Mahamandi 2019: A Marketing Report

Peter Drucker, a leading management theorist, says:

“There will always, one can assume, be need for some selling. But the aim of marketing is
to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer
so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should
result in a customer who is ready to buy. All that should be needed then is to make the
product or service available.” (Reference: Marketing Management by Kotler, 14th Ed)

Today, I participated in one of the flagship events of my Post-graduate school which is called the
Maha-Mandi. “Maha-Mandi” literally means a “huge marketplace”. “Maha Mandi', is a socio-
marketing event organised annually by National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai.
It is a one of its kind of events where the students of business schools take the business to the street
where it belongs. The event is organised with the help of various NGOs working towards
disseminating education to the underprivileged children. Through Maha Mandi, toys made by the
NGO are sold by the students and the proceedings are used to educate the children.

I was in a team of three. Initially I and my team started by approaching random people on streets.
Some people stopped for listening us whereas some directly said No and left, even before trying to
listen to us. But we kept on trying. Our first customer was an old lady who bought the cheapest item
of our lot. She was impressed by the purpose of our activities. We realized that our customers would
be those who were interested by the NGO part of our sales pitch. So, for later sales we tried to
emphasize more on the fact that the products were for the benefit of various NGOs.

And then, we started selling. After selling a few items, we got the knack of it. But we still lacked
marketing. I and my team knew what the customer wanted. We knew how to project the right data
in front of the customer so that they would want to buy it. We knew our products thoroughly. But
we didn’t know whom to target. We segmented all our products into categories. Some of the
products were games which could attract children, whereas some were decorative items which
attracted girls. Some products were cheap which anybody would want to buy whereas some
products were costlier which people of higher end could afford. We decided based on our products
whom to target accordingly.

We learned marketing along the process of making sales. For me, marketing started right from the
way I and my team was dressed and the ID cards which hung across our necks. Our institute’s
reputation, our physical appearance, the products that we put out for selling and the purpose of
those products; everything acted as an marketing agent during the entire task.

By the end of the day I had had an experience of lifetime. Even though at the start of the day I was
out on the streets making sales, I realized, by the end of the day, I ended up doing marketing. Sales is
indeed a subset of Marketing. “Maha Mandi” was surely an experiential learning process for me.