Marketing must not look at being a support function: Chandru Kalro, TTK Prestige

Over the years, as a brand TTK Prestige has built impactful brand stories keeping innovation and consumer-centricity at the core of its storytelling. At Pitch CMO Summit, Chandru Kalro, Managing Director, TTK Prestige, took the stage to share how the brand’s storytelling has evolved over the decades in his address on ‘From Pressure Cookers to Kitchen Appliances: Delighting Consumers Through Innovation’.

Kalro began by outlining the history of the pressure cooker. He narrated how a Frenchman named Denis Papin invented the pressure cooker and TTK Prestige began importing them from Prestige UK in 1955.

TTK Prestige were the category's forerunners, he said. Pressure cookers had not existed prior to that, yet they were in high demand in India. "Because there was no mass media advertising at the time, we spent the next 15 years driving from village to village, town to town in a van, displaying a 16mm movie on the roads promoting this product. That's how we promoted the pressure cooker, which now has more than 90 per cent penetration in urban households and more than 45 per cent presence in the entire country for all households, and that's the narrative of TTK prestige with pressure cooker."

He also shared that they started manufacturing the product in 1959 on the old Madras road in Bangalore. Kalro recalled that at that time they were short of aluminium because it was a controlled commodity. “If we could get more aluminium we could get more pressure cookers. So, we decided that we will largely concentrate on the South. The second person to bring in the pressure cooker was Hawkins Cookers and they were largely concentrating on the non-South region. So, this is how the market got polarized.”

Kalro shared that 1981 was the year of invention of the Gasket Release System (GRS) which made the cooker completely safe. And also helped TTK Prestige to come up with its first tagline – “Jo Biwi Se Kare Pyar Wo Prestige Se Kaise Kare Inkar".

Kalro credited their agency (MAA ad agency) involved at that time to articulate a safety feature i.e gasket release system, which became the brand strength of TTK Prestige. Sadiqa Peerbhoy penned down the tagline.

In 2001, TTK Prestige got out of the pots and pans business and it was a turning point for them. They launched gas stoves and the mixer grinder. There were very few companies, which could make this transition from a non-electric to an electric system across the world kitchen appliances. “Somehow that transition doesn’t work in people’s minds. If you are pot and pans company you will be known for that and to get into both was the biggest marketing challenge we had,” said Kalro.

When the company launched gas stoves and mixer grinders, they also moved out of their agency after more than 25 years, from MAA to Mudra. “I mentioned this because the agency has been an integral part of our business.”

He mentioned that the new agency then came up with the tagline which very few people know - Are you ready for a smarter kitchen?. “We ran this line for more than 12 years and at the end of 10-11th year we did research which nobody knew. It's not that we advertised less. Was that a failure of the agency or the marketing team? I don’t think that both were true. Because the tagline - Are you ready for a smarter kitchen did to TTK Prestige was to ensure that we do hard core innovation in product development. While the line wasn’t something that people would understand or remember, we started getting noticed for being innovative. That helped us grow from a simple marketing tagline.”

The company had both its ups and downs. Talking about the year 2003, when the company launched a new product called Prestige Smart, which failed in the market and was a complete disaster. “This was an innovation which functionally didn’t survive. We had the biggest marketing campaign, a fantastic launch campaign but the product didn’t do well.”

Kalro said that they even went to customers' homes and brought back each cooker and paid their money back. “The company was in such dire straits that in 2003, our turnover was Rs 100 crore with a borrowing of Rs 25 crore with unusable inventory of Rs 25 crore and the interest bill of over 11 per cent, we didn’t know from where our next salary was going to be paid from?  Everybody thought that we were going to be bankrupt. Even our shares dropped to Rs 6 or Rs 7 at that time which means our market cap was mere Rs 66 crore. The market expected us to go bankrupt any day. That, according to me, was a huge turning point for us.”

The company decided to do something that the market does not expect them to do. “We decided not to give credit beyond our norms irrespective of what happens. We will launch more new products now than ever before and we set ourselves an incredible growth objective of 30% year on year for the next 10 years,” said Karlo. 

He shared that the interesting thing about this 30% growth story was that the objective didn’t come from the owners or from the promoters or CEO, but it came from the marketing team.

From that day until today, TTK Prestige has launched between 75 to 150 products year on year. “It's never been at that pace before.  We also launched exclusive franchise retails because people don't want to give distribution so we decided to open our own stores.”

He also shared that the company's brand investment has been consistent. “Our brand investment either a good year or a bad year in percentage terms has been no different across these years.”

During a survey they also found an insight that a wife would love it if her husband helped her in the kitchen. And TTK Prestige brought back its iconic tagline "Jo biwi se kare pyar, wo Prestige se kaise kare inkar" with Abhishek and Aishwarya in it. “We were back on track,” said Karlo. In 2015, they started a whole new efficiency building exercise and they were at 11% EBITDA in 2015, and now they are at 16% EBITDA which means 50% increase in profitability, he added. 

In 2020, COVID happened and it's accelerated things for the company. They stopped importing their products two years ago after China invaded the disputed territories of Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. Almost 30% revenues of TTK Prestige were coming from China but they are proud of this decision. 

During COVID,  the company also decided not to sack any employees or cut any salary.They even paid all the vendors on time during the lockdown. Karlo says, "it was a test of their character." Last year they ended up with Rs 2,700 crore and they have now committed themselves to a journey of Rs 5000 crores. 

Karlo commenced his speech with four lessons, first that marketing should not look at being a support function in the company. Marketing must have a business approach for the company. It can lead, strategize and actually give direction to the company. Second,it is important to protect and nurture your culture", third, " the brand purpose " and fourth, "resilience of the company and consistency of approach.

He ended with, "innovation,  differentiation and value incubation has been consistently followed in our organisation across the year. And finally all this for creating value for every single stakeholder whether it's the customer, whether it's the vendor or whether it's a shareholder. I think value creation has to be obvious to everybody and continues to happen."