I had blogged about the ubiquitous Sachet a few months back in a post titled the Sachet Story.
The post also talked about how notoriously popular and unsightly, the discarded Gutka sachets had become on the streets of Delhi.
Well here's the epilogue,
Starting March 1st, no more Sachets to dress up gutka tobacco. Thats a really bold move by the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India considering the massive turnover and influence these companies have.
Times of India
Financial Express
While the move is great from an environmental impact perspective and certainly laudable, I guess it will only force 'innovation' (sic) in the Gutka delivery mechanism- Gutka dispensers maybe?
I have just recently witnessed, at close quarters, the devastating effect of substance abuse and how it degrades the people, families and relationships that it touches. Perhaps a firmer stand needs to be taken considering the simple fact that what our country loses in terms of its resources is way more than what it earns from these industries.
Unfortunately, it is so so easy to ignore costs that are not explicit- someday, it will hit us bad. Thank God, hope is free!
Showing posts with label bottom of the pyramid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bottom of the pyramid. Show all posts
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
A Sachet Story
Preface
Every honcho worth his salt, dealing with rural retail in India, swears by the sachet story and ensures that atleast a slide in the corporate presentation is dedicated to it.
For my lack of better imagination; imagine if every book on a say, 'Engineering Mathematics' started with the same dedication page
- such is the magnitude of influence of this one word on the way folks (us at Eko included) try to position a product for the not-urban India. The Sachet Story in short, is nothing short of a hyper-polygonal love story (some of our Bollywood movies are still stuck with the triangular variety!), with a whole army of heroes trying to woo 'ol Miss Sachet with whatever they could fling at her.
Chapter 1. Its Born!
To the uninitiated, this is how, they say, it all began (courtesy, a slide shared by Dr. Amit Rangnekar):
Case: Chic Shampoo- Rural Revolution
This essentially says that sometime in the '80 or the '90s a relatively unknown player called CavinKare, literally pulled the carpet under the entire group of global giants trying to sell their shampoos in India by understanding the simple fact that theres only as much as a customer could ever pay. If one could sell something at that price then it required nothing more than a nudge or a light tickle to persuade them to buy that something. So, they sold shampoo in tea-bag sized packets at 90p and then at 50p and viola- Sachet was born!
Chapter 2. Thats extinct!
Cut! Flashback two decades. Thats me, sweating under a groaning fan, frantically trying to coax the very last hint of black ink out of my fountain pen while the school bell rings and the teacher non-nonchalantly snatches the answer sheets, right underneath my pen's nib, before it could stutter its last dying words. No amount of cursing or praying would make any difference now. Except, maybe it did make a difference :). Well... then came a pen we simply knew as 'Reynolds'. Out went the nib and the ink-pen and the ink well; the 'pencil box' had new international tenants. I could buy a few Reynolds for the price of one ink-pen and the best part was that it democratized and simplified the process of writing. That Reynolds was the first 'sachetization' to have hit most of 'us'. While true connoisseurs did cry foul for reducing the sublime art of writing to its basal nothings; the venerable ink pen was extinct. I must admit though... its been years since I have written more than two straight sentences with any pen; who 'writes' these days anyways!?
Chapter 3. Its Plastic!
If there is anything that has contributed to the growth of the sachet industry, its the advent of plastics. Till the cheap plastics came about, it was neither economical, nor practical to pack gooey dollops of liquids, gels and what nots into gulp sized units and print glossy true-color portraits of dames showing off their photo-shopped long hair. And plastic remains its bane, especially in most emerging countries. While these engines of mass consumption went on an overdrive, generating all forms of consumables in plastic avatars, they stuck a moniker - 'disposable' on them, without having the faintest clue on how to manage their disposal.
Oh, and add to this the fact that somewhere along the path of evolution, after the elaborate drainage systems of Mohejo-daro and Harappa that made it stand out as civilizations, most of us Indians have lost the gene that should have kicked in when throwing trash in public places- its so easy to blame the genes and get away with it ;).
Chapter 4. The Bad
.jpg)
And, TaDa! even our animals seem to have taken to plastics- just that their intestines don't take as kindly to it and they end up dying a slow death.
If only plastic packaging were portrayed as not disposable by default, but as a re-usable novelty! True, this has something to do with the packaging industry on the whole, the sachet industry should not be the prime culprit - but definitely an accomplice.
What if all plastic using companies had to ensure by law, that they also had to buy used plastics back from the customers through the same channel that they sold their goods! ...Nothing more than wishful thinking. Sure, some companies are making token efforts as a part of their CSR programs- but we know that something like this will succeed only if it is a commercial program- an integral part of the product life-cycle.
Chapter 5. The Ugly
Well, if that was the bad, now comes the ugly. Trust me, this one IS ugly. Try this. Walk ten paces in any direction on any road in Delhi (or any place in North India), look down. I can bet you will find at-least one every odd yard. This innocuous package is called 'Pan Masala'. (The scorpion in the pic is not a part of some fancy kickass branding- thats the mandatory warning sign these have to carry)
Paan, I read has been around since ages. It is a betel-leaf wrap with areca-nut, lime and motley spices inside 'em- supposed to be chewed as mouth fresheners post meals. Somewhere down our colonial past, tobacco was added to the list of ingredients.
Commercial Paan Masala was a recent development, where a Rs.5000 crore+ industry has sprung up with various combinations of pan ingredients. The sachetization wave was readily adopted by these manufacturers and it has resulted in their sales shooting straight up. One variety of pan masala was particularly potent- the one with tobacco as an ingredient. It has now been established that pan masala is as addictive as cocaine. In its sachet form, this ended up as the only cheap thrill- that the entire bottom of the pyramid here had access to. This sachet is more ubiquitous than any other, especially in North India. From kids begging on the streets to migrant drivers ferrying their bosses in their posh cars on the streets of Delhi - ALL have a few sachets stashed in their pockets. It either helps them forget their hunger and pain or has become a plain addictive habit that they just cant kick.
Used packets are simply discarded everywhere- literally everywhere. Another unsightly addition to the plastic mess we've landed ourselves in.
The web is strewn with stats, figures and facts on this topic. Do read this one when you get time:
Chewing Pan Masala and/or Betel Quid–Fashionable Attributes and/or Cancer Menaces? G. Gandhi, R. Kaur and S. Sharma
In conclusion
The sachet story is a pretty dramatic one. A simple bi-syllabic word that has touched a few billion lives in a few good ways and a few bad ones. One conclusion is unambiguous- Sachet has redefined the word consumption- forever.
Every honcho worth his salt, dealing with rural retail in India, swears by the sachet story and ensures that atleast a slide in the corporate presentation is dedicated to it.
For my lack of better imagination; imagine if every book on a say, 'Engineering Mathematics' started with the same dedication page
This book is dedicated
to
Ms. Sa-Che'
- such is the magnitude of influence of this one word on the way folks (us at Eko included) try to position a product for the not-urban India. The Sachet Story in short, is nothing short of a hyper-polygonal love story (some of our Bollywood movies are still stuck with the triangular variety!), with a whole army of heroes trying to woo 'ol Miss Sachet with whatever they could fling at her.
Chapter 1. Its Born!
To the uninitiated, this is how, they say, it all began (courtesy, a slide shared by Dr. Amit Rangnekar):
Case: Chic Shampoo- Rural Revolution
This essentially says that sometime in the '80 or the '90s a relatively unknown player called CavinKare, literally pulled the carpet under the entire group of global giants trying to sell their shampoos in India by understanding the simple fact that theres only as much as a customer could ever pay. If one could sell something at that price then it required nothing more than a nudge or a light tickle to persuade them to buy that something. So, they sold shampoo in tea-bag sized packets at 90p and then at 50p and viola- Sachet was born!
Chapter 2. Thats extinct!
Cut! Flashback two decades. Thats me, sweating under a groaning fan, frantically trying to coax the very last hint of black ink out of my fountain pen while the school bell rings and the teacher non-nonchalantly snatches the answer sheets, right underneath my pen's nib, before it could stutter its last dying words. No amount of cursing or praying would make any difference now. Except, maybe it did make a difference :). Well... then came a pen we simply knew as 'Reynolds'. Out went the nib and the ink-pen and the ink well; the 'pencil box' had new international tenants. I could buy a few Reynolds for the price of one ink-pen and the best part was that it democratized and simplified the process of writing. That Reynolds was the first 'sachetization' to have hit most of 'us'. While true connoisseurs did cry foul for reducing the sublime art of writing to its basal nothings; the venerable ink pen was extinct. I must admit though... its been years since I have written more than two straight sentences with any pen; who 'writes' these days anyways!?
Chapter 3. Its Plastic!
If there is anything that has contributed to the growth of the sachet industry, its the advent of plastics. Till the cheap plastics came about, it was neither economical, nor practical to pack gooey dollops of liquids, gels and what nots into gulp sized units and print glossy true-color portraits of dames showing off their photo-shopped long hair. And plastic remains its bane, especially in most emerging countries. While these engines of mass consumption went on an overdrive, generating all forms of consumables in plastic avatars, they stuck a moniker - 'disposable' on them, without having the faintest clue on how to manage their disposal.
Oh, and add to this the fact that somewhere along the path of evolution, after the elaborate drainage systems of Mohejo-daro and Harappa that made it stand out as civilizations, most of us Indians have lost the gene that should have kicked in when throwing trash in public places- its so easy to blame the genes and get away with it ;).
Chapter 4. The Bad
.jpg)
If only plastic packaging were portrayed as not disposable by default, but as a re-usable novelty! True, this has something to do with the packaging industry on the whole, the sachet industry should not be the prime culprit - but definitely an accomplice.
What if all plastic using companies had to ensure by law, that they also had to buy used plastics back from the customers through the same channel that they sold their goods! ...Nothing more than wishful thinking. Sure, some companies are making token efforts as a part of their CSR programs- but we know that something like this will succeed only if it is a commercial program- an integral part of the product life-cycle.
Chapter 5. The Ugly
Well, if that was the bad, now comes the ugly. Trust me, this one IS ugly. Try this. Walk ten paces in any direction on any road in Delhi (or any place in North India), look down. I can bet you will find at-least one every odd yard. This innocuous package is called 'Pan Masala'. (The scorpion in the pic is not a part of some fancy kickass branding- thats the mandatory warning sign these have to carry)Paan, I read has been around since ages. It is a betel-leaf wrap with areca-nut, lime and motley spices inside 'em- supposed to be chewed as mouth fresheners post meals. Somewhere down our colonial past, tobacco was added to the list of ingredients.
Commercial Paan Masala was a recent development, where a Rs.5000 crore+ industry has sprung up with various combinations of pan ingredients. The sachetization wave was readily adopted by these manufacturers and it has resulted in their sales shooting straight up. One variety of pan masala was particularly potent- the one with tobacco as an ingredient. It has now been established that pan masala is as addictive as cocaine. In its sachet form, this ended up as the only cheap thrill- that the entire bottom of the pyramid here had access to. This sachet is more ubiquitous than any other, especially in North India. From kids begging on the streets to migrant drivers ferrying their bosses in their posh cars on the streets of Delhi - ALL have a few sachets stashed in their pockets. It either helps them forget their hunger and pain or has become a plain addictive habit that they just cant kick.
Used packets are simply discarded everywhere- literally everywhere. Another unsightly addition to the plastic mess we've landed ourselves in.
The web is strewn with stats, figures and facts on this topic. Do read this one when you get time:
Chewing Pan Masala and/or Betel Quid–Fashionable Attributes and/or Cancer Menaces? G. Gandhi, R. Kaur and S. Sharma
In conclusion
The sachet story is a pretty dramatic one. A simple bi-syllabic word that has touched a few billion lives in a few good ways and a few bad ones. One conclusion is unambiguous- Sachet has redefined the word consumption- forever.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Patient Capital - Sunflowers in the desert
The poor need tools more than charity.
People providing these tools need more support and capital than mere aid.
And most importantly, the folks supporting these people need
a deep understanding of social capital and delayed monetization.
Jacqueline appropriately calls this - Patient Capital.
Another great TED Talk by Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO Acumen Fund:
(Courtesy: Guy Kawasaki)
Related: "Poor Aren't Lifeless Bricks"
People providing these tools need more support and capital than mere aid.
And most importantly, the folks supporting these people need
a deep understanding of social capital and delayed monetization.
Jacqueline appropriately calls this - Patient Capital.
Another great TED Talk by Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO Acumen Fund:
(Courtesy: Guy Kawasaki)
Related: "Poor Aren't Lifeless Bricks"
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Mobile Development Report - A Review
Reports come in various shades, shapes and sizes. Mostly, reports are seen as means to fill up shelf spaces, attempting to make one look more informed than one might really be. At times, reports are sources to be quoted in a B-Plan or used smartly to justify certain viewpoints. Usually, reports are the result of painstaking research carried out by domain veterans. But the fact remains that not all good researchers are good story-tellers and that leaves behind somewhat unwieldy (not to mention costly) paperweights that might be full of unnavigable facts and figures.
There was one report however, that captivated me more than most others out there. I found a link to this report through Jan Chipchase's blog while trying to find out what exactly it was that the Indian mobile consumer at the so called bottom of the pyramid wanted?
The Mobile Development Report (note: its a 15+ MB download, 114 pages pdf), released over a year ago, commissioned by Nokia and beautifully executed and presented by Dr. Aditya Dev Sood and his team at CKS (Center for Knowledge Societies)
The report aims at finding out exactly what the next billion people waiting to be connected through the mobile network want. In other words, it seeks to find what developmental role the mobile can play in the Indian rural context.
The report first examines and explains the diversity India is known for and derives its justifications for a classification. Eminently readable, the article is full of graphics and images that provide a peek into the ecosystem. After laying a solid foundation for even the uninitialized to understand the social fabric, the report then proceeds towards listing out the following opportunities for mobile development:
1. Transportation
2. Micro-commerce
3. Financial services
4. Healthcare services
5. Governance
6. Education
7. Infotainment
The really interesting part of this report is the case studies section. It allows the reader to view first hand the life of people who would benefit and how they might benefit through the mobile revolution.
We had the opportunity of personally meeting Dr. Aditya Dev Sood at our studio last year - an enigmatic personality with a lot of energy and a mystic glow in his eyes. This report perhaps reflects some of that youthfulness and charm from him and his team at CKS.
A must read for
a. anyone seriously planning to be a stakeholder in the rural/ semi-urban mobile ecosystem.
b. anyone starting on writing a report with an intention that people would actually read it.
c. anyone who wants a peek at the real vibrant India, the next billion waiting to be connected to the rest of the world and each other.
There was one report however, that captivated me more than most others out there. I found a link to this report through Jan Chipchase's blog while trying to find out what exactly it was that the Indian mobile consumer at the so called bottom of the pyramid wanted?
The Mobile Development Report (note: its a 15+ MB download, 114 pages pdf), released over a year ago, commissioned by Nokia and beautifully executed and presented by Dr. Aditya Dev Sood and his team at CKS (Center for Knowledge Societies)
The report aims at finding out exactly what the next billion people waiting to be connected through the mobile network want. In other words, it seeks to find what developmental role the mobile can play in the Indian rural context.
The report first examines and explains the diversity India is known for and derives its justifications for a classification. Eminently readable, the article is full of graphics and images that provide a peek into the ecosystem. After laying a solid foundation for even the uninitialized to understand the social fabric, the report then proceeds towards listing out the following opportunities for mobile development:
1. Transportation
2. Micro-commerce
3. Financial services
4. Healthcare services
5. Governance
6. Education
7. Infotainment
The really interesting part of this report is the case studies section. It allows the reader to view first hand the life of people who would benefit and how they might benefit through the mobile revolution.
We had the opportunity of personally meeting Dr. Aditya Dev Sood at our studio last year - an enigmatic personality with a lot of energy and a mystic glow in his eyes. This report perhaps reflects some of that youthfulness and charm from him and his team at CKS.
A must read for
a. anyone seriously planning to be a stakeholder in the rural/ semi-urban mobile ecosystem.
b. anyone starting on writing a report with an intention that people would actually read it.
c. anyone who wants a peek at the real vibrant India, the next billion waiting to be connected to the rest of the world and each other.
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