by Professor R Srinivasan

Kellogg’s and Upma! Yes, you heard it right! Kellogg’s recently launched ready- to- make Nutty Rava Upma in the Indian market. All of us know of the failure of Kellogg’s in ignoring our cultural moorings when they introduced in 1994 corn flakes, wheat flakes and rice flakes. Not until 1997, when they launched sugar-coated “Frosties”  to salvage the market, did they taste some success. We have often used this example in the classroom of why Kellogg’s failed in the Indian market while Maggi and McDonalds succeeded. Similarly, a few years back when HUL launched a product line of the premium ayurvedic brand called Ayush, there weren’t many takers, but later relaunched it at a more reasonable price point. Patanjali found its sweet spot in its marketing of Ayurvedic products with a better-perceived value.

That brings in a flood of ideas to my mind making the original Indian breakfast, Vada-Pav into a chain of Drive-Thru (like McDonald’s). There is a chain of Vada-Pav outlets called Goli Vada-Pav, but its marketing is not even a whisper. Or can it be taken globally like what was done by an Indian start-up called Wow Laddus, which sells premium Laddus in the USA and Europe? “More than 36 per cent of the orders on Amazon in the US for our laddus are not from Indians,” said Murali Cherat, founder and Managing Director.

We, professors, can spark many a idea for start-ups! That’s what I did six years back to a student in a class who wanted a business idea. I suggested that he start a food business by delivering rotis/chapattis to regular customers like they do newspaper. The student wasn’t impressed. Well, there is a firm that figured out how they could sell rotis that could be heated and served in an instant.

Talking of ideas, I recently got a box of teabags from a friend in London. They had branded it as “The Best English Tea”. I never knew tea was grown in England! The teabags had inferior tea dust. I opened the box and saw at the bottom “Packed for the United Kingdom in India”.