“Honesty is still the Best Policy but with Little Bit of Common

Sense- A Report On Work Experience

This report discuss about the experience I gained, and learning I made when I had worked on a
special project with Mr. Avinash Pathak, RSM- Kinetic Motors Co. Ltd. This was done when I
was gaining work experience there in the year 2002-03. For this project I worked in deep rural
areas of District Bhopal and Indore; and did my best to learn the rural consumer behavior when it
comes to sell automobile two-wheeler to them. When I was busy in conducting road shows and
demonstration in Bhopal city, Mr. Pathak called me up one day to his home for the dinner (as he
was impressed by my enthusiasm and the thirst to work and learn while being on job). He kept a
proposal of a project infront of me, which had put me in big dilemma and made me to think for a
while. I took one days’ time from him for my consent. Next day with a rough format of work
plan I went to him. I expressed my consent and kept the rough road map before him. He got
convinced and asked me to carry on with the project plan; and assured all the possible help for
any resource from his side.

Project: Kinetic had launched one bike named “BOSS” specially targeting the rural consumers.
The instructions were given to the dealers to focus mainly on the rural markets of their respective
areas of operation. The target given to us was 200 bikes for the first quarter of the financial
year (April-June).

Challenge: It was the big challenge for all of us. The challenge was ‘ New Bike, New market’
and that too, to be sold in rural market; and specially bike of that company which is not very
much known for Bikes, rather, Kinetic’s competency and fame was in Automatic scooters. Well,
I gave the thought that if company has launched the bike then they must have thought of
something about it and than only they have launched it; and keeping this in mind we should go
ahead with it. The motivating factor was the confidence and reliability shown by Mr. Pathak on
me.

Process: The project was very important and challenging, no doubt. It was highly required to do
lots of brain storming for it. The worrying factor was that we should not land up with very low
sales after putting in lots of effort, resources and money in it. Well, I started with my rough
plan and the concepts, which I had learned in BBA.. During the marketing Strategy class in
BBA, once my professor had said that, before preparing strategy for your product, it gives you an
edge, if you, first of all study the product and its related factors that of your competitor.
Remembering that I started the project and took complete 15 days to do research and learn the
strategies of Bajaj “Boxer” with which we had to compete. I did thorough study of sales and
distribution pattern of ‘Boxer’ and successfully found the flaws in it. Still, it was the risk to carry
on the work only on the basis of these flaws because it was not sure that whether it will work or
not? But the charm of the life is there, only when you run your life while holding the finger of
risk. Finally, I incepted the project.

Working Strategy of Bajaj Boxer: Mainly villagers were purchasing Boxer in those days
because it was the cheapest available bike in the market with 4-Stroke engine. Bajaj was
successfully taping this market with the help of their Sub-Dealership networks. The heavy
promotional activities and advertisements were the main and strong backup for them in this
work.
Working Strategy of Kinetic “Boss”: Kinetic also had the same network as of Bajaj, infact
Boss was launched with much better specifications than Boxer. But the promotion and
advertisement of Kinetic was not up to that extent of bajaj; but the beauty was the Brand
Ambassador for ‘Boss’ who was no one but our nationally known figure ‘Mr. Kapil Dev’. This I
can take as the back up factor in my project.

Edge of Boss over Boxer:

Specification Boss Boxer

4-Stroke Engine Yes Yes
Price 31,400 32,200
Mud Guards Steel Fibre
Engine Cooling Iron Plate Yes No
Rubber in-fit Footpads on both sides Yes No
Computerized Alignment of Handle Yes No (Many riders use to
and Seat complaint about back ache
while driving Boxer for
long)
Zigzag Tyres Yes No
Chassis Double Cradle Single Cradle

Otherwise, rest of the factors was almost same with both the bikes.

Edge of Boxer over Boss:

 Strong awareness
 Wide recognition
 Strong distribution network
 Facility of vehicle finance
These were the factors completely lacking with Kinetic Boss.

Geographic Location of Rural areas in districts of MP and infact across India

Each district has got some 5-6 Tehsils or Talukas here. Again these talukas are segregated in to
cluster of small villages say, 4-5 after every 5-6 Kilometers deep inside from main road or
Highway in their respective regions. The people of these areas are mainly occupied in agriculture
and allied activities.

Purchase Behavior of these people:

 Low income group

 Very careful when go for big purchases
 Look for economy products
 Love discounts
 Favors gifts (Even a nice Key ring with the key of the bike works for them)
 Buyer brings at least 3-4 people with him when he comes for purchase. These includes,
one of their family member, one relative and one very close friends. We can consider
them as peer group members and opinion leaders
  They use the product very roughly. At least 3 people sits on the vehicles at a time, even
for long drives
 Less cooperative with dealers if incase any problem comes with the product and in the
first instance asks for refund of their money. We can call them stubborn in this regard
 Vehicle on Finance was their preference and about 70% Boxers were sold on finance
only.

Geographic Location shown by the figure

DISTRICT

Cluster of
small villages

* Self drawn map, not to be scaled

Study: I studied this geographic pattern and came to know that most of the sales were happening
in these clusters of villages.

Flaws in Boxer Distribution Network: The dealers of Boxer had the opinion that these buyers
belong to Tehsil and near by small villages. But they did not have any idea about such clusters.
They felt that there is no need to make extra efforts to tap them because their sub dealers are
taking care of it. But neither dealers nor sub dealers were actually worrying for further
penetration because of the two reasons. First, is that the sales was happening easily through
counter itself and secondly, they never gave the thought for further penetration.

Findings
 It has become the tradition in MP to give Bike as a Dowry in the marriages and the sale
was happening mainly because of this reason. As these bikes were the cheapest one, and
that’s why were in demand.
 The sales gets high in the slot wise months of :

April-June : It’s because this is the time for marriages and also money remains
available with them after the sales of Kharif crop.
October-January: It’s because this the time of festivals like Durga pooja, Vijyadashmi,
Deepawali and also the peak time of most of the marriages in
December and January. Again money is available with them after
the sale of Rabi crop.

 Sales remains either Moderate or Low in the slot wise months of:

February- March: Sales remain moderate due to investment in sowing kharif crop and
also marriages happens less.
July – September: Sales remains moderate again due to the investments in sowing Rabi
crop in july and also as they have started providing education to their
kids, money goes in that also because of the starting of their new
session in this month. Sales happen little bit more in august just on
the occasion of Raksha bandhan. In the month of September sales
gets too low or almost low due to two reasons. One is that these
people saves the money and postpone their purchases for upcoming
festival season and secondly, in September ‘Shraaddh days’ goes on
during which no purchases are done there.

 In each cluster of villages, we do have some small and big village and these people
themselves consider their head village, the bigger one among them and go to the
‘Sarpanch’ of that big village for their discussions, problems and opinions.
 Each above mentioned bigger village of the cluster has got one specific day in a week on
which they organize ‘Haat Bazaar’ and these people of small villages visit there for the
purchases.

How we proceeded

 The first job was to create the awareness about Kinetic “Boss” in these areas rather than
focusing on sales initially.
 We called up the Demonstration Van from company for the demonstration of Boss and
then with a team of 4 people (including van driver) headed by ‘Me’, we started our
mission
 We selected the villages, which conduct Haat Bazaars and use to go there one night prior
to that specific day and demonstrated Boss in those haats while playing movie songs.
The reason for reaching there one night prior, was that the shopkeepers or participants of
that haat reach there at that time only inorder to set up their stalls and then they stay there
for the whole night. We run the movies on projector for these people inorder to make
impact on them because they belonged to various villages and that leaded to word of
mouth. The movies which were run were mostly the action movies along with bit cheap
comedy of shakti kapoor and specially of Govinda and Mithun who are their favourite
film stars till today. The most liked movie was ‘Raja Babu’
 Movie songs were specially selected which were mostly from the movies of Govinda and
were somewhat cheap, as considered by people of urban area like us. For example, one of
the famous song of their choice was “ Choli ke peeche kya hai”. Catching this, we run the
songs of these types only and that really generated the gathering around our demo van.

 We did this in each and every cluster continuously for 15 days and received handsome
response. People started talking of Kapil Dev waali motor cycle jo ki ‘Kaynotic’ ki hai
(as they were not able to spell Kinetic properly)

 The above area & behavior study and then marketing in chosen areas already took one
complete month and we had only 2 months in hand to achieve the target. Though in the
mean time sales was happening from the counter but was not as per expectations because
people of urban area were liking the economy bikes to a very less extent and were mostly
going for ‘Bajaj-Caliber’ or ‘Hero Honda- Splendor.

 Anyhow we started our sales activities in targeted areas. First of all, we caught the
Sarpanch of the above-mentioned bigger village of the cluster. We use to have a talk with
them about the bike while offering them ‘Cigarette’ which was the bigger factor for them
(as most of them smoke ‘Beedi’). Another bigger factor was having lunch or atleast a cup
of ‘Tea’ with them, which overwhelm them because they get the matter to discuss with
their group of friends that they had ‘Lunch/Tea’ with the ‘Saab’ who came from a big
company. Sometimes we offered them English wine too. Overwhelming them with these
activities, it became very easy for us to convince them to recommend our bike to those
who will come to them for opinions and suggestions.

 Now almost every sarpanch had some 2-3 sons. We caught the youngest son who mostly
was considered as ‘Bekaam’ or ‘Faaltu’ by their fathers but were widely recognized as a
son of sarpanch saab. After the consent of these sarpanchs’, we appointed their youngest
son as our ‘Sales Agent’on commission basis and sarpanch was also happy knowing that
their faaltu beta has got something to earn.

 Now after making this person as our Agent we took him with us and moved down to the
other small villages for the publicity and personal contacts. People were influenced by us
because whatever we wanted to convey, was being conveyed by the so called Beta of
sarpanch saab. This factor was proving the key to success for us.

 After this we managed to get the information about the big marriages about to happen in
our target areas. This information was easily available with ‘Eunuchs’. We visited to
these marriage houses and convinced those people to ask for Kinetic ‘Boss’ in dowry (if
they were people of Bride groom) and convinced others to give our bike (if they were
people of Bride).

Confession: We admit that for our purpose we were motivating these illiterate people for
Dowry, which is an illegal practice. But we felt that it’s a deep rooting tradition and we have
to go with it only, if we want to sell our vehicle, as nothing can stop them doing this. Honest
part we played there was that we convinced them to provide education to at least one child of
their family (because after education at least they will raise the voice against dowry system).
That’s why I believe in the phrase “Honesty is still the best policy, but with little bit of
common sense”

 Well, these activities were good enough for our mission. Though even after this we went
through other activities further like Sponsoring ‘Boss’ in the lucky draw on the basis of
the ticket nos’. villagers purchased tickets to watch ‘Ramleela’ and ‘Khrishnaleela’. Also
Boss was kept in lucky draws at big ‘Tableaus’ in Ganesha days and Durga pooja days.
 Quoting the above phrase again, I would like to demonstrate one more activity of ours.
We observed that few villagers were still not at all convinced. Inorder to convince them,
the only way out was to sell the bike first of all to their opinion leaders. The opinion
leaders for them might be a doctor of that area or Master saab or thaanedar saab. We tried
to convince these people to purchase the bike, and whosoever did not purchase it, we
opened their names in the lucky draw. (Now they will have to ride the bike).
 In this mean time we received each and every kind of help from Mr. Pathak and that too
within the stipulated time frame.

Other Experiences and Facts

 I felt sick for twice in the mean time due to contaminated food and water we had.
 We had our lunch and dinners in 35 different villages for that particular period of
time.
 Our vehicle got stuck in a big mud hole, which created a lot of inconvenience for us.
 We had spent continuous 20 nights while sleeping in our demo vehicle itself.
 My command over local language ‘Malwi’ helped us a lot in conversations.
 Out of around 60 villages, which we visited, some 10 villages did not have
connectivity to the roads and few of them were not connected with the telephone line.
2 villages did not have electrification still.
 Villagers use Kerosene oil as a fuel to run their vehicles

Final Result:
Targeted Sales: 200 Bikes
Sales at the end of the first financial quarter – 372 bikes
100 Bikes- Through direct counter sales
272 Bikes- Through our rural campaign activities

After that round the year we went on increasing the sale. When other bike company dealers
saw the R.T.O. figures, they were shocked. When they came to know that our sales happened
due to our specific campaign, till that time it was too late for them. We had established our
roots in rural market smoothly.

Learning: A deep understanding of consumer behavior facilitates developing the right

marketing strategies to win in any and every market. Before targeting any group of target
market, try to put yourself among them and the things will be easy automatically. See the
things from their viewpoint, imaginations and perceptions. Involvement by heart and soul has
done wonders, what I believe is.