He is the fourth-generation promoter of a century old and tremendously popular company – Dabur. Amit spoke to DARE about the challenges he faced, the opportunities that he sees, and more…
What are the challenges in sustaining and running a century-old organization?
It has a lot to do with innovation and changing with the time. From a century-old compan, which was more in the ayurvedic space, Dabur has been transformed to a more urban company.
We have to keep innovating and bring out products that are relevant to today’s environment. For example, Vatika, Gulabari, Real Fruit juices, etc, which are the need of the hour. To be able to do all this, it is crucial to have good teamwork, a motivated team that delivers on goals, and you have to serve as a catalyst for the team to be successful.
 |
| Amit burman, Dabur India |
What steps did you take for modernization? What were the challenges faced in bring about changes?
To begin with, I have an engineering background. Before I started handling Dabur, I had worked with Colgate-Palmolive for three years in New York. I brought in all the learning that I got there to Dabur. I looked at the layouts of all our factories, and spotted where we could make our production more efficient. Besides this we did some project studies in areas such as possibilities of reducing hours in production.
Since our distribution is across the country, we also evaluated the logistic part of everything. While at this, we looked at the best way to distribute any product and which product should be sourced from which factory, in terms of looking at differences, costs, certain taxes in different states, etc.
What I tried to do with the company, in short, is bring in more efficient systems and processes into place.
As for how the organization took these modernization steps—there were people who had been in the company for long, and were used to doing things in a certain set way. It is very difficult to change people’s mindset in this regards. To overcome this challenge, we ran a comparison between both, conventional ‘as per my experience’ perspective, and a more system-and-facts based decision-making model, on computer-generated programs. This let the organization clearly see realistic and practical answers to the questions raised with regards to modernization.
Furthermore, my father, GC Burman, who was running the organization at that time, was aware of and was open to implementing the systems and processes that were happening around the world. He was very happy that we were looking at taking those modernization steps. Over the time, we as entrepreneurs have moved out of the day-to-day operations of the company, and the organizational affairs are now run by professionals. Fact-based decisions are now taken based on various purchase software, or logistics software, or the SAP and ERP systems that we use. A lot of these modernization steps have helped everyone in taking the right decisions.
What were the challenges faced in getting Real compete the likes of Pepsi and Coca Cola?
First of all, we have had the first-mover’s advantage in this segment. I saw the need gap for packaged juices in the country. In India, juice drinking has always been a form of gaining nutrition, and the concept is not something that is alien to the people here. Everyone makes juice at home; there are countless fruit juice stalls in every nook and corner of the nation. We just provided them a healthy way of consuming it, and removing the seasonality out of it. We were the first ones to bring them juices that were hygienically packed with six months of shelf life, and contained no preservatives.
The challenges we faced in the juice segment had a lot to do with consumer learning research and exercises. If you look at all our products, we have been ahead of time. We don’t just have mango, orange, and pineapple juices; we have litchi, pink guava, soya, mixed vegetable and lot of other very Indian juice products. Considering this, we have been ahead of these foreign multi-nationals, in terms of product innovation, delivery, and such. How have we brought out products that these corporations did not even think of? That is because we have the knowledge of dealing with fruits and vegetables and blending a mix that suits the Indian consumer.
During the rolling out phase of Real Juice, the challenges that we faced were more on the lines of procurement and distribution. You know how fruits and vegetables are transported and processed in the country. So there were a lot of rejects upon procurement. Then there was the issue of how to best distribute these products such that they reach all the retail shelves, and still maintain the freshness. Now, however, we are well-oiled and have overcome all these challenges.
You are accredited for foraying Dabur into the processed food business. How did the organization take it?
I had an idea that processed food is a big opportunity in the country. Hence, we gave these products a shot and used the existing distribution system that Dabur had. We did this because we were already in the food based business, in terms of distributing Dabur Honey, Sharbat-E-Azam, and more. Hence, Real Juice was more a product-based foray.
Moving on from there, we saw the category growing. However, we also saw the limitations for this category because of the shelf-life of Real Juice as a product. Therefore, we felt a need to come up with a distribution system to deal with this product. Since a distribution system always works at a critical size, the question that we faced was whether Real Juice could sustain the distribution system in the first couple of years? The answer was no—it would take nearly five-six years. Then it became a question of getting into products which the consumers needed and were not available. This is the reason we came up with different cooking pastes for the Indian housewives to aid them in cooking and so on.
The organization was excited about Real Juice, but the other products were not seen as having much potential. Moreover, since Dabur was not in the food business earlier, there was a bit of resistance. But with the success of Real in the beginning, we let these products ride on a float basis, and this is when everybody started seeing the potential. It is then that more marketing spend and advertising went behind these products, and the companies went out in a grand way with these processed food products.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
written by GB, April 17, 2009
Considering they largely deal with ayurvedic products, I wonder why they aren't hopping on the "no animal testing" bandwagon. A shame for a company of their caliber.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Considering they largely deal with ayurvedic products, I wonder why Dabur is hesitant to hop on the "no animal testing" bandwagon. It's a shame for a company of their caliber and reputation to be testing on animals.