Ashwin Upadhyaya's Blog

I went to a retail mall today and bought some products. I reached the bill counter and noticed they had hung some cloth bags (with the mall’s brand name) for customers to purchase. I must say, the bags very really cheap. The most probable explanation to this was so that at least a few customers would buy these instead of the free plastic bags. It could serve multiple purposes; it may have been environmental concern, it may have been branding or it may have been a strategy to reduce some costs by saving on plastic bags.

I bought one. The next instant, the billing guy packs all the items, including the cloth bag into a plastic bag! I talked to him and found out that he had no clue why the cloth bag was being sold! Subsequently, after my lecture, this billing guy started asking the next customer whether she wanted a plastic bag or a cloth bag.

Lesson learnt: It is not enough if an organization takes a decision at the highest level. When it trickles down to implementation, the employees at the lowest level must be educated. The best intentions at the top may lead to nothing in real result.

Often, we require rural statistical information related to our business. How many farming communities exist in an area. What is the forest cover in an area. What is the existing economic scenario in rural areas. And many more like this. How do you find such information?

The answer is to visit Gram Panchayat offices, Agricultural information centers, rural forest offices etc. Yes, all of them are government offices. Strangely, these offices are not like the government offices we see in cities where apathy rules. Rural offices typically consist of 2 or 3 officers. In all my recent experiences these rural officers have been extremely helpful. Being in a rural area, their expertise is seldom sought by any. As a result, they are more than happy to talk when a city fellow asks their expertise.

The reports prepared by these offices collectively form a summarized report at the Taluk level. These move higher to the district level, state and then the national level. During this process however, much of the qualitative information gets smudged as the information reaches higher levels. Only the quantitative information typically remains. Quantitative information most of the times can give a wrong idea of the real situation on ground. For example, community forestry on a national report may not be true at the ground level (as I have seen in one instance).

The rural market may be huge. Yet, it is extremely complex too. And as far as I have seen, rural areas can’t be generalized. Every village is unique with its own set of benefits and problems. If you are in a business dealing with villages, you have to solve one village at a time. No single solution applies to all.

Another thing is, I see an opportunity here. An aggregated knowledge pool of rural statistics which is inclusive of real opinions, reviews etc on the ground situation might be extremely valuable.

We all love stories. Kurt Vonnegut explained this beautifully (as written by Derek Sivers).

People have been hearing fantastic stories since time began. The problem is, they think life is supposed to be like the stories.

Isn’t it then obvious why we are always impressed by brands which have a story. The Infosys brand has a story. The Reliance brand has a story. The fisherman’s son who becomes president of India captures our attention. A black president of the US impresses us even more.

This becomes all the more important when you are marketing or selling something. If your product doesn’t have a story, you are just explaining the product. People do not want explanations. People want stories. In a world where everyone is marketing one or the other thing, the ones with a story win. The employee with an average technical knowledge but with a great story telling capacity gets promoted faster. The product with the same features as its competition but with great looks sells more.

If you don’t have a story yet, then it’s time you create one.