Active Stocks
Mon Mar 18 2024 15:55:53
  1. Tata Steel share price
  2. 149.60 5.69%
  1. Tata Motors share price
  2. 972.20 2.75%
  1. ITC share price
  2. 417.40 -0.51%
  1. State Bank Of India share price
  2. 730.70 -0.18%
  1. ICICI Bank share price
  2. 1,082.00 0.32%
Business News/ Companies / People/  Sandeep Khanna | Giving organizational capabilities a facelift
BackBack

Sandeep Khanna | Giving organizational capabilities a facelift

The Asia-Pacific managing director of Brand Learning on why everyone should become an entrepreneur at some stage in life

Sandeep Khanna says the current generation has been shaped by technology, which calls for a very different way for marketers to think about ways to cater to them.Premium
Sandeep Khanna says the current generation has been shaped by technology, which calls for a very different way for marketers to think about ways to cater to them.

Singapore: Sandeep Khanna is Asia-Pacific managing director of Brand Learning, a UK-based firm that specializes in “lifting capabilities" of organizations that it works with.

Now 48, he has no regrets about having left India in 2000 and missing out on the ensuing boom there.

After a 11-year stint in India across two leading advertising and marketing agencies—Mudra Communications and R K SWAMY-BBDO—Khanna relocated to a regional role with the latter’s Singapore office.

His corporate career has since revolved around this region, missing out on the 2000-2010 period, considered by industry experts as the best era of marketing and advertising in India.

Khanna sees it differently. “I did a couple of regional jobs and that gave me an exposure to India. On the flip side, it made me more of a global professional and I learnt about different cultures and about working in different markets. I had richness of diversities of categories and of geographies, and this made me a well-rounded professional," he explained in an interview.

After corporate stints in Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines as well as attempting an entrepreneurial shift, Khanna joined Brand Learning last month to lead its Asia-Pacific operations when the UK-based firm decided to expand to Asia.

Founded in 2000, Brand Learning works with over 120 leading multinational organizations, including Unilever Plc., Royal Dutch Shell Plc., PepsiCo Holdings Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc. in more than 60 countries to create sustained performance change in their commercial teams, Khanna explained.

Prior to joining Brand Learning, Khanna took the entrepreneurial route and set up Karma-Asia Consulting in January 2012. Starting, running and growing the business also led to some of the biggest learnings in his career.

“I do believe everyone should become an entrepreneur at some stage in life. It makes you very clear about what you are all about, allows you to think through own strengths and what you bring to the table. You are the brand. You do not have an accompanying label to carry you on," he said.

He was forced to venture out on his own after Korean consumer durables firm LG Electronics Inc., where he was vice-president of corporate marketing, Asia-Pacific, decided to shut its regional office in Singapore in 2011.

“I did not have the luxury to plan my own venture and had to hit the ground running," Khanna said. “It allowed me to understand myself—I became a lot more collaborative, built personal networks, it made me inventive and very tenacious as well as enabled me to form loose alliances and strategic partnerships. You realize that shorn of visiting card, you are just another human being and why should anyone pay you for your services? It is a very humbling experience," he said.

But after two-and-a-half years, he shelved his venture and decided to come back to a job in the corporate world, and claims the move was partly on account of “missing the sense of tribalism and being part of a larger community".

After leaving India and moving to BBDO’s Singapore office in February 2000, he worked with companies such as FedEx Corp. and Akzo Nobel ICI Paints. On completing a year in the Singapore office of the latter, he headed marketing for ICI Paints in Vietnam for two years, and then moved on to head marketing for Nokia Oyj in the Philippines from 2006 to 2010.

Khanna then returned to Singapore with LG.

Asked about the lessons he gleaned from having worked in companies that lost their way to rivals—Nokia and LG—Khanna said while he could reflect on the strategic mistakes these firms made, it was on hindsight. “When you are in them, you are obviously thinking that you are doing it right," he said.

“Nokia was pretty happy with its business model. I still remember when the first iPhone came in 2007, no one gave it much of a chance. Apple had clearly seen where smartphones could be. We also used to sell smartphones, but when it came to the vision, or the potential of a smartphone, Apple realized it in a much grander and customer experience way," he said. “I would say for Nokia, it was a bit of arrogance and a bit of inability to adapt to a new set of technological and consumer experiences. By the time they started to come back and do things, perhaps, it was too late. Key learning was momentum is very important in business, and firms should be very future focused."

Khanna also said the same could be applied to LG, and the company’s failure to embrace smartphones saw it losing the edge to its Korean rival Samsung Electronics Co.

“LG was the leader in home appliances by a long shot, but the big move was when they could not catch on to the smartphone wave. Then it became a virtual upward spiral for Samsung and downward spiral for LG."

While Japanese, Korean and Chinese companies in the consumer space have gone on to become global brands, Indian brands are yet to make the cut. Khanna says that for a country the size of India and its talent pool, it should have produced some global brands. But he points out India appears to have concentrated on its forte—selling software services.

“To me, it is about the brand owner—it begins with the intense vision that the brand owner must have. If you are happy with being a lead player in the Indian market, that is where you will stay. If you want to take on the world and build a world-class brand, you have to state that as part of your vision, and allocate competencies to deliver that. I have not seen too many brand visionaries out of India, who have stood up and said that we will build a world-class consumer product."

Edited excerpts from an interview:

Chinese handset maker Xiaomi has caused a wave in the smartphone market in Asia while local players led by Micromax in India have successfully taken on established players and come out on top. A few years ago, conventional wisdom said that local handset makers did not stand a chance as they did not have the firepower, research and development (R&D) and marketing resources to take on the biggies. From a marketing perspective, how are these companies succeeding?

The answer lies in a couple of places—they were smart and nimble enough to innovate and reap the benefits of technology and offer the benefits straight to consumers. They were able to offer the same technology at lower price points. Then what is the value of the brand? That they were able to combat that by being relevant to consumers in the media that consumers understand. For instance, Xiaomi has built its brand using the collective wisdom of the audience it wants to address. It brought its consumers on board and built an online community around them. It harnessed the collective intelligence of the audience to help it come up with relevant and better products—this was never thought of by traditional companies.

Today, digital is not just a channel, but a way of life. Some of them have also played the low-margin high volume game to develop a sense of scale. In their own way, these companies have a future-focused view. These brands are showing how one should be agile, how companies should break down layers of decision-making and increase their speed of response.

As a marketing executive, what are the big changes you have been seeing when it comes to the profession, as well as brand building and brand loyalty? Consumerism is now led by China and Asia, whereas it was the US that led this for long time.

Many of the brands that originated in the West—they were driven by Western mindsets and driven by marketing minds appealing to that mindset. When the centre of gravity has shifted to Asia, it is bringing into play new types of mindsets and cultural dimensions. The basic needs and motivations remain the same. Obviously, it is a function of numbers—60% of the world population, most of who are youth, are in Asia. This generation has been shaped by technology. This calls for a very different way for marketers to think about ways to cater to them—a big shift is technology and how it impacts the consumer’s life is very different. A lot of this generation is growing up assuming certain things are given—they did not see the transformation from analogue to digital and were born into digital. Digital has its own way of building communities, and that is a different way of engagement.

This generation has seen a slightly better standard of life and their expectations on what a product should deliver is much higher. Because so much of the technology is now for free, the way you derive value is very different. Facebook is only 10 years old and Google a little older than that. But these are the companies that are in the mindspace of this generation—these are the starting points for this generation, while for us, it came much later in our lives. Brands like Xiaomi have not spent billions of dollars in advertising, but have invoked the participating powers of this community, not just as a method of consumer engagement, but also delivery. Today, e-commerce is the driver and today’s generation may just want to engage those channels.

Regarding e-commerce, how can it impact marketers, because almost every brand is available online? You are bypassing two traditional constraints—earlier, certain brands were only available in certain countries and, second, consumers may not necessarily go to a retail outlet to feel the brand before buying. Today the consumer’s choice is any brand across the globe—how can marketing communicate to this generation and how can products differentiate themselves in this scenario?

At some level, consumers will still go to a retail outlet to touch and feel a brand, even if they buy it online.

So retail will continue to co-exist, and it has a role. But for other products, technology is an enabler and a great leveller because you don’t have to restrict yourself to where you are. So we come back to the issue—how do you harness technology? Today, you can become a cross-border brand more easily. Companies will have to take the final decision—as marketers, we will share with them what we are seeing as new, and we will equip them to better handle a changing world.

Apart from brands such as Apple, or certain high-end luxury cars, is brand loyalty dead? If I don’t find a Coke, I can often do with a Pepsi. I can eat at Subway, and can compromise, if say, I can’t find a KFC outlet which may have been my original choice.

The concept of brand loyalty still exists, but getting brand loyalty is getting tougher because the forces of commoditization are increasing momentum vis-à-vis the forces of differentiation.

This has been a constant struggle in the marketing world—which force holds sway?

In the good old world, there were few choices and each brand was able to create a niche for itself and, hopefully, deliver to that category of consumers.

But, over time, competition has increased, and you can deliver the same experience at a lower price, creating the confusion of commoditization for the consumer. The reason to be inventive and to come up with the next big thing becomes a challenge for marketers.

Today, it is very difficult to command a premium and to get loyalists. The best example is Apple—it has been able to get people queuing up outside its stores for days before a new launch—it is because people believe that nobody can offer what an Apple product can give them. That remains the acid test for any brand—how do you keep your core consumers always delighted?

It is like Harley-Davidson—people are willing to tattoo that brand on to their bodies. It enjoys that level of passion. Some niche brands can do it because it is easier to manage a smaller tribe, but for mass brands, it is very difficult.

Unlock a world of Benefits! From insightful newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and a personalized newsfeed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now!

Catch all the Corporate news and Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates & Live Business News.
More Less
Published: 18 Sep 2014, 11:59 PM IST
Next Story footLogo
Recommended For You
Switch to the Mint app for fast and personalized news - Get App

Chat with MintGenie