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Ep 2. Anupam Gurani, Lead
143 Plays2 years ago
In this episode, we talk with Anupam Gurani, CMO, Lead.
In his 17 years of extensive professional experience, he has worked with companies from FMCG to tech to the education industry. He talks about the importance of brand and how rebranding Lead School has led to expanding its impact in transforming Indian schools.
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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, 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.
Conversation with Anupam Begins
00:00:33
Speaker
Hi Anupam, this is Saurabh. Thank you for your time. Welcome to the podcast. It's good to have you here. Hey Saurabh, likewise. Finally, good to have this conversation. I know it's been pending for a long while. Looking forward to having a thrilling conversation with you and share and also get to hear from you about your experiences of dealing with so many of marketers from all across the industry.
00:00:58
Speaker
I think you are probably the kindest guest that I've had who's told me that they want to listen from me. I'm the guy who's like a student and trying to say, I need to refresh whatever I know. So I am more in the listening mode, to be honest, but happy to have a chat. Let's see how it
Anupam's Role at LEAD and Company Rebranding
00:01:18
Speaker
goes. Anupam, tell me in my audience, what is your day job like? OK, that's very simple.
00:01:27
Speaker
I currently in my current role, I head marketing function for for lead school. Our trial lead school now we've just rebranded ourselves to and we are calling ourselves as lead. Our parent organization is called Leadership Boulevard. So we've just in this month, around about a week back, transitioned from lead school to being lead. So I had marketing function for them and been at this role for the last one year.
00:01:54
Speaker
So, I have to ask you this question for most brand managers and marketeers, the biggest challenge is when they are told that, you know, take a brand which has been out there for a while, and then sort of either add something to it, remove something from it, sort of do a relaunch. So, in your case, specifically when you worked on this relaunch or the brand of lead,
00:02:16
Speaker
cool to lead to something else. Tell me more about it. Why was it necessitated? Why did you think it had to be done? How did you go about that? How did you find your partner agencies? What was the kind of work you did? So just talk me through the rebrand process. Sure. I'll just quickly give context of what the organization is, how did we come into being, what do we do. And because they'll give a lot more clarity on why is there a need for rebranding.
00:02:45
Speaker
See we are ORG which is which we started doing started by you know started on about five years back and we started off as a school so Sumit and Smita who are our founders they wanted to
00:03:04
Speaker
have an impact in the way India is educated. And therefore, and specifically from a tier two, tier three, tier four towns, how children are receiving education, they wanted to make an impact there. And because the quality of education has not evolved, et cetera. And they started off by saying that I'm gonna open schools and then see how it goes, right? So they moved from one school to four school and five schools, and then they quickly figured out that
00:03:32
Speaker
By opening schools in your lifetime, the impact that one will be able to make is maybe you will open 100 schools. Because running a school operationally is not an easy job. Therefore, this is that for us to have a much larger impact, whatever we have been able to learn by virtue of how we teach in our schools, let's make a product and service out of it. And then start to extend that service.
00:03:59
Speaker
be an enabler and empower more schools across the country. And then from four or five schools, they quickly moved to 35 schools in the year after 150 in the next year, 800. This year now we are currently present in 2,000 art schools across the country. So if you start to see a scale, how we made a difference. So from lead school, we moved to a company which empowers schools. So now we are a partner for schools.
00:04:29
Speaker
And therefore, the brand name, you know, think of brands again as a personality or a person. You say that every now and then you pause and reflect on what your journey has been, how do you want the journey to be over the next 10, 15 years, 20 years.
00:04:46
Speaker
And our purpose, let's say five years back, was to again make an impact in the field of education by providing excellent education, which is affordable. That hasn't changed. It's in fact gotten probably much more crystallized. We are still saying that we want to now impact lives of, or touch lives of one crore children by 2025, by being present across 25,000 schools.
00:05:12
Speaker
However, I think it gives us much more clarity that we are not going to expand via being a school. So it's a partner who is powering schools and therefore that's become our go-to slogan. And B is, I think we also wanted to, when we started off, our brand just had one touch point of physical building. It's over a period of time evolved into a much more
00:05:40
Speaker
technology-enabled organizations. So today, we have apps as services for our consumers. So it's more tech-enabled. And therefore, we wanted to be a lot more consumer-friendly and also have a far more dynamic reflection in our brand identity, which is what led us to say that, hey, let's drop the name of the word school from our brand name, because we're not a school anymore. And our original brand,
00:06:10
Speaker
visual identity it had a slate. The slate was used because you know children you think of children as they when they come and join a school there it's a clean slate and then you educate them and then you know you can write whatever you want right that's the kind of education we want to provide. However now we are saying that we enable children to in tier 2, tier 3, tier 4 towns to
00:06:35
Speaker
to succeed in life and therefore shine like a star so our new logo has a star formation in it and then we have retained some of the colors of the old brand which is the orange color thereby sort of landing an extension the word lead stays and that's how that's how we sort of transition so we our purpose doesn't change it's just that yeah I think we are more in tune with who we are now and how we see our next 10 years is evolving so that's that's the reason for change and then in this journey we
Rebranding Challenges and Collaborations
00:07:05
Speaker
We work with two different partners. We work first with future brands. This gentleman by the name of Santosh Desai, him and his team, they work with us and they did some nominal consumer work for us too.
00:07:19
Speaker
help understand really what do consumers how our brand is perceived and what would be the brand essence for us. And then we post that, we took that input and then we work with a design agency by the name of CoDesign. And then they helped us to reshape the brand identity. Now we are in the process of bringing it to life across different touch points, whether it's communication, whether it's our app or products or website.
00:07:46
Speaker
In fact, as we speak, tomorrow is the launch for our first national Pan-India campaign. We've just relocked our website. So these are things which are in progress and hopefully exciting times. Co-design is the same set of people that are based in Goa, right? They used to be called beard design before. I'm not so sure about their earlier name, but Rajesh Daya, he's the person who
00:08:16
Speaker
He is the guy who owns it. I think him and his wife, they are the founders of code design. So that was again, when I joined LEAD,
00:08:27
Speaker
I think the first two people that we identified that we want to work with were these two set of teams and they've sort of played an incredible role in getting us this far and really helping us understand what is the essence of the brand, something that can help us differentiate over the long term, own
00:08:46
Speaker
from consumer point of view. I think in marketing it becomes very important for you to partner with the right set of folks who can bring in their expertise because it's just so diverse, design is one core aspect which we can't sort of build in house and therefore we want to work with the right vendors who
00:09:07
Speaker
understand and want to deeply invest in your brand. I think these partners are time and again proven. My experience of working with them has been phenomenal.
00:09:18
Speaker
So this next question could be controversial. So do you want to, and we can remove this from the edit, but do you want to talk about how the selection process of these two agencies happened? Like as a brand, if you have a fairly large brand with presence across the country and you talk to almost all cohorts, right? I mean, from a school owner to a parent, to a student, to even your employees. So you speak to like multiple stakeholders. How did the evaluation happen for these agencies per se?
00:09:48
Speaker
I think for us you know when we look at different, you are absolutely right A in saying that you know as a brand we speak to different stakeholders. See we sell our product and service directly to schools.
00:10:06
Speaker
They are the ones who pay. Now school owner is the decision maker. However the product that we sell is eventually being consumed by everyone including the student. So the students completely study on our textbook, our curriculum, our app, our product. Teachers use our product day in and day out to teach. So eventually the end user is, and finally the parent is the one who is paying.
00:10:34
Speaker
So while you might say that hey, customer, but consumer is eventually the student. So A, we wanted to have that clarity. As we are moving forward, what we envisage is we want to be a consumer facing brand and we don't want to relegate ourselves to just being a position ourselves as a B2B brand.
00:10:56
Speaker
Because what are we trying to do? And if you look at schools as an industry in the country, I will come to the second part of the question. If you look at schools as an industry, it is a highly fragmented industry. There are close to around 15 lakh schools in the country and catering to almost like 20 plus grow students. Half of these schools are government and the balance are all private.
00:11:24
Speaker
industry is fragmented. Now what we are trying to do is build a large network of schools. So think of it as what OO did.
00:11:32
Speaker
in the hotel industry right. They brought all these 2 star or 3 star hotels under their folio and they also said that I am going to ensure a certain level of quality of experience that the consumer gets when they get to this hotel. Beds will be clean, the bathrooms will have a toothbrush, need bed sheets etc, change over of pillows, covers, some pet practices.
00:11:57
Speaker
In our case, we are not just an aggregator. While all of these guys are aggregator, we are deeply entrenched in even designing the end product.
00:12:05
Speaker
of what goes. So that's where we are a little different. So while we are trying to build a similar network of schools, we also work deeply with them to really define how their core product is getting delivered to students. Now, so therefore for us, all stakeholders are important, but we are trying to go consumer first and therefore the rebranding effort and the mass media campaign that we are launching with an effort to go to parents and tell them that send your child to a late pass school.
00:12:33
Speaker
Now, once we were clear that this is what we do, therefore, the kind of agencies that we wanted to work with automatically, the shift was more towards saying that, hey, we're not looking to make a B2B brand. We are wanting to go more consumer. We wanted to go to partners who have a much more deeper understanding of Indian users, how that understanding is changing. And that's where co-design, that's where future brands came in.
00:13:03
Speaker
They worked deeply with future brands on a bunch of different projects. In fact, they recommended to us co-design while we were evaluating a couple of other companies as well. I had a reference point from
00:13:16
Speaker
some of my friends who had worked with co-design in the past. I used to be at Hotstar earlier, even at Hotstar co-design had work on a couple of projects in the past. So they had a pretty good sort of equity across the ecosystem. So when we evaluated in the kind of input that they brought to the table, I think that seemed more in sync with how we were looking at our brand and therefore the decision making was fairly simple from there on.
00:13:42
Speaker
Awesome. So let me ask an easy question now. I've been sort of grilling you about the brand. Let me ask an easy question. So tell me, do you want to walk me through your journey from your MBA at Bangalore and Bangalore and from there on where you have
Anupam's Career Journey and Insights
00:13:59
Speaker
landed right now? So do you want to quickly talk about the journey? Sure. It's been 17 years and counting.
00:14:11
Speaker
I ended up joining Rekit straight up from campus and I spent close to a decade with them and did sales and marketing stints. The first stint started off in Chhattisgarh.
00:14:24
Speaker
in Raipur way back in 2004 and summer intern, not summer intern, I think management trainees always used to get these punishment postings to see what they are made of. I think at least in my B-School, when I passed out, I went to MDI, so most of us would compare notes.
00:14:45
Speaker
Like companies would be different, like somebody would be at record, somebody would at Nestle, somebody would be at P&G. But the question would be, how do you think the company would be able to buy something like this? And the good thing was that, because all companies do it, what we quickly figured was, check the code that you have posted on the P&G account.
00:15:08
Speaker
So in Raipur, we figured that we had a gang of like four or five different guys from all one. There was a guy, Sundar, and you know, made very good friends. Then we rented a house together, started to stay together. So, you know, we would have a ball because we would travel, plan our travel trips together. And that was the one thing that we, that helped us survive those six, seven months. And from, you know, from there on, it was like, you know, every 12 to 15 months you were doing one stint. So I moved across into the country.
00:15:38
Speaker
And from Raipur went to Tamil Nadu, Bezadokkombatore, Pune
00:15:43
Speaker
Then back to Pragam. After that, moved to marketing, stayed in marketing function for a couple of years in India and then I moved out to South Asia. I did a short sit in Singapore and then I was posted in Thailand. Thailand, I was there for around about three years. I think after spending close to around 11 years in Mehrkut, I decided to move out because I had started to sort of feel like, feel like furniture there. Long time.
00:16:12
Speaker
And also, there was a time when you started, one started to hear about all this digital disruption which was happening in the world. And even CG industry was largely, probably the slowest to sort of adapt that. And I got an opportunity to work with Google in that time in Thailand. I worked with them. And then eventually I had to,
00:16:40
Speaker
I had to return back to India. I was married by then. I had my wife and then we had two kids. Essentially my parents were in India, came back because of those family reasons. And then, who was at work with Vodafone? Vodafone joining was time well with LaunchUp Geo.
00:17:04
Speaker
and work there for close around 14 months and then we moved to hot star. That's when I moved to Bombay. Worked with hot star for the last three years and now it leads. So my roles have sort of moved from sales to marketing to sales and marketing. Largely stayed in these two domains.
00:17:25
Speaker
Also, what I like about your journey, and I'll tell you what I hate also after this, what I like about your journey is that you seem to somehow land in the middle of the next exciting thing to happen, right? I mean, for example, if you ask a beef student after three, four years of his or her career, they would say, I want to go international and see how work happens in a different country, right? So you probably moved with that timing. Then from there on movement, digital was picking up, you probably moved to Google.
00:17:55
Speaker
Vodafone was a challenge in itself because you were somehow now looking at fighting with the company that is offering like zero services and then and then hot star obviously the rise of ODD platform and now edtech is like the hottest thing so that's a good interesting challenging career path if I if I if I may.
00:18:13
Speaker
The bad thing that I think I would want to mention is super jealous of how these moves have happened for you because you've clearly learned a lot. And the other thing that I would want to learn from you, and it's a negative person, is that each
00:18:28
Speaker
time each role you would have at a different marketing challenge, right? I mean, I mean, I mean, example, Vodafone, but once you join in, you realize, somebody like Reliance, like a big daddy, like Reliance is offering for free. How do you compete? And plus, Vodafone was probably prized and positioned as a premium brand, right? Compared to the Airtels and the, and the, and all the other, were the other Elko's around, still around when you joined? Yeah, yeah, everyone was there. But I think
00:18:56
Speaker
in a quick 12 months we saw you know almost
00:19:03
Speaker
They were close to around more than a dozen players in the industry. There were only three left by the time and currently there are only three left, right? So even the likes of Tata's and even look at, if you look at Vodafone idea, which at that time when I joined Vodafone, Vodafone's turnover was 42,000 crores in a year in India and it was a bit of a positive business, stimulating revenue.
00:19:27
Speaker
And today the mind would have won an idea, they are, I think they are probably negative each year by a case of 50,000 crore. So I think it is just the entire industry has gotten disrupted heavily.
00:19:41
Speaker
So tell me, my next question that I've taken a note of is, how is marketing for a business like lead school wherein, like you mentioned, consumer coyore, customer coyore, stakeholder coyore, this is an entire, like a difficult EGs to manage. How is it different for a lead compared to any of your previous roles, let's say a hot star or a good phone or a racket, racket to super, you know, road pivots, but how is it different
Branding in FMCG vs. Tech and Telecom
00:20:12
Speaker
In record, I have worked on weight average brands, I have worked on, got the chance to work on Dettol and Harpik. These are two probably, you know, both market leaders in their different categories. Harpik, one might say, is not a very interesting category to work on. We are talking about toilet cleaners and used to analyze the stains on toilets as a brand manager.
00:20:38
Speaker
I think if you look at any FMCG product right let's pick toilet cleaners now between one plot from a product lens if someone wants to copy Harpig's formulation and the shape of the bottle actually you go in a big bazaar you will find 10 different products with the same red cap and blue bottle same shape price that one plus one half of the price of Harpig right
00:21:03
Speaker
I'm sorry, I'm cutting you because you gave me the liberty to cut you and share my experiences as well. So what I've learned is that there are a few brands that become the category mnemonic. This lady, every panic, a bottle started looking blue, and then they had to change the color to green. And even if they change the color to green, now everything is green in that same bottle shape, right?
00:21:22
Speaker
Heart pick, for example, that curvy bottle, I call it curvy bottle, I don't know what you guys call it internally, but that bottle with that shape, like you mentioned, every brand at a big bazaar or even a local store will have that same shape, same red and blue thing, right? Dittol, for example, green became such a big synonymous to, like, everything. So, yeah. So, see, again, now, therefore, in these industries, in most of the times, in fast-moving consumer goods, you take, let's say, Maggie or an EP noodle,
00:21:51
Speaker
Maggie anyways you know when it comes to food there is still a taste that goes into my Indian mall right now for Harpik it's a very low involvement category people couldn't care less if the toilets were not getting cleaned up and people would not buy it so they are not very difficult to replicate the only thing that differentiates is the brand
00:22:17
Speaker
Now, because when you put a brand name there and you invest behind it, people actually start to demand that product, right? So Harpik today represents the category of toilet cleaner. And as a very early on, I think these are some learnings from from Rekit that
00:22:38
Speaker
One person, one brand will say that, hey, I'm going to drive this category and build the penetration of category in the India market. So when I used to work on Hapik, our job was to, let's say if there are 100 households in urban India, we used to measure what is our penetration. And each year, we would say that our penetration goal would be, let's say, to move it up by 300 basis points or finite basis points. That is what would give a small business. We had a trial pack, which was separate for that.
00:23:08
Speaker
And your bonus as well. Absolutely. So after trial pack, you will say that if 100 people try, so many people we are able to retain and so many people are going to try it again and then they become, you know, heavy users, etc. So that's the role of category. Now, what happens is as a result of it, when people start noticing that, hey, this is a growing business,
00:23:30
Speaker
private labels will kick in or copy all these products who would be priced lower, they will kick in because they know that consumers, there is a set of consumers who will shift because of price but there is a set of consumers who are more brand conscious and who will be willing to pay that extra payment and B is not every product
00:23:49
Speaker
Now, big bazaar can ensure that in their own stores, they can put a private level. But when you are going out to do situation, India is still in the lead market. So there are like more than 70 million stores in the country. So, distribution happens primarily. There is A, there is a direct distribution that companies like Rekat will invest in. B is indirect, which happens through wholesale. That is again led by consumer demand.
00:24:14
Speaker
consumer will go ask for a product on a shop they will not ask for unbranded product they will ask for a branded product and therefore I think investment in brands for FNCG industry has been has been the core reason why this industry is sort of grown it also enables in driving distribution obviously now as you as you keep moving forward now within the soap industry for example if you say
00:24:39
Speaker
There are beauty soaps, which is a lugs. And then there are these germ protection kind of soaps, which is that all. And it's a niche market. Normally, you will find not more than two players operating in that market. So there is a live boy in India, and there's a dead all. Yeah. I'm trying to think, is there a third brand I know? I can only think of live boy and dead all in terms of... Savalo, I think, is a real... They're very small. They're very small.
00:25:04
Speaker
I mean, I think they were a decent entrant, right? After the solution sort of desaturated the market with that, they are again a leader in that space, right? So they had to get on top.
00:25:14
Speaker
Savlon is making that liquid thing right so they have to move on from there. Actually see even in the antiseptic liquid our market share is and did all market share is like 95% Savlon was like less than 5% and and that was because in India while they said that you know it does not sting for some reason in India people start to believe it doesn't sting doesn't work so so so
00:25:43
Speaker
been more about brand because the differentiation in product was always limited. If you look at different chips brands, how much differentiation is there? If you don't find Uncle chips in one brand, will you go to another store and say, I want only Uncle chips? Maybe once in a while you will do that, otherwise you will buy whatever is distributed. The next piece was, and therefore
00:26:09
Speaker
you know brand becomes important because when you go to a store the top of mind brand that is you will ask for it. Now when I think from that lens when you move to let's say somebody like a Google there the differentiation in its product is so huge let's say who are have you ever used any other search engine? I've only used Bing once
00:26:46
Speaker
So I think the whole analogy or the whole principle on which most of these tech companies have built their products is to say that
00:26:57
Speaker
Tech is going to be the heart of our offering and product differentiation is something that we are going to really drive. Nobody can copy our product. If you think of a Google map, Google probably has 10 products today, which have more than a billion users. Now, it's very difficult to copy that. You just can't. Now, likewise,
00:27:20
Speaker
If you look at Ola or Uber, there are two or three people came, but then nobody could scale beyond a particular movement. So there, the principle that most of these companies have worked on is, let's get users. We will figure out monetization later. Let's build great products. Google has searched all over. Let's build a great product. Eventually, they figure out how to search ads.
00:27:48
Speaker
And they figured it pretty late in their lifestyle, right? And Google, as a search engine, was around for, I think, a decade before they stumbled upon money making via ads as a business, right? I mean, they were around for a decade or more, right? And then when I moved to Vodafone, Vodafone, so even in Google, while there is a marketing team that is there, and they do these campaigns. But if you see in the pecking order, today, who is the guy who heads Google?
00:28:16
Speaker
He's not a marketing guy. He's at the heart. The core is, are these techies, right? Who heads, let's say, whereas if you photo FMCG company, you will find that CEOs are more, they will tend to be more marketers who've done those, gone through those journeys, because you'll not find a supply chain or a R&D guy sitting at the CEO position of a HUL or a record.
00:28:39
Speaker
Now, when I joined Modophone, I think the one big difference in the industry was from a tech. Telecom is a service, right? So, it is from all of a sudden a product, a soap or a toilet cleaner, you moved into services marketing. And therefore, things like, you know, customer life cycle management, product marketing, all of a sudden these started to come into picture. While there is a role of brand,
00:29:06
Speaker
So they would talk about corporate marketing. I used to head sales and marketing function for Vodafone Karnataka. Our corporate marketing used to happen out of Bombay. This gentleman by the name of Siddharth Banerjee, who used to head marketing at that time. And Vodafone has done. He eventually moved to Facebook. No, Siddharth. He's recently joined, I think, I'm in touch with him. He's recently joined Pearson as the MD for India and South Asian markets.
00:29:36
Speaker
And so he's also moved from telecom to digital, after that he was working with, played 24x7 games and then he's just moved to a tech.
00:29:49
Speaker
So he's amongst, again, one of those marketeers that I've sort of learned a lot from a distance because Vodafone, at the peak of Vodafone's brand, did some fabulous work, not just in terms of communication, but even the touch points. I remember the visiting card would be really cool. It said, hi, my name is blah, blah, blah, whatever. It was a different sitting card only, right? I mean, from a corporate brand to the communication consumers. Vodafone built a phenomenal brand in India, the Zuzus.
00:30:16
Speaker
the characters or the campaign about the dog you know that wherever the way you go the network flows. I mean there was a time and pugs were in so much in demand that you know India may people wanted to adopt pugs only before because Vodafone was using that in an ad right. So I think the experience at telecom was more around services because you know we used to have in my in my own market we had close to around 200 stores which would act as a touchpoint for users they would come
00:30:51
Speaker
You know, there were so many players in the industry. One of the most important metrics for telecom industry overall was NPS. That, you know, is your customer really recommending a product to a friend or family? But at the end of the day, everyone was priced, you know, very similar to the competition. Whether it was until Mukesh Bhai came and he started offering freebies in the industry.
00:31:09
Speaker
while and it's a
00:31:20
Speaker
So I think that industry taught me more about product life cycle management, about services marketing so that there was a role of brand but when one would advertise on brand one would say that hey we want to be the top three brands
00:31:39
Speaker
that people, when they are thinking on the spot, when they are going to a store and you are saying, we are going to recharge, we are going to recharge, so we would want to be there and you would also want some association of, you know, what kind of imagery. You would never find a Vodafone or Airtel user switching to Idea. Right, because you have a certain imagery, right, you want to play within those two places, because you feel here, very image. Idea, for example, used to always be a more massy, more
00:32:10
Speaker
more tier 2, tier 3 or more rural kind of a brand.
00:32:13
Speaker
So let me try to tell you what I thought of idea as a marketeer. And then, so purely the marketeer from a distance. I've never worked on idea as a brand. But to me, no idea was an epitome of a desi cool brand. You know, like, mas me cool kasibhana. And with all the campaigns that it did and the pricing and the colors was all kitschy and vibrant for people like us, right? So to me, idea was mas desi cool, if I may use that word. And go to phone was,
00:32:40
Speaker
let's say our SEC A's of the world and aspirational brand, 8 or somewhere in the middle. So that was the stack that I thought was there, right? So and Vodafone always had a much higher post-paid base than anyone else in the industry. True, true. Even Arpuz was the highest, right, from Vodafone for the longest time. So that was that and then therefore a little bit of a services exposure. I think, again, going back to Hotstar, Hotstar, my role was more on sales.
00:33:06
Speaker
And I was helping to set them up, the digital ad sales business, while I used to interact with a lot of marketers, a lot of CMOs like me, and tell them why they should come and invest on Northstar and advertise on Northstar. So it kept me in touch with marketing throughout. And then now at LEAD, I think the biggest difference in LEAD has been that LEAD's role is an amalgamation of all of these.
LEAD's Empowerment Strategy
00:33:33
Speaker
So on one hand, we are trying to build a brand.
00:33:36
Speaker
On the other hand, see when we go to schools, we are selling them a B2B product.
00:33:42
Speaker
And it is our product is not just curriculum, it's also services. So we sell a suite of product and services to them. And therefore, that aspect comes into picture. Managing the product lifecycle or customer lifecycle comes into picture. We have to maintain a certain rate of acquisition and to become the leaky bucket. And then at the same time, we are wanting to now go consumer first and tell them that, first, I have 2,000 partner schools across the country.
00:34:12
Speaker
I want you to, if you have a choice, if you have two schools, right, if you are a parent, for example, you have two schools in, in, near your household, I want you to send your child to a lead powered school. Here is the reason, one, two, three, refer this one. So we want to actually drive admissions or demand for our partner school because that becomes then a huge mode for us that we can own in the long term. There are a lot of curriculum services, etc. providers in the country, a lot of publishers.
00:34:41
Speaker
but nobody is able to generate demand for their partners because we are trying to approach this problem a little differently.
00:34:49
Speaker
So that's interesting, right? I mean, there are some names that pop into my head immediately, but this is an interesting take on this entire edtech business that, you know, could you become the school of choice? Like, for example, when I was a kid, right, I grew up in Delhi, and every kid in Delhi wanted to go to, say, a DPS argument. And the DPS could be in wherever, right? I mean, it could be in Mathura Road, it could be in Dwarka, it could be wherever, but my parents would say a DPS job.
00:35:16
Speaker
So, I think you are trying to sort of create that same demand with LEED, right? You could be, I don't know, GUR Education Institute, but if it's powered by LEED, parents would say, GUR education institute, but if there is a LEED curriculum, my kid would be happier and more fulfilled if he goes there, right? So, that's an interesting take. Sorry, you're saying something? I mean, so, see, our challenge in the education industry has been that there are
00:35:46
Speaker
parents who can afford education for their child in either high-fee schools. High-fee schools form less than 10% of the private school ecosystem. Over the last decade or so, something called affordable private schools has really had a phenomenal growth. Because in general, the trust that consumers have had on government schools is low. Because of various reasons, because the kind of teacher, the kind of quality of teaching
00:36:16
Speaker
and therefore private schools have really grown. Now we work with these private schools to improve the quality of education that they are able to deliver.
00:36:23
Speaker
of course they are better than government schools but they are still nowhere in comparison to let's say what a urban metro city school will offer right both in terms of exposure kind of teachers evolve pedagogy because they charge high fees they are able to afford better teachers like a virtual cycle so we go to these schools and try and upgrade the quality of curriculum we actually work
00:36:49
Speaker
With schools which are charging fees below Rs.50,000, we actually don't go to schools above certain threshold level of fees. And 75% of our business today is coming from, you know, tier 2 plus terms. So we hardly have any presence in metros. We don't even want to be in metros right now. Now,
00:37:13
Speaker
What you mentioned about us going and partnering with these schools and parents, parents will start to recognize us as a brand. And when they see that, hey, we are as a brand endorsing a particular school, they are assured then all of a sudden that there is a certain bare minimum quality that I'm going to get from this school. That's what we want to do.
00:37:39
Speaker
There is no say unlike in a lot of foreign markets where schools are rated officially and there is a ranking of schools which is available so parents can and therefore the higher demand schools will charge for probably more fees and therefore here there is no such ranking that is available. We are trying to create at least a benchmark of saying that this is the minimum quality of education that you can expect from a lead powered school.
00:38:06
Speaker
So that's what we are trying to do.
00:38:10
Speaker
Got this.
Diversity and Continuous Learning in Marketing
00:38:11
Speaker
Super interesting. I think it's a long-term mission. And like you said, right in the beginning, that vision is getting crystallized on a day-to-day basis. So this looks very, very interesting. Cool. Let me jump to the not so boring part of the conversation, which I typically start the chat with. But today, we couldn't. And these questions, again, like I said, there's no right answer, wrong answer to it. But this is what we'll learn from you.
00:38:37
Speaker
So tell me, as a marketer, right, who's supposed to sort of handle a brand as diverse as lead, how do you keep yourself updated about what's happening in the world, per se? So what's, you know, again, I have
00:38:58
Speaker
I have relied a lot on my own experiences to be very diverse like I shared. Every time I have changed my roles, I've gone to a completely new industry. Whether by design or by accident, it's happened so that I've ended up working for four very diverse industries in my career.
00:39:21
Speaker
Now, there is an advantage to it. The advantage is that you get a lot of exposure. There is also a huge disadvantage to it because every time you join a new industry, you have to unlearn a few things and you have to learn a lot of new things, right? If you are continuing to work in FMCG industry and you just change the company,
00:39:38
Speaker
I think that learning curve is not so steep. You just need to get to know the organization and not the industry. Here it's both about the organization as well as industry and also setting up of teams. So in at least three of my roles, last three roles, I've had to set up teams from scratch. So inherited no team. So here when I came, zero team. Today we have like a 25, 30 member team.
00:40:04
Speaker
Now, like I was in the previous role. Now, the other roles that I did back at Google and at Hotstar, they again helped me to... So there the role was to go and meet with people from a very diverse set of industries. So when I was doing sales at Hotstar, I set up the SMB sales business for them.
00:40:31
Speaker
we would meet with clients as diverse as davat rice to patanjali to let's say lishis of the world or khata book right so
00:40:45
Speaker
And therefore you understand from them their business, what are they doing, what is it that they want to do, why should they partner with you. I think the name Motsar used to help us, at least ensure that we would knock on their doors, they would let us in and they would talk to us, try and figure out how can we help them solve their business challenges. And then you bring in your experience from the past to figure out what is it that you can do.
00:41:08
Speaker
to help solve their core challenges. I think for me one of the biggest things that I have sort of relied on is this diversity of experience and probably more than anything else because it's helped me to build a very large network of people. When I moved to this organization
00:41:29
Speaker
actually consulted a lot of CMOS from who used to be my clients on how to set up a team, what skill set to look at, what did they do and some of them have been, I have gone back to them, asked them I am stuck here, what do you suggest I should do and they have all been sort of fairly welcoming in terms of opening up.
00:41:49
Speaker
let me interrupt and then dying to the ask this question, so if, so tell me what would you look for in a potential team member as in don't give me the skills obviously they will depend on the role that you are heading for but what
00:42:05
Speaker
other things you look for people when you hire for them. So arguments like if you were to hire me as part of your team in whatever role, what kind of, what do you think I should have? I mean, give me some genetics that you've learned from your colleagues in the past, your bosses in the past, and today how do you practice it? So give me, talk to me about that please. And also think of it that if there are students listening to the conversation,
00:42:27
Speaker
And I tell that guy, I can't get a conversation for 43rd minute. So that you know, how do you get hired at a modern marketing company today? So what are those three things? I see again, when you are running an interview, I think when the first thing that I do is if I'm hiring for my direct report, the shortlisting should ensure that you know, you're getting rid of those functional aspects.
00:42:57
Speaker
And then you might want to quiz them about that. And rather than quizzing them, get them to narrate a few large business problem statements. That gives you a sense of how they approach that problem. I think the other aspects for me which are more important are the energy that people bring to a discussion table.
00:43:26
Speaker
And how genuine do they sound? And I think after working for 17-18 years, one sort of develops an act to figure out care. Genuine, generally it's like the guy is faffing around and hasn't really done that stuff. Or how enthusiastic or energetic are they about it?
00:43:47
Speaker
Sometimes you end up running, going for an interview which just came by and you said, and maybe you might be interested once you come to the discussion table and that's absolutely fine. I have done interviews with a lot of people where I have been only one speaking for the first one hour. I have told them, hey, now this is the company. No, why don't you think about it whether you are interested or not and then come back. If you are interested, then we will do an interview.
00:44:17
Speaker
And lead unfortunately, the team that I recruited over the last one year was in that stage where I had to sell the company to everyone. Because people didn't know about it. And the business model also was not very clear to people. People used to think, I'm going to be in school now.
00:44:34
Speaker
to explain to them containing school. This is our vision, that's where we want to get to. I think a lot of those problems hopefully get solved once we start to appear as a brand on national television. So I'm hoping for that. But yeah, I think I look for these three, I specifically look for three aspects. A is, you know, the
00:45:00
Speaker
personal connect that I am able to establish with the person while we are having a conversation, how open and frank they are and what kind of energy they bring to the table. And obviously how genuine they are.
00:45:14
Speaker
some understanding of how open are they to learn because we all come when I have hired people into this organization or even when I hired a not sir I hired a lot of diverse set of candidates I think one thing I learned after moving out of record most of the LNCG companies historically they have just hired photocopies of each other right it's just the same culture
00:45:47
Speaker
But when I moved to Google and at Hotsana, I saw so much diversity there in these organizations that I think for the first time I started to feel care. There should be diversity in the candidates that you bring to the table because
00:46:01
Speaker
There is value in it. And just having photocopies of each other does not help. Because then you don't realize, I know there was a time when we did well, this is that culture. I think that time is sort of passé. And so that's the second thing that I try and consciously do. I try and maintain some diversity in my team.
00:46:25
Speaker
Even if they are coming in from different industries, how open are they to picking up and taking a risk. But I know that these are my skill set and I think there is an application there. I think openness to learning something new.
00:46:44
Speaker
I've also done those jumps a lot, a lot of times in my career and I think it's helped me in good stead. Now, as an Yankee every time every move has worked for me but some moves don't work and it's fine and Vodafone didn't work out for whatever reason.
00:47:00
Speaker
But again, I enjoyed that. I'm still in touch on a day to day basis with the teams that I used to handle back in those days. I've helped quite a few of them to get placements outside. They have helped me in different ways than they could even after. And you know, it's like, that's with all of those folks. So those would be my, beyond the core functional aspect of it.
00:47:28
Speaker
I mean, you said it right, right, that, you know, assuming functional aspect has been taken care of, short testing has happened, the guy has come to, the guy or the girl has to come to meet you, so that filtering has happened already, right? So, that's there. Cool, got this. So, tell me, and this is again, you may all skip this or whatever, but do you want to talk about some mistakes that you made when you were growing up that you think a marketing manager of three to four years of experience should avoid in their careers?
00:47:55
Speaker
And if not your mistakes, maybe what you've learned from your friends in the business or from the school. I think a lot of times it's about choices. You make a choice and then
00:48:20
Speaker
Maybe in hindsight, one might feel care. I should have gone with the other choice. And not so much of a mistake because most of the times in such large organizations, you are always presented with one, two, three choices that business can make it any point. Got it. So I'm going to say that you skirted the question pretty well. So let me use that as a language.
00:48:48
Speaker
Okay, so tell me, and last few questions, Anupam. So tell me if you could go back to a B-School now in 2021 and you were told to redesign the curriculum that a marketing student gets to be taught on. So what would you want to add to that and what would you want to remove to that from what you learned day back 17 years ago?
00:49:15
Speaker
I have had the good fortune of studying in probably very prestigious institutes. I studied in Delhi College of Engineering and then I studied in IAM Bangalore. To be honest, as a student I did not put in a great amount of effort once.
00:49:36
Speaker
you know, probably not even half of the effort that I had put in to get into the institute versus what I put in when I was in the institute. And I think there are a lot of my batch mates who did that. I think probably some part of it is on account of maybe lack of maturity at that point in time as a student because you will not experience, I had not worked at all when I joined IM Bangalore.
00:50:05
Speaker
one of the key changes if I was to make my own life I would probably have worked and then gone back to study because I think the application of it is far more clearer to you once you have done some kind of work and worked in an organizational setup for me that's like the single largest difference between
00:50:34
Speaker
the approach that we have in our B-spools in India versus what, let's say, the B-spools in any US or European market would have. And I think it does have a huge impact. My own brother, he worked for a couple of days. I think even in his case, he worked for two and a half years, and then he joined MDI. I would have, unfortunately, now that I'm 42,
00:51:03
Speaker
I am not sure if any student is going to entertain me to come back but that is one aspect and therefore the reason why I am saying that aspect is also because of you know poor application of stuff. Sometimes you end up reading a lot of something theory while one works on a lot of case studies. I still feel that at least back 1670 years back the
00:51:31
Speaker
The application part of it from an industry exposure perspective was still extremely limited. I'd say and I'm sure it is increased now and this I'm talking even about I'm Bangalore and I'm again saying it with all due respect to the institute. It's played a huge role in my shaping my career.
00:51:54
Speaker
the way it is right now so I will thanks you then those are two three aspects that if I could revisit my own career that's what I would want to change
Anupam's Personal Goals and Future Plans
00:52:04
Speaker
And let me fast forward, let's say, if I told you that, you know, Anupam, you need, you must take a sabbatical for a year starting tomorrow. What skills, things, what would you learn for yourself with 17, 18 years of experience across diverse industries? What would you learn if you had an option? Yeah, I think I personally like learning both the word use word.
00:52:42
Speaker
And I'm not saying we all get exposed to so much communication on a day to day basis. And I have been actually looking forward to what you just mentioned right now. In the last 17 years of my career, probably not taken a break more than a week right at any point in time.
00:53:05
Speaker
I think somewhere one again needs to pause and reflect and say what we are doing right now is probably a reflection of what we thought you know in early 20s KCLiveJ and I
00:53:28
Speaker
I probably have more personal agendas from a family lens. I think the ability to spend time with parents, with kids, my own brother over the last couple of years has been extremely important. I think if I were to take a sabbatical, I would actually, maybe not a year, but at least a good three months, I would want to do some of that stuff.
00:53:56
Speaker
rather than think about, keep personal learning. The other thing that I want to do is, you know, my wife has been insisting is to practice a lot more meditation. And she's been practicing for a very long time. She's been asking me to practice it. I've just not been able to get a hang of it. So she wants me to try and learn that if that's
00:54:26
Speaker
So learning is a way of learning. And then probably maybe try and spend a lot more time with family. I know one can say that day to day is a day to day. But it's like when I gab, I have to fill up the time sheet.
00:54:46
Speaker
I am not so fussed about Senki. At least at the moment I don't have any such qualms. You have any thoughts around it, let me ask. It's only because I think that I am 38, so thankfully I am still not 40.
00:55:10
Speaker
Sorry for rubbing it in, I'm still less than 40. So, so if I get to talk to interesting people, I realize that while I may have had diversity of experiences, like I call myself somebody, and yet I believe there is so much more that, but the more I learn, the more I realize that I don't know so many things.
00:55:37
Speaker
So I am one of those selfish people who want to live it all, know it all, be the most knowledgeable person in the room. You know what I'm saying, right? So to me, learning is the most important thing. Agreed. I don't agree to LinkedIn only learning. I don't like that LinkedIn brag learning. But I hear you. I think that's something that
00:56:06
Speaker
I'll give a small example and I recently after I moved here I underwent a product marketing course because it was not something that I had done in the shape and form that I am doing now and therefore there was a need for me to sort of revisit it and and have some theoretical knowledge around it so that when you're doing the practical aspects of it you apply those frameworks right and so from that lens I think
00:56:32
Speaker
Marketing is like a forever evolving industry. And it allows us to always keep learning, so to speak.
00:56:44
Speaker
I think I should have called this convocation the riff on learning and unlearning and something like that. Okay, last two questions. One is a difficult one, one is an easy one. Difficult one is that what is that one question that you always wished somebody asked you in an interview but they have not asked you. Actually, you have asked the question, what is the best way to do it? What is the best way to do it?
00:57:12
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
00:57:41
Speaker
I have tried my best to give people probably a little more than what they expect. So that when people are coming in their 3 and they feel like they are doing this, they feel like they are doing this, they feel like they are doing this, they feel like they are doing this, they feel like they are doing this, they feel like they are doing this, they feel like they are doing this.
00:58:01
Speaker
So that was a question that sort of, how do I put it? Everybody sort of stumbles to think about that. So that is one. The last, the absolute last question that I have on my list, while there is a list is very, very long, but I will cut that because of the time. So last question is that, if you were to throw a marketing challenge to the listeners,
00:58:23
Speaker
And I would compile those responses, whatever I get and send them to you, now that I have an email address and phone number. What would that be? What do you want them to think on? What is it that you care for? So this is something that we are trying to do right now. And if you think about schools as a category, and we are grappling with this challenge, we are trying to find a solve for it.
00:58:49
Speaker
I'm happy to hear what our listeners think about it. Schools as a category is largely run or largely operates and tries on referrals. Now, when we are trying to build our business and go consumer first, one of the key sources for us to drive admissions in our partner school should be referrals, which are given by our own parents of our own schools.
00:59:18
Speaker
Now what we are trying to figure out is how do we build a large referral marketing program. Currently because what happens is referrals are always there is no structure to it.
00:59:33
Speaker
What will happen is, I as a parent if I like my school, maybe some other friend asks me to school tomorrow, I might give them, but it's a very unstructured way of doing it. I think we are trying to figure out how do we create those digital journeys or user journeys, where we are able to create a structured program, but at the same time
00:59:54
Speaker
We are not trying to offer, see the schools that we partnered with, they are also very conscious here. I don't want to beg for admissions. I don't want to give 500 bucks, 1000 rupees discount in fees for admissions because that impacts my imagery. No school would want to do that, any credible school.
01:00:14
Speaker
right and therefore chas cool says care why do I need to give discount or for you know referral I think what I am offering is far greater as a product and service.
01:00:25
Speaker
and therefore, typically referral programs, what you will see, a lot of them tend to offer freebies. You refer someone, that guy subscribes, you will also get something, ex-guy will also get something. Now, if you say that, hey, my value proposition is this, you as a parent are really happy with what your child is learning in my school and you are proud, therefore you will refer, one,
01:00:53
Speaker
And be the other guy's reason to come sign up is because he feels that hey education is so important that he doesn't care about that 500 bucks or 1000 bucks or 2000 bucks discount. I am willing to compromise their, compromise many education, my parents are willing to go that extra mile.
01:01:12
Speaker
So that's one challenge that we are trying to solve. If anyone has any brilliant ideas around it, I'm more than happy to hear. Interesting. I will try to write a note and then put it out because it's going to take some explaining to do as well.
01:01:28
Speaker
I hear you. Brilliant. And I think these are the questions that I have. I mean, I have like 20 more questions to ask, but I think I'm going to take a break here and cut the interview here and then we'll probably connect again. Thank you so much for being patient and responding to my questions. I know they were all over the place for some reason, but I'm glad that I could get to talk to you. You just heard the latest episode of the Marketing Connect
01:01:56
Speaker
a show for marketeers by marketeers. The show was brought to you by C4E and the podium.