We don't change the amount we invest in advertising: Chandru Kalro, TTK Prestige

As a grand finale of the Pitch CMO Marketing Summit, as well as an opener for the Indian Marketing Awards, Chandru Kalro, Managing Director, TTK Prestige Ltd and Suresh Balakrishnan, Chief Revenue Officer, The Hindu Group, held a no-holds-barred conversation wherein they discussed Kalro’s long tenure at the brand, its present place in the market, and their plans for the future.

Balakrishnan began the conversation by remarking how Prestige had grown from a pressure cooker company to today having more than 600 products and more than 1000 SKUs, and asked Kalro to recount that journey.

“I joined in 1993 and revenues were at Rs 72 crore in 2001 which had only grown to Rs 100 crore. And in 2001 we started saying that the brand was way beyond the turnovers that we were doing. We went through our own set of transformative workshops that we did, and then we decided to move into appliances because there seemed to be a fit,” he said.

“But when we moved there, we said that we can't be an also-ran player because we have this whole aura of having pioneered the pressure cooker category, having been the first ones to actually launch metal spoons, nonstick cookware, so we said whatever we get into, we don't get into unless we add value. I think it is that philosophy that allowed us to enter so many new categories,” added Kalro.

“The other truth that we saw about the category known as kitchen appliances, actually every subcategory, had a different set of Top of Mind brands in the customers’ minds. So unless I work very hard to come into that consideration set, I wasn't going to be able to sell a mixer grinder because I have a good pressure cooker,” he added.

“And for us, it was particularly difficult because if you actually go through there are very few companies in the world, including India, where companies from non-electric products have graduated successfully into electrics. And even within that from non-motorized electric appliances to motorized electric appliances. These sound like very normal transitions, but they're not,” he added.

Balakrishnan pointed out that the Prestige customer seems to be the homemaker. “So tell us in the last three decades, how has this homemaker changed, especially in our country?”

Kalro noted how the idea of how homemakers have evolved over the years, especially in Indian society, and so the marketing of kitchen and home appliances had to follow suit.

“We had this 'jo biwi se kare pyar’ line, which was in a context where the man was buying the pressure cooker for his wife, because he loved her he wanted to keep her safe so he bought a Prestige pressure cooker. That was broadly the construct. Now in 2001, when we came into appliances, by then the woman of the house was not going to ask her man to go and buy a pressure cooker. She was going to buy a pressure cooker the way she wanted it, the one she wanted, the size she wanted. So the husband had no role to play,” he said.

“So we actually thought that the line was no longer relevant. So we removed that line and since we were also saying that we will come up with innovative products, we changed our baseline to “Are you ready for a smarter kitchen?” That was the lineup to 2013.”

“And I'm sure if I do a poll here in this room, less than 1% would have known about that line after 10 years of running that, but we grew at 27 and a half per cent CAGR. So whether or not the line resonated, the company certainly grew. And because we grew we use that as a philosophy for our products. Then we did the research again and we found that even now people remember the 'biwi se karey pyar' line. And then we said how do we bring this back, if at all? And we can't bring it back if it's irrelevant. And therefore we came up with the Abhishek and Aishwarya brand ambassador deal and brought in 'Jo biwi se kare pyar' and so the man would cook for his wife using Prestige because he loves his wife. And I think after that the line is stuck again and we are quite happy about it.”

Balakrishnan also asked Kalro about the brand’s omnichannel category, to which the latter noted “We have 550 stores on our omnichannel right now. And we are taking that further. About 12% of our revenues come from e-commerce. We try to keep that at a balanced level because we want all channels to be there. The accent is clearly customer retention and being available where the customer is going. We are nobody to dictate to the customer as to whether you have to buy from this channel or that channel. We have to be available where the customer is,” he said.

“Today, the traditional entry barriers are gone. I mean, a small player can get onto digital and he's available all over the country, which earlier you know, at least the threshold level of media presence there was required for the person to get the distribution that that company needed today even though that barrier does not exist. But I think what will always exist is an emotional connection that our brand has with our customers, which is difficult for that local brand or the regional brand to establish. There are of course regional affinities that might come in which we have to fight with our own innovation and with our own value proposition that we have to give, which is a constant thing the other thing that we do is we do not change the amount of money we invest in advertising and promotion in a good year or bad year.”