In talk with Manish Aggarwal, Director, Bikano to know the insights of the business
If you had to pen down your top 3 learnings from 2021 then what would that be?
- Hygiene, Convenience & health
- Reaching consumers with product and right communication
- Be a role model
From your brand’s perspective, what changes did you bring in internally to build a ‘road to recovery last year?
There was a need to swiftly adopt digital strategies and cater to online consumers as we had seen an uptick in e-commerce orders since the lockdown. The unprecedented nature of disruption has left a lasting impression on both consumer behavior and the business environment. There is a higher focus on health and wellbeing, spiraling adoption of e-commerce, as well as demand for affordable, local, authentic and sustainable products.
What is your vision for 2022 for your brand?
With a revival in demand and consumption, we are looking forward to 2022 with positivity and hopes of sustaining a healthy growth trend across both rural and urban markets while gearing up to cater to the ever-increasing digitally active consumers and tackle the challenge of higher commodity prices. We are driving premiumisation across our portfolios with targeted innovations as consumers are gravitating towards trusted brands looking for quality, purity and hygiene, in continuation of the trend that started since the pandemic last year. We are also accelerating digitalisation and investing in building capability in e-commerce and Direct-to-Consumer channels.
How are you laying the bricks for growth and success in the New Year? Is it going to be an omnichannel journey or putting action to digital transformation or accelerating processes with technology or something else? Tell us your thoughts.
We believe in re-engineering our focus on distribution. It is important to consider the relatively restricted direct consumer interface across channels (traditional trade, modern trade and cash and carry stores, e-commerce). While traditional trade will continue to see strong demand for essential food items followed by snacks, the potential of e-commerce to drive business is unprecedented. We are agile and keeping a close watch on the situation. Simultaneously, we are beefing up our supply chain by building stock of both finished goods as well as RMPM, wherever necessary. We are also trying to ensure that our stocks are nearest to the selling point as much as possible so that our response time is minimised to tackle the situation in the event of any disruption
Elaborate on the initiatives (marketing and digital) which were a success in this period.
We started the Bhujia campaign with the tag line,”Hum se behtar Bhujia ko Jaane Kaun” to promote our Bhujia variants. The campaign was promoted on digital media, radio channels and on print media. We did another campaign for our Lajawab Mixture. This campaign was also awarded as product launch of the year 2021 in the Namkeen Category by Channelier.
