IIT : Indian Institute of Technology

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Cellsman: At ease with shampoos & DVDs too

Cellsman: At ease with shampoos & DVDs too

No one was
surprised when Finland-based Nokia chose D Shivakumar to head their business in
India. For the 45-year-old Shivakumar the challenge was to make a greater success of an already successful brand - a tough legacy to live up to.

But most felt Shivakumar would deliver: in corporate circles he is perceived as someone who thrives on challenges, and a marketeer who sees brands through the eye of the consumer. Besides, being a gentleman, many had the best wishes for him.

Increasing market share is not easy, when you already command close to 80%. The bigger challenge is to maintain it; more so, with competitors like Motorola finally getting their act together.

Motorola is the clear number two in the market place with a share of around 8%, striking a 4% growth over last years. The gain in market share was not at Nokias cost. The other players lost market share, said a mobile phone distributor.

Nokia had seen little competition in last few years, despite the presence of big brands such as Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson. Samsung seemed to be close to giving Nokia a tough fight at one point, but even Motorola still has a single digit market share. As a dealer points out, in case of Nokia 80% of the work is done by the brand.

Shivakumar, a former Leverite heading the hair care and personal products business, will have to ensure that the brand pull is not diluted in the years to come. His experience at Philip Indias consumer electronics business may also come handy.

Shivakumars colleagues at HLL remember his enthusiasm to launch 50 paise shampoo sachets - a strategy to grow consumption through affordability. The idea which was not approved by the company initially, was later hastily cleared when arch-rival P&G stormed the Indian market with its affordability strategy.

A graduate from IIT Chennai and a post graduate in management from IIM Calcutta, Shiva - as friends and colleagues call him - is a team player. Colleagues say he always had a clear idea of what he wanted to do at the next level.

He could smell a creative idea a mile away and put in equal effort with the advertising agency to make it a success in the marketplace. He has this quality of rallying people around him. I know instances of people working though the night and loving it, said Dhunji Wadia, senior vice president and general manager at JWT.

There are few leaders you look up to professionally and personally. Theres a lot of humility in whatever he does. Shivakumar has an amazing ability to understand the need for an organisations development and is focused on building its capabilities.

He always looked at benchmarking strengths with an eye on the next level of growth. He is also hugely communicative and maintained a personal touch with everyone in the system giving them enough space to operate in, says a senior Philips official who has worked closely with Shivakumar.

At Philips India, Shivakumar can be credited for bringing the growth strategy back to the company and infusing a fresh thinking and approach to the market and the consumer. Most manufacturers in the durable industry looked at the brand from the dealer perspective.

Shivakumar brought the focus back on the consumer through pricing, product and service. Above all, there was far more transparency in dealing with the consumer, trade and even within his organisation, said KS Raman, a senior consultant in the durable industry.

During his tenure, the market share of Philips colour televisions moved up from 4-5% to 8%. The company took the DVD market by storm with its Rs 3,990 pricing, making it suddenly affordable.

The strategy took even the Korean majors LG and Samsung by surprise, helping Philips to grow volumes sharply. In fact, he was among the few who called cricket a dead medium for committing a huge ad budget to push up durable sales.

Source : http://www.agencyfaqs.com/

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