Blue Ocean Strategy: Synopsis

As products and services increasingly become commodities in overcrowded industries and companies,
profitable growth shrinks and companies are driven to compete primarily on cost. Companies in India
today are competing in the global market place where cost arbitration alone is not sufficient to
differentiate and sustain the business. Historically, a recession is a time of enormous creativity and
breakthrough business launches. If we look at the current Indian information technology industry, the
pure outsourcing or offshore development centre business models are not able to deliver sustained
growth. It is time for companies in the sector to look into value innovation — the cornerstone of Blue
Ocean Strategy.

Blue Ocean Strategy is critical in today’s business climate because prospects in most established market
spaces — red oceans — are shrinking steadily. Technological advances have substantially improved
industrial productivity, permitting suppliers to produce a plethora of products and services. And as trade
barriers between nations fall and information on products and prices becomes instantly and globally
available, niche or monopoly markets are beginning to disappear.

Over the years, Blue Ocean Strategy has been more of a global concept but in today’s business
environment in India, where companies are striving hard to stand out of the competition, it would be
necessary to understand the ways in which different markets within India have got saturated and the
way few of the prominent companies and brands have managed to swim through the Red Ocean.

In India, during the past few years where the competition within sectors like Automobile, Entertainment
has been the fiercest of all, there have been a few brands which have made it big through this
competition. Also there has been increasing trend where the companies have been making their
presence felt not only in the retail outlets but also online. Hence understanding the Blue Ocean Strategy
in context to the Indian markets would be a great learning experience.

Therefore we intend to study the Blue Ocean Strategy in context to the Indian scenario and specifically
understand how a few prominent brands have managed to implement it in their business.

Mitali Desai, Mitesh Kapadia, Sumit Gosar, Sujit Sawant