online, more than 90% of the people who come to Chrome have been online before they come to the store.
00:23:57
Speaker
But they do make a trip to the store. And if my proposition is right, then I have a fair chance to convert him. So that's really the premise on which we work. What we are trying to get better at is to be the first person, first site that the customer searches on. Because that allows me to shape the conversation better than I do currently.
00:24:24
Speaker
And that is exactly what Best Buy has achieved in the US. Right. I think because a lot of us are also slightly biased by the fact that we end up seeing a lot more of Chroma stores physically than digital. So I think for a lot of people, rather than thinking of Chroma as the expert retailer for electronics, we sort of think that it's the physical retailer for electronics. Is there a distinction that you're trying to
00:24:53
Speaker
create or is this my perspective and people think otherwise? So what I would say is your perception is pretty much accurate. Okay, except that it is changing by by degrees as we pass. So, like I said over 90% visit a site before they visit a store.
00:25:19
Speaker
visit our stores. The percentage of that which has visited chroma.com has now hit around 50%. A year back it was 37%, the year before that it was 30%.
00:25:35
Speaker
So slowly over a period of time, the awareness that Chroma also has a website and the second part, which is the usefulness of the visit. So the usefulness of the visit was coded at around 25% by the 30% who would have visited the site. That number is now running at around 75, 77%. So that's really the journey.
00:26:05
Speaker
And see, it's something that we are working on almost like a hobby. Like I said, there is a weekly rhythm to the running of the stores. And that's really that treadmill is where the entire business operates.
00:26:22
Speaker
So, for us to take time out and you know create any business transformation is always a challenge. So, what we have done now starting I think around September last year is we have got into a strategic relationship with TCS where you know the IT transformation has sort of been outsourced to them.
00:26:44
Speaker
Okay, so what and there is the same team that manage the transformation for Best Buy. So that's why you will find me talking repeatedly about the Best Buy. Because we have seen those learnings from very close. So but it's a journey, it will take its time. The good part is from a value chain perspective, we are very competitive with Amazon.
00:27:12
Speaker
similar to the way Best Buy is competitive versus Amazon in the US. In fact, for almost the last one year, on our shop floor, we do have a price match with Amazon prices. It's not affected our profitability any negatively.
00:27:29
Speaker
Okay, great. Which brings me to my next topic for conversation, which everybody's talking about. How do you think all of this is now going to change because of the new reality and post-COVID opening up of our interactions and all of that? Are there things that you think are fundamentally
00:27:49
Speaker
going to completely change or have been accelerated? And are
Post-COVID Consumer Behavior Changes
00:27:53
Speaker
there things that you think are not going to change despite this sort of temporary blip that all of us will see? See, I think
00:28:03
Speaker
I think human behavior tends to be fairly elastic and we tend to forget very quickly. At the same time, there are things what you would call delta moments, which really leave an imprint on your mind. So, for me, for instance, growing up in Delhi, the 84-6 riots left an indelible imprint on my mind.
00:28:30
Speaker
So, this is at that level, you know, 50 days, 60 days of not being able to step out, being in a state of lockdown and realizing that you are not alone, the world is also going through the same thing, is a life-changing event. I think a lot of people are talking about tactical stuff like
00:28:56
Speaker
digital becoming more important than physical contact and all that. I think those are small things. But the more interesting things are how this is going to affect the way people think and how people relate to the material world around them. And I think there are going to be fundamental changes in that.
00:29:19
Speaker
I think especially in Bombay, where there is Bombay, Gurgaon, Noida, all the places where the new jobs have opened up over the last 10 years.
00:29:34
Speaker
There are these huge numbers of singles who either stay alone or stay, you know, in chamery kind of accommodation with frankly, people who are acquaintances, not even friends. To move yourself locked in for 50 days with a stranger, you know, people are going to have serious thoughts about, you know, what they're doing with their lives. I think two things will change. One is people will
00:30:05
Speaker
you know, try and move forward in into the next life stage, which is getting married much faster. And one very practical reason, which is, you know, two incomes to run a home rather than one, which is always of use in our cities. And the second is, you know, if you have someone who you are even
00:30:30
Speaker
halfway inclined to spend your life with, you're better of getting started on that rather than either being locked in alone or with a stranger. So I think that's one thing that's set to change. Linked to that is the investment in the home versus investment in products that I call
00:30:52
Speaker
products with a high look at me quotient. So between buying the latest iPad and buying AC for your bedroom, I think a lot of people are going to swing for the AC in the bedroom. The home as a nest, as a comfortable nest is something I think a lot of people have missed in the last 50 odd days. So things like those are fundamental shifts.
00:31:21
Speaker
It's fairly immaterial whether he looks to buy the AC digitally or in a physical store. I think I would rather focus on how is the demand going to shift rather than...
00:31:34
Speaker
We have just been allowed to open a few stores in the green and orange zone. And what is selling is an eye opener. Of course, there are personal grooming kits which are selling. People haven't had a chance to trim their beards or cut their hair for 50 days. So everybody thinks, now I need to cut my skin. Yeah. So that's one thing we need to do.
00:32:03
Speaker
yeah so same thing is happening to us we are selling out okay the other thing is you know induction cookers so there are a lot of people who never run a kitchen in their home and suddenly they are realizing
00:32:19
Speaker
So, get something that will serve the purpose even if you do not have a gas connection. So, tea coffee makers, microwaves, induction cookers, all the basic kitchen appliances are selling on one side and personal care items are selling on the other side. Third of course is laptops.
00:32:43
Speaker
A lot of people have realized either they don't have laptops or what they have is really not good enough for a work from home situation.
00:32:53
Speaker
Great.
Challenges in Conscious Consumption and E-waste
00:32:54
Speaker
And I wanted to touch up on another topic that I know you're passionate about, which is this whole discussion and action around conscious consumption. And I know for a fact that you are in a space where electronic waste, for example, is going to be a huge deal. It's already started to become a huge deal and it will become a big problem in the years to come.
00:33:16
Speaker
What are your thoughts on it? Are there details about the sort of e-waste space in India that you can share with us? Or are there other brands that you think are doing a great job when it comes to walking the line on conscious consumption?
00:33:31
Speaker
See, it's a double-edged sword. India has to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of lifestyles as well as awareness of the world in terms of education, in terms of a lot of things, all of which are embedded in products.
00:33:54
Speaker
So the smartphone and the laptop is really the modern gateway to the world of information. And while we are at it, why shouldn't we have a TV or a refrigerator in our homes either? So consumption has to grow. We need to catch up with the world.
00:34:14
Speaker
At the same time from being in a position where 30 odd days or 50 odd days of lockdown can actually improve the quality of air and water around us to being in a place where you know there is no point of return.
00:34:33
Speaker
That's the choice we need to make. And frankly, as a retailer of electronics, my business and therefore my salary depends on being able to sell more stuff. The way we have struck a balance is we always ensure that we are running better than market offers on products that are resource efficient.
00:35:01
Speaker
So, we try and steer the customer towards resource efficient products in the store, whether it is inverter ACs and refrigerators, anything which is an inverter motor consumes less electricity, whether it is about only selling green gas compressor products in ACs and refrigerators.
00:35:25
Speaker
or whether it is about you know actively supporting e-waste collection in our stores. So, the task really is about creating awareness ok. People who are consuming do not realize about the risk they are creating for themselves as well as the environment around them. So, any one of us if he starts looking in the house will find some batteries which are lying around.
00:35:52
Speaker
whether it is in a power bank or it is in a torch. And batteries if not disposed of correctly where you are separating the two reactors are a potential fire hazard ok. Not this is not very well known.
00:36:15
Speaker
And even if people know about it at the back of their heads, it's not something people act on. Inertia just takes over. This is one level of the problem. At the other level, of course, all the LED panels that we are consuming,
00:36:32
Speaker
is depleting the world's supply of sand. You wouldn't think it's possible that the world can run out of sand, but apparently it can. The rate at which you are creating LED panels and sand silica is one of the basic ingredients of that.
00:36:53
Speaker
it is a challenge ok. So, there are lot of brands which are working in the space of you know repurposing reusing what you call the circular economy. The government runs you know a there is a mandatory requirement to bring in a certain amount of your earlier production.
00:37:14
Speaker
as a you know, so electronics manufacturer whether it's a Sony or an Apple has to bring in 33% of what they sold three years back or five years back depending on the category in order to get the license to market what they are marketing now. Okay, so there is a there is a mandatory target for e-waste
00:37:43
Speaker
what chroma tries to do all the brands want to do it ok.
00:37:48
Speaker
But the problem for the brands is if as a customer, so Sony is telling me to bring in the old TV, I don't know where to take it. So what we are trying to do is use our chain of stores as a collection point for e-waste where the brands can communicate to the customers that you drop off your old gadgets at Chroma and we will, you know,
00:38:18
Speaker
incentivize you for that. So become a partner to the brands, not just when they are selling the product, but also when they are trying to meet their events targets. That is one program we are running. Apple incidentally, and this is something I also learned recently, most of their components are recycled. Okay, so all the rare earth they use most of the plastic they use in their products is all recycled.
00:38:57
Speaker
So brands like Sony, brands like Apple are actually pretty far ahead on the curve.
00:39:09
Speaker
See, actually the task in India is from a customer's perspective. We have been trying to do it for more than three years now. People think it's something nice to talk about. People don't really act on it. So inertia is like a big challenge. So you don't think it's worthwhile making the effort to make a call and say, come and pick it up. And, you know, far from bringing it into the store.
00:39:36
Speaker
So that's been the real challenge for us. And gradually, the volumes of e-waste we collect have gone up. Last year, towards the end of the year, we ran a fairly successful campaign with Times of India. And the November to Jan period was the highest we have done in terms of collecting e-waste. But for perspective, it's still less than 10% of what we sold in there those three months.
00:40:04
Speaker
Most successful campaign we have done so far on e-waste was when we worked with Times of India in the period November to Jan of this year. And we got our highest ever e-waste collection in that period. However, it was still less than 10% of the number of units we sold in that period. So it's still 10 is to 1. What you sell versus what you bring back, we are still running at 10 is to 1.
00:40:33
Speaker
The idea is to over a period of time, come to a place where it's one is to one. Yeah, I think, but some of these facts are new to me. And I think, like you said, it's a question of, you know, bridging that gap between intent and taking action. So I think everybody wants to do good for the environment, but they have to realize that they have to take some action. And even it might mean just a small action, but I think taking that first step is important.
00:40:59
Speaker
Yes. Again, you know, I think what the recent 50 day period would have done for people, it's done it for me. You know, when you see all these, all these news of Jalandhar say Himalayas, Dikrai, Organga, Kapani, Sathoga, etc. It does two things. One is it, you know, tells you how much of an impact you really had on nature.
00:41:25
Speaker
Second is anybody who's stuck in inertia and thinks, what can we do about it? We can't really change it anymore. It tells them that it's still possible to change things back to their new normal.
00:41:41
Speaker
I think you're very right. I think for me personally, that has been my biggest sort of aha moment that, you know, of course I knew that the environment is in a bad shape, but I was really surprised to know that just about 30 days into it, the, you know, environment starts becoming better. So healing itself and it doesn't take too much to get there. So I think that has been my personal learning as well.
Ritesh's Personal Interests and Advice for Marketers
00:42:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:06
Speaker
So that's what we hope that maybe we will have a period where people will overcome their inertia and start taking those baby steps on their own. Great. I'm just going to move to our last couple of questions, just trying to understand some bits about
00:42:23
Speaker
You know, you as a person, so are there some passions that you want to share with us about? I know you're passionate about walking back. I know that you do a little bit of writing yourself. Can you share some experiences about what kind of stuff do you like to write about or what kind of books are you reading? It'll be great to know that. Okay.
00:42:45
Speaker
So what I was saying is actually walking is not a passion food is my passion and walking is so that I can you know afford to put in those extra calories.
00:42:58
Speaker
What I'm passionate about in sports, I have always been an active sportsman. I used to play a lot of cricket growing up. Before I moved to Bombay, we used to play cricket on every weekend in Gurgaon. Then when it became difficult to put together a quorum for cricket, we moved to tennis, badminton, pretty much anything that could get you out on a weekend.
00:43:27
Speaker
So that's something I really enjoyed. In terms of reading, I really love reading P.G. Vodows. Pretty much collected all his works. I've probably read every word he's written. And that's something I'm pretty proud of.
00:43:48
Speaker
Uh, what I write is about, uh, my life, my experiences most of the time. Um, and to be honest, you know, there is much more which is, uh, left, unwritten, unfinished than has ever been, you know, finished. Yeah. Yeah. I know everybody has so many draft articles written. You just need to find the time and inspiration to sort of put it down and finish it. Yeah.
00:44:18
Speaker
In fact, there are two articles I finished writing in these three days, which is two more than I've done in the last two years.
00:44:33
Speaker
I think everybody's creative juices have really started flowing in this sort of forced lockdown period. Yeah, we've got time, no? There's time to come. Correct, correct. My last question for you, Ritesh, is that, you know, as a marketing leader, I'm sure there are times when people from your team or even other people who look up to you as a mentor really ask you that, look, I want to be a good marketeer or I want to start a career in marketing. What are those two, three things that you really
00:45:00
Speaker
want people to know and sort of imbibe that will really help them build a solid marketing career or do well as marketeers.
00:45:08
Speaker
So I think the first thing is about being curious, having an open mind and being curious about people. That's the first trait. Second is the ability to synthesize data across different sources to come to mental map of what might be the problem.
00:45:34
Speaker
And third is communication skills. One of the biggest, and I'm not talking more advertising, one of the biggest roles marketer plays in an organization
00:45:47
Speaker
is it is the one function which has KRAs which go beyond the you know coming 12 months and therefore, it is important for you to be able to articulate what you see as the company's future or the brand's future and make a compelling word picture so that people sort of you know start believing in it. So, being good at communication especially oral communication is very important for marketers.
00:46:14
Speaker
Right. Right. And are there some books or resources that you can recommend that, you know, students of marketing definitely have to sort of look at or read through and irrespective of how many years they've spent at marketing. I think being curious and being a learner is a very critical part of being a marketing leader. Are there some things that you can recommend?
00:46:35
Speaker
See, I think it is very important to have an eclectic taste in reading. I'm not a big fan of textbooks and I'm not a big fan of, you know, for wonderful better word, I would call business books, you know, the seven habits of effective managers or whatever. But I think it's because finally how people behave as consumers is an outcome of how they
00:47:04
Speaker
are as humans. So, you know, being curious about history, being curious about places is probably more important than textbooks.
00:47:18
Speaker
Great. I think that's solid advice coming from somebody who spent a lot of time in marketing roles. Thank you so much, Ritesh, for your time with us today. It was really helpful to get your perspective on, you know, your role, the organization, and how some of these things are being shaped by, you know, today's reality. Thank you so much once more. You heard the latest episode of the Marketing Connector.
00:47:45
Speaker
A show for marketeers by marketeers. The show was brought to you by Seapoori and The Poon Show.