One has to listen to the consumers: Shankar Prasad, Plum Goodness

At the India Brand Conclave 2024, Shankar Prasad, Founder, Plum Goodness, presented a summary of an entrepreneur’s view of what it takes to build a business as much as it is about building a brand. 

Prasad calls himself a self-taught marketer since he has never had a formal degree in marketing but his learnings have come from common-sensical experiences over the years.

At Plum, there are mainly six key takeaways that they keep in mind. 

Customer view is the only view that matters

Plum started selling Kajal pencils with a sharpener but consumers complained that they could not use the kajal beyond the first bit of the pencil tip since the sharpener wasn't effective enough. This is because the PVC barrel was too hard for the sharpener to scale off.

“We launched a great kajal but we didn't have a great sharpener. So, when we launched the right sharpener, the sales of the kajal took off. To this date, we give a free sharpener with the kajal because we know no other sharpener works with it,” Prasad added.

Another example stated by him was that they chose to discontinue a few products and consumers started questioning when they will be back in stock. The brand assumed the noise would die down in a few months, but a year later they had to bring those products back on consistent consumer demand.

“By referring to another brand’s playbook a brand can't chop the tail off. Because a large section of consumers gets chopped off too. One has to listen to their consumers,” he explained.

It's easy to spot fakes, so be real

Prasad highlighted when other brands say 4x more brighter skin tone or 99% people agree to this product, as a marketer you may feel the FOMO and get delighted to say big bombastic things but that is when you should realise what actually matters to people. This is when you start treading on the line of being real versus fake.

Even today customer support mails are CC’d to Prasad and when someone asks where their parcel is, he is very happy to help. “Even a single customer today matters to me and I make sure their query is closed. That ethos has stayed from day one,” he added.

Consumers spot when a brand is just talking nice things but not really doing it. Hence, it is very important for any brand to be real as the whole journey of building a brand unfolds.

Raising money is a means to the end and not the end

It is crucial to focus on the customer, build something of value and then think of scaling it rather than the other way round. Prasad suggests bootstrap if you can and as long as you can, then raise capital from the right sources that support the right way of working for your brand. 

Prasad said, “It's also necessary to understand why a brand needs capital in the first place and how much money is needed. Make sure you raise only as much as you need and you put it to use only for the purpose you intended to raise it for.”

People, process, planning, repeat is the way to go forward 

One can’t scale without being process-driven so this people, process, planning is more of a circular loop. “If you move forward without the processes being in place, you are for sure going to be slowed down at some point,” the Plum executive added.

Further, one can’t build processes without people and further a brand can’t attract, grow and retain talent without processes. 

“In the end to do this circular loop, you have to have a plan in place,” said Prasad.

Balance short-term and long-term goals regardless of the sales pressures

A smart entrepreneur or marketer will always understand what's sweet in the short term may not necessarily be so in the long term. 

Somewhere having the patience to run it as a long-term endeavour is important and it is even more necessary to keep in mind, you, as an entrepreneur, have to balance out the short term and long term goals.

Speak numbers because numbers speak!

The ideas, plans, and thoughts matter but one doesn't realise that until and unless they do the numbers. These numbers will someday come and speak louder than you at the meeting.

Prasad added, “Make numbers a habit. I see a lot of people make presentations with photos and concepts, but without putting numbers into it and that's not a good place to be.”