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Episode 04: Building a consumer brand with Nisa Godrej

Nisa Godrej is the chairperson of Godrej Consumer Products part of the Godrej Group. It's a business with diversified products across health and beauty, insecticides, and a variety of other areas. We're going to talk a lot about consumers habits, brand, sustainability, geographical expansion, product development, direct to consumer brands and just generally how the market has evolved over the course of the last year.

By Sandeep Murthy

6th January 2022

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Change is not coming, its here.

Sandeep

To start with a topic, you and I have talked a bit about over the years, about and the impact of tech on the entire ecosystem, and one thing is clear, that direct to consumer brands are growing. People are believing that they can reach the customer through all channels. Distribution has been a big advantage for larger companies over the years. How do you think about that world? Is that something that you see changing? How do you see it evolving?

Nisa

Sandeep, I think, you know, when we think about tech and we think about d2c, see and we think about distribution, you know, in consumer products, to give you a bit of the landscape - 80% is still our kirana stores. 10% is what we call sort of modern trade, which is your D- Mart and your reliance. And then, you know, depending on the category, for us, it's about 5% right now is on e-commerce. But what we're seeing, Sandeep, is that especially with COVID, this digitization is happening actually across all channels. So when you look at online store, there's a lot of disruption coming, whether it's from what was the traditional distributors or wholesalers being, you know, kind of pushed out a little bit by players like what Jio is doing so you know, the way I think about it is, you know when people panic, like Oh God, "what's going to happen? Amazon is going to, you know, we make products like soaps and household insecticides. What's going to happen because all these people are going to bring their private labels because that's where they'll make the margins and stuff.

“ So I think change is not coming. It's here and it's happening extremely rapidly. As a company that was not founded in the last 10 years, it's important to embrace this change ”

And I'll talk a little bit about it that as we go along also in terms of what are the advantages d2c, or this digitization of the kirana store can bring you. And at the same time, you really must focus on your core, which is your brand and you have to keep strengthening your brand and keep making sure that they are very meaningful to the consumer. Because then whichever channel you're going through, that's where it gives you, gives you your strength. And we've seen this, you know, I think these conversations that all these big brands will get disrupted, at least in consumer products brands are able to survive, you know, decades even if some of these brands are 100 years old because e they keep renewing themselves and serving the consumer. So I think that's very important to focus on while embracing the change

Sandeep

Actually, you brought up brand. And I think that's another area I wanted to talk about, which is that you've managed to take, let's say, the parent brand and extend it across categories. Whereas some of the other larger or large businesses have opted to keep the parent brand or the parent company's brand silent in the background and not stretch. And actually, we've thought about this and looked at as distribution becomes more tech enabled and and perhaps more. Single channel, as opposed to the thousands of Kirana's that we're looking at in the offline world. Is there an advantage that you see to having the parent brand being so strong? And is that the direction that's going to even benefit you even more so as you think about this?

Nisa

The parent brand, which is Godrej, was an evolution that's happened. We're going to be a hundred and twenty five years old or young as we like to see it next year. But, you know, I don't think this was a thought through strategy at any point or if it was, it was before my time. So I think what the parent brand does, it does give you a foot in the door in terms of trust and quality. But, you know, sometimes a parent brand can also have a negative context. So I think you have to really think about your company, think about the categories that you're going into and see, you know, do the positives outweigh the negatives? So I don't think there's a master brand is right or a master brand is wrong. And you see companies going both ways. . You know, a lot of the FMCG you companies like Unilever or Johnson, we actually see them putting the parent brand, bringing it into advertising and things like that. So, you know, in the same way, we also see brands moving away.

Sandeep

Is this now a firm strategy, as you think going forward?

Nisa

In India as an endorser brand, using the parent brand name works very, very well. So if we do research, whether it's an old or new brands, it does. We do, even when we've done sort of digitally first brands, putting the Godrej on the packaging gets your click throughs up. So I think for India, it makes sense. But now, you know, as a global company, we haven't really focused as much as getting the Godrej brand out there as a master brand in other countries. There the Godrej comes at the back of the pack

 

Global expansion

Sandeep

Let's talk a little bit about that and the global expansion. This has been a big focus for you. When you took over and you said that this is a big part of where you see growth coming from. How did that start? What were the challenges? What is the current situation?

 

 

Nisa

I think the opportunity as we saw it was that other emerging markets would behave similarly to India, where high quality value for money products driven by sort of deep distribution and sort of very strong cost economics and categories with low penetration. So there's a lot of headroom for growth. So we did acquisitions in Indonesia and all across the African continent. And I think a lot of what we said, has played out as we thought. In Africa, we went into a category called hair fashion, which is, you know, African women, but extensions on their hair. So it's it's not really a category that women of other races actually use. And there, I think we, you know, we didn't estimate our lack of knowledge of the category correctly. And you know, we've all been to business school and you read about this, how what is the distance of geography and category from your goal? and then when you actually do it in practice, you don't pay as much attention. And I think we've definitely suffered some consequences...but you learn as you go along the way. And we're really quite excited about the potential of the African continent and off some of these categories.

 

“ I guess that's really where entrepreneurs start from, which is they know nothing about anything to some extent, and they have the willingness to just get in there and work to figure it out ”

 

 And it sounds like to some extent, you find yourself in that position with hair extensions and I guess you work to figure it out. And that sounds very much keeping the business in a very entrepreneurial mind frame to be willing to take risks like that and get into areas where there's a lot to work out. But you believe you can, for sure.

 

Nisa

I think in any business you need, my dad always says that you know that we sometimes discount people who were very successful... we sort of see them when they're at the top of the game. Correct? And but why are there so few people like that is also just the tenacity it takes to keep going at it for that.

 And I think any of us, whether it's an entrepreneur or whether you're a professional working in an established business, you're going to have lots of failures, you're going to fall down flat on your face. I think it's the amount of time. Did the amount of times that you succeeded and pick yourself up, did they just outweigh the failures? If they did, you're doing well.

Although I had, I had one Wharton Professor Sandeep, who told me that everyone will tell you it's great to learn from failure, but it's much better to learn from success. So I mean, you know, obviously we tell ourselves this. I mean, you know, I'm very glad we did Africa. I think, you know, that is, you know, it will be an important part of our future, I think for me personally. I didn't start this company. So I'm just this trusteeship of the company for a number of years and I hope to leave a legacy in Africa. But you know, it was an acquisition. So if nothing else, I would have paid much less for it. But in hindsight.

 

Keeping the legacy alive

Sandeep

So let's go back to the direct to consumer and these new Age companies that are coming about, you know, they've made the cost of entering categories really low, let's say, by just being able to grab products from places and put a brand on it. And they believe that it's their communications and their customer acquisition strategy and their positioning, the brand that will carry them forward to a level of scale, perhaps when they can ultimately get into their own real product development and product differentiation. Whereas I think you've come from a very different place where you guys have had strength in product development, and had years of research, development and ability to understand customer needs from a very real perspective of having users who have used products. How do you how do you think that translates over time as an advantage? Is that  something that these guys are going to have to build sooner rather than later if they're really going to compete in a in a world or is it something that they will have to figure out.

 

Nisa

think what some of these D2C  companies have done is quite amazing. Even in the beauty and personal space skinned up quite strongly, especially just doing it on e-commerce without having sort of offline trade. So hats off to them. But I would think that sustainability also comes from repeat customers. So customers were are repeating and not just because you keep launching new SKUs you need to have your consumers come and repeat your product. And that really happens from good quality products.  And if you don't focus on that, at some point, it's going to hit you

There’s all this excitement in FMCG about these D2C brands. And we frankly, have studied some of the product quality of these brands and it's not so good. So you could you could see some of the fallout of that coming. I mean few years ago, Patanjali was going to take all of us over and  throw us out of Indiaand people were obviously, you know, this whole natural trend and this is the futureand look where they are today, and they didn't have product quality. They didn't run their factories in the best possible way.

He was on TV all the time and the kind of branding it was  just fantastic.

 

“  at the end of the day, the consumer's going to repeat buy because they find the product good, because they love the product ”

 

So we started consumer products FMCG, business making soap, and I think ever since we started and we were the first in the world to actually commercially make soap from vegetable oils. So it used to be out of animal fats. And you can understand out of religious sentiments, why this vegetable soap did really well. And so I mean, soap is mostly oil, and now we're having a big sort of commodity price inflation. We are one of the companies who we don't touch our quality, we don't reduce the oil. And so we always keep our soaps, the total fatty matter to Grade 1And this would say in a year like this, if I tweaked my quality, I could put 50Cr to the bottom line. Consumers wouldnt probably realize that it had been done great. But if you keep doing it, do you know what I mean? But you, as a company, you have to say no, but this is a long term play and quality really matters. So I think these young companies have to be very careful that you do business also and repeat

 

 

Sandeep

You often see hype driving cycles, right? And we get very taken by.. whether it is there is laundry companies for a while that were really hot and everyone was investing in those there. It ranges right and it ranges from short form video content and now to D2C. But if the core product at these doesn't sustain, then repeatability doesn't exist.

Nisa

And yeah, and so there has to be core product quality, and then you have to see like there's a lot of these D2C can do. There's a lot that digital can do. I'm a woman in my 40s, I have my hair falling, I have acne and all sorts of beauty issues, which someone like me has access to a dermatologist. I go I figure out new things because of the dermatologist today, but they give you a really silly example, she said. Stop having this collaging powder in your coffee. And she told me this a year ago. I ignored her, and then she said, No, I really think you should do. It'll help your skin. And it was amazing. And then I googled it and it's all online. This is not something that's not going to be a traditional TV ad. It's a very premium product, right? But I think your digital ecosystem is a set off, you know, consumers in India. You know, I don't know what the depth is at a very premium pricing, but. Who you can sort of educate and have a conversation for.

 

“ And it's beyond what our traditional marketing models of TV industry, you know what you're doing with a brand with a brand like Nua, you know, menstruation and women's health is not something everyone has a lot of knowledge about. So I think there's lot of there are a lot of categories where you can build both the education and the penetration for it”

 

Sandeep

We've often talked about the idea here that brands are built at the intersection of affordability and aspiration and this aspiration question versus affordability and one of the examples we've often given as we've talked about this idea, was that the Tata Nano was very affordable. But due to the fact that it was the world's cheapest car and labelled as that was not very aspirational and the position. And I guess as you if you positioned it perhaps as  affordable and you could have probably done something interestingly aspirational with it while maintaining the price point and a different story.

Nisa

If I look about, you know, 12 to 15 years ago where I actually got involved in the business and I got directly involved in brands and product development. And actually in our hair color category where they were saying your grandparents brands. And I was being told like, we're not good enough.. We're not good enough to compete with L'Oreal. Their products are better. But they obviously like the world's strongest sort of beauty brand. But I think, you know, we took inspiration. And I don't know if you remember Target back in the days to have this whole. It was like almost like cheap and chic. And you know, all these stories think about the BMW was parked outside So you can be affordable, but you can do it all with flair. You can do it with a sense of style. At the same time, you have to be sort of really authentic  to yourself. So even in this hair color, like if you look at the launch for the first time ever in India, actually creme hair color in sachets versus box packs and brought the price down, but it also made it super easy to use. You know, I sent this product to a lot of friends during lockdown and they were like, We don't know why we've been wasting money in salons all these years, and why didn't you give it to us before actually even the way we did the packaging and things like that, we went back to our roots, correct? So we really owned the brand it's a great case study. So I think that though I think you have to, you know, really love your brand and bring it front and center and price is just one part of it.

Sandeep

So I guess that's a big part of I think what's also coming into being is the reality of the strength of who you are and the strength of India, perhaps in general as a place for products. Because I imagine that especially with some of the things that have happened, some of the lack of accessibility to other products from around the world, that provenance is becoming more relevant to people's desire to know how it's made, a desire to know that it's coming from someplace they trust. So all of this should be stuff that gets factored into what the brand actually communicates, whereas I think people tend to want to copy the West alot. And maybe that's another thing to ask you when you build things and look at stuff, how much of it is saying, OK, people want what's western, and therefore I'm going to communicate in a certain way. And I remember looking at brands here like Peter England, and these are brands that were made in India, but with Western names.

Nisa

India is a very big market. And actually, the consumers your companies speak to, the consumers I speak to probably overlap, but very slightly overlap, because we're really a mass market company. So then one of the things is not to make the mistake of there's obviously some stuff that you know and we know they're very global brands and the same thing sells all over the world. That's very possible, but not to make too many generalizations because you really need to think of India now, almost like a Europe, because each state has different taste and stuff will be very different. So if you are in  food, If you're doing tea in India, you do have to be sort of cognizant that the blends could actually be. Even though you have one brand, the blends will be different across state, especially for a big company. Obviously, if you're doing hair color that doesn't exactly work in the same way.

“ And then there are lots of trends the going at the same time. I remember doing that Naturals research. And you know, we have this huge thing. There's everything everyone wants Naturals Naturals. And frankly, it's very difficult to actually get any of these products to be really, actually natural. So a lot of it is just marketing”

 

And I remember going to consumers homes in Delhi, and there was this one consumer who was talking about just how she uses natural stuff and has a wheatgrass juice and the family's very religious and satsang and natural baby care products. And then you ask, what's the most important baby product that you must have? And she's like, It's a diaper!

Cut to another story where I'm doing research and research in India is amazing because women will start talking about their family and it's quite something how willingly they open up their houses and share. And a 12 year old daughter comes out of the room and you know, this is a two room house with Dahi in her hair and I'm like, Oh, this is like the perfect natural 12 year old girl and I and I'm like, Can you when you speak to me? And she was like, No, I have to wash. My hair goes, comes back. You know why she put Dahi in her hair because she had tried to iron her hair with an iron to straighten it? Correct. And I'm talking, this is a twenty thousand rupee a month household. And then she's telling me that I want some keratin straightening thing when I'm older and I can get it, which costs about, I don't know about twenty thousand rupees to get it done. So you. So I think that all these trends going on together, correct. So you need to really identify sort of. Who is the core customer you're going after? How big is that ? What is the penetration of your product for them and really, really what matters to them correct and message them on those one or two things.

There's a book called Different by Youngme Moon, She was a Harvard Business School professor. I remember reading this now 15 years ago, it was fantastic. And she talks about this idea of market research makes all companies regress to the mean. And how do you actually stand out and be different, and I would really encourage entrepreneurs to read

 

Tell it the way it is

Sandeep

I want to talk a little bit about COVID and how, you know, I guess you're obviously shocked everyone system when it came about and businesses shut. You guys have to deal with that as well. Revenue is down. Clearly, things have bounced back. But let's just go back maybe a year and a half and think about. How did you handle it? What was the what went on, both internally as a company and even in terms of how you thought about customers and what you were thinking that you had to do or communicate with them?

Nisa

I mean, the first thing for a company and us as the group actually was, you know we're very lucky. We're not we're not highly leveraged. We're quite a conservative sort of group. Also the industries we played and nothing was really very badly impacted. But took decisions quite early on, on things like securing pay, securing people that we would we would secure them as far as far as possible. So I think we really sort of leaned into it with our values to keep people safe and stuff on. And I think then the hustle started Sandeep because we make soap and people need it because everyone's being told to wash their hands. We make insecticide, so people don't get malaria. So I think we really sort of focused on that and what we sort of did on this concept of hopeful realism. So we did share any sort of bad news and gcpl had actually the previous couple of years where sales hadn't done well. But we were very honest that it doesn't look good. We don't know how it'll play out. There's huge supply chain disruptions-  that's the realism. But he goes the hope, you know, we are behind you, no pay cuts, we're going to stand behind people and then we need you to hustle And people are going to need our products.  I calculated that 80 percent of our portfolio would do fine because either it's essential or it's very value for money and things like hair color or these hair extensions. And I was really surprised that I was quite bang on.

“ So I think it's, you know, hopefully realism, you know, give the bad news, give the good news, distribute leadership, hustle, learn as you go and get constant feedback. We had a lot of conversations and feedback all the time ”

Sandeep

Let me ask, did you find that there's been any shift in consumers in terms of what they care about as a result of all of this? Is there more of a focus on whether it's the environment sustainability impact your having or is that? Too much to think that that's going to pay for.

 

Sustainability can’t be an afterthought.

Nisa

I think the sustainability question I don’t think it's top of mind for them, frankly. Obviously, there is a set of consumers that really care about it, and we'll see that happen more. But if I can just step back for a second and say, Look, we're in emerging markets, which means that our per capita income is still much lower than at much lower than China, and we see much lower than the West. And as per capita income grows, consumption will increase and it is upon us to think about how we grow these categories, correct?

 

“ Because there's no point in saying we spend hundreds of millions of dollars putting sugared water into plastic bottles and then, you know, 20 years down the line talking about how to take a little bit of sugar out and how to take a little bit of plastic out of that ”

Sandeep

But you guys have set some targets for yourself in terms of what you're going to do on the sustainability side, bearing in mind that, like you said, that the common consumer may or may not care and you're doing this perhaps as the responsibility to the world around you, but you've said that you're going to be water positive in 2020. You're carbon neutral, I think, this year.

Nisa

In 2011, we set some of these goals, we reached most of then, but can, but can I just step back from that? I think there's a design to product also that matters, correct? So, you know, as consumers move say from something like Bar Soap to hand-wash, we've launched this product called Magic Hand Wash, which is 15 rupees. It's powder to liquid and has a lower footprint than a bar soap, correct? But it's giving people a more hygienic solution,  So we should be able to do THIS across categories and it's up to companies to do that. We all like to talk about our best selves and not our true selves - Say this is a green category. This is an amber category and this is a red category, correct? Some of it based on some sustainability, some of it based on consumer health, some of it being a bit more holistic in our thinking.

Sandeep

What was the thought behind it. What was Mr. Magic born out of? How do we make it more sustainable product? What drove the thinking?

Nisa

It was more born out of-  How do you do disruptive pricing? But if you think of disruptive pricing, it means taking everything out that you don't need. It, which is that you don't need to transport water around, which makes it more sustainable. There is a there's no question there is a green premium correct for and how you make or if you're using a lot of renewable energy and stuff.. I wouldn't like government actually to regulate it., but industry bodies themselves self-regulate some of these things and say, you know, we are going to move the industry in this way.

Sandeep

Yeah, I think again, the whole notion of why I got involved in investing in tech businesses was the thought was you should be able to use technology to remove costs and thereby create better propositions for consumers. And somewhere along the way, at least in my world, some of that has seemed to have gotten lost and it's been more. We'll put tech later on and we'll just simply market a lot and spend a lot of money and eventually figure it out. But I think that, you know, it's great that you're being straight about the fact that with Mr. Magic, it was driven out of how do you change the pricing proposition here? And as a result, you've created something that logically makes a ton of sense.

 

Diversity and Inclusion

Sandeep

Coming to values again. I mean, a lot of what you guys have done has been driven by clarity of values and clarity of who you are. And that's translated whether in terms of how you handled the crisis with COVID, how you thought about product evolution. One of the values that I've come to appreciate from the conversations I've had with you is Diversity and inclusion. And I think there's been a big one that I think started years ago for you and you've really pushed that you want to talk a little bit about why it's important and what you think you're getting out of it.

Nisa

Godrej actually started in India's freedom movement and you know, it was really very much part of Mahatma Gandhi’s Swadeshi movement and one of  our most prized possession is the letter he wrote about Godrej. And so I think that,

“ The idea that you can stand for people, planet, it's beyond profits, I think is always been sort of within the thread of the organization ”

And I think we just, you know, in our DNA  really believe sort of equality that actually drives business and drives innovation. It is. It is incredibly important. That being said, it's not that we've had some perfect journey on this or, you know, actually some of our diversity numbers look better because of some of the international geographies that we operate in and where gender diversity is much higher in India it's a struggle, actually, because as you know, the participation rate of women in the formal economy is actually fallen over the last decade. We're hovering somewhere right above Saudi Arabia. So but I think it's I think it's critically, critically important because it's really I think what creates innovation, it stops you from making mistakes. And it's not just diversity, it's not just the numbers that matters. It really matters that people are included and they have a voice, correct? So it's actually even worse just to have someone there because it looks good. Their voice must be heard, they must be at senior levels and they must be sitting at the table. And as we can see with Black Lives Matter, we've had the riots and what you will see post-COVID is more of this. More of this rising up and saying that we don't accept this

Sandeep

I'm wondering if that translates into decisions that consumers will make as to where to buy. And you said it before, it probably doesn't matter as much sustainability from a lens for the consumers that you're talking to. I'm assuming that applies as well. This this is more. It's the right thing to do.

Nisa

Yeah, I think you could potentially have consumer backlash, correct? We've seen things happen with Cadbury and sort of Nestlé and stuff. So things can backlash in other ways also. But I just want to say one more thing because, you know, we're talking to an audience of a lot of entrepreneurs and CEOs. And you know, I always used to joke at HBS that I was sure that the percentage of mental health issues was higher than in the general population. So this entrepreneurship type A people also come with the down side, which, you know, and it is their tenacity and they don't like to listen and they don't like to hear no. No.

“ but one muscle that a leader must build very strongly for diversity and inclusion is their own authenticity, their own self-awareness and their own ability to listen”

Correct, because it starts from the top. So that's just something very critical to think about. But you've not put that. There's not feel and people do actually tell you here, buddy, this is of value and we should rethink what we have. 

Sandeep

You have you sound good ways to ensure that you're doing that or that the people around you are aware when they are not doing it?

Nisa

Yeah, I think so. I think, look, there's obviously tools like, you know, you do 360 degrees, you seek feedback, you values is not something that's etched in stone and then everyone just magically follows it. If it's etched in stone and put up on a poster and not being followed anywhere, I think values is actually a muscle that you have to work out every day. And it's the stories being told of what you did in a particular situation. So you have to create the openness, the language around it, the ability to debate whether this is on value or off value. This is inclusive or not inclusive. And it's not, I mean, you know, Parmesh actually, you introduced us, you know, and I think I'm very, oh, I'd like to think I'm sort of open minded and inclusive. I have a lot of LGBTQ friends. But when Parmesh told me-  he had to point out that we had a spouse and not partner in our policy, it's probably something that even if I had read, it wouldn't naturally cross my mind. And I remember when he came to me and said, You know, let's put, let's have a gender transitioning policy. I had to make him explain to me fully what it meant. But if he was not at the table, it's not going to happen. And if I can't be open enough to listen, it's not going to happen. So do you know what I mean? You need you need both the what Michael Boland calls the set and the setting. You need the mindset and you need the right environment.

Sandeep

That was very, very helpful. And I think. Look, I think to your point that the people they walk in the door have to be so strong minded and. And that's actually you mentioned tenacity. It's one of the things that I had said to people we look very heavily for when we're talking to entrepreneurs is tenacity to survive through things and to survive. You also have to be stubborn to the noise around you, which is voices around you that are telling you that it's not going to work yet. I guess people put enough to listening to the things that are going to allow you to succeed

Link to Parmesh’s episode:

https://lightbox.vc/new-thinking/episode-1-parmesh-shahani

 

Public Markets

Sandeep

So public markets CEO of a public market or a public company. And I guess that that look, the reason is the companies that have grown up in a venture backed ecosystem, you guys. But when you stepped in, the business was public, you had been there and the business, had been there and had developed certain processes. It had understood how to manage the different types of investors in different ways. And so you had to figure out how to deal with that. And I guess is, what do you what do you think is really different or what do you think is important or what have you learned over the years in terms of being a public company leader?

Nisa

So, you know, I think a few things one is, you know, you have to know when to really ignore the market also  because this quarterly and I guess these VC funded or private equity funded companies are also on the march to show numbers, I guess, on a monthly basis. But you need to really decide, there is this quarterly pressure or and no long term without a short term, but you need to really sort of deftly manage between the two.

 

“When you're the CEO, you really need your eyes on the long term. What's happening next? Don’t under promise or overpromise. Be truthful.  

 

and in FMCG due to extremely bad habit, where sort of people dumb sales at the end of the month to show numbers. Remembering that cash is always reality is sort of critical. So if I if I had to leave with advice, I would say a couple of things with your institutional investors, your big investors always be truthful, correct? Don't don't, don't actually overpromise or don't under-promise, just be honest. So I'll give you an example. I took over as CEO last year. During all that, the company had been doing too well. You know, growth was growth was sort of low single digits and actually the core of it, because in March we actually had a two or three percent growth. And I went in to investors and said, Here is the bad news, and the bad news is not just Covid. Its XYZ. Correct. And here's what I'm going to do about it. And I cannot tell you how everyone and you know, this is why I'm doing this. See how like I had investors actually tell me we are. We've not been excited about the company for the last few years. We were not so sure about what you were saying to us and thank you for your honesty and I'm going to buy . So I think you have to be honest. And I know sometimes it doesn't feel like that when you're chasing money. But in the long run, I think that's really what counts. And what you tell investors externally is what you must be saying internally in the company. Don't make those two stories different.  So it's authenticity or it's truth. And then learning how to drive the short term with the long term how to drive enough investment for long term growth, but managing the PNL in the short term without bagging the numbers and without sort of playing with them

 

What’s next

Sandeep

I guess just having lived through a year and a half of this and imagining that as it continues on, we now understand a little bit better how to manage stuff, you know? Are you back to a place of feeling excited about what what can happen for business going forward? Are you tentative or are you are you focusing on something that you think is going to be big and new coming ahead? What interests you? What excites you in this world right now?

Nisa

I think from a business perspective, I'm quite excited in terms of what this digitization and productivity can mean. And I think there is going to be a shifting of the global supply chain. I don't think it's for us it'll shift overnight, but if they put in good means, you know, for increasing sort of manufacturing jobs and stuff that can be huge for us as a country. So, you know, I'm hopeful of these things happening.

Also the the new CEO, I should plug him. Oh, he's if you guys want to know more about consumer goods. Read his book called  the CEO Factory. Although it is about Hindustan Unilever. I don't know whether I should be plugging that or not haha but they are a great company and so I'm quite excited. He's really like, I think one of his sort of outstanding strengths is knowing the Indian consumer and how these sort of penetration and demand cycles work and stuff. So I'm quite excited

 

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