Directi hosted a National Business Case Study Challenge seeking ideas to promote Blogging among users in India with over 1400 participants in about 487 teams. Team Six Degrees from IIM Lucknow, comprising Suban Walia and Akhil Chugh was one of the 5 teams selected for the Final Presentation.
The talk by Himalaya’s CEO Mr. Ravi Prasad provided the students of IIM Lucknow the wonderful opportunity to learn about brand building from the man himself who has transformed brand Himalaya globally.
Mr. Ravi Prasad talked about the journey of Himalaya and discussed decisions- right or wrong, which has helped Himalaya to reach the position which it has attained today. With the benefit of hindsight he talked about what Himalaya could have done better in terms of decision making.
He talked about health care trend shift in India and as well as shift of consumer to Ayurveda. He talked about success of Liv 52 which has defied all concepts of product life cycles and shared insights on what made the product huge success during all these years since its inception in 1955.
He talked about the most important milestone of creating a brand from the company – Himalaya Health care and then extending it to other products like body care, body oil, chawanyaprash etc. He also discussed ways about how to lend credibility to brands and how to keep consumers hooked and provided live examples. He also discussed about Himalaya‘s international market strategy.
The session was highly interactive and lots of question related to Himalaya ‘s position as compared to leading FMCG giants like P&G and HUL were asked. Audience were impressed and heavily applauded Mr. Ravi Prasad when he shared Himalaya’s stand towards environment and its conscious decision of not introducing sachets until they come up with bio degradable packets. Session was aptly summed up by one of the audience who said that perhaps he has learned more about building brands in these 90 minutes than in the complete course in a semester.
