Bringing the Rainbow: The Hindware Story by R.K. Somany

Author:R.K. Somany [Somany, R.K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mobilism
Publisher: Rupa & Co
Published: 2016-09-30T18:30:00+00:00

9

FROM NEWBIE TO MARKET LEADER

Hindusthan Twyfords was the new kid on the block when we started out. But as I’ve said in previous chapters, we hit a market plagued with shortages with a product years ahead of its time. This allowed me to go from new kid on the block to market leader with relative ease.

Nothing illustrates this better than an incident that took place soon after HTL started production. Bhaiji, who was the founder chairman of the company, called me from Chennai. ‘I’m talking to about sixty dealers here. They want to see the quality of our products.’

We were the first to introduce vitreous china products in the country. Imports of sanitaryware had been stopped to conserve precious foreign exchange. Our competitors were selling earthenware products that absorbed water when they chipped, as such items were wont to do. The dealers wanted to see for themselves if HTL products were really different and superior as we claimed.

I sent a selection of our products to Bhaiji. The dealers couldn’t believe that the basins, water closets and Indian-style pans had been made in India.‘We don’t believe you could have made these in India. You have imported them from your British collaborator,’ they said.

Meanwhile, as word spread that HTL was about to start production, we began getting lots of calls from many influential people in Delhi and Mumbai asking for sole selling agencies in different regions. Bawa Bachittar Singh was then the mayor of Delhi. He called me one day to ask for an exclusive agency. ‘You don’t understand marketing,’ he said. ‘You’ll lose your shirt.’

There were a few other such calls as well, all from influential people and established dealers. I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of giving them sole selling agencies as this would place us, the manufacturer, completely at their mercy.

It was a seller’s market when we entered the industry as there was a complete absence of good-quality sanitaryware. It was standard practice for dealers to visit the offices of the existing companies to grease the palms of executives to get their quotas. Given the acute shortage in the market, they would then sell to the end users at a premium—in the black market.

‘They’ll squeeze the marrow out of the bone,’ I told Bhaiji. He concurred.

Our products were far superior to anything else in the market and were thus expected to command a higher premium than the competition. This was prompting the rash of enquiries.

I appointed two independent dealers in Delhi—Gurbax Singh & Sons on Asaf Ali Road and Mahavir Parshad in Chowri Bazar—and made R.B. Rodda & Co, which had a presence in Delhi as well, my third dealer in the capital. I also appointed one dealer each in Ranchi and Kanpur, and two each in Calcutta and Mumbai and then, over the years, gradually expanded the network.

HTL quickly established a reputation for producing high-quality products at prices that customers considered fair. Earlier, sanitaryware was mainly purchased by contractors and plumbers, not by householders and business establishments, as

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