Preparatory Seminar 2021 – Day 2
On the second day of our Preparatory Seminar, we met our longtime Platinum Partner Accenture and prepared tomorrows virtual company visit. Our Gold Partner BBC told us about market entrance and business in India.
Additionally, we got more information to this year’s themes sustainability and flexibility from Simon Haller from AdBag, Mathias Binswanger and Nikolina Fuduric both lecturer at the FHNW.
The language lesson was another insight into the Indian culture. We have learned kemcho which means hello, how are you and aavjo which means see you soon in Gujarati.
Our last speaker of the day, Mr. Uttam Tripathi from Google talked to us about the Digital Ecosystem in India.
We are pleased to share some insights into some speeches, provided by our delegates.
Simon Haller, CEO AdBag – Innovative sustainable Startup
Simon Haller, CEO AdBag
Simon gained professional experience during his work at Kantonalbank, Hypoguide, and PerspectivePlus, before founding his own start-up. According to Simon, there are some challenges for him as an entrepreneur. Firstly, it is really difficult for him to separate business from private life, especially when using the smartphone. This requires his time management skill and also affects his work/life balance. Additionally, as a start-up, he must be optimistic because when making a call to potential clients, the chance of getting the contract can be a challenge. Therefore, it is crucial to motivate himself and his team to keep going. Being an entrepreneur, next to his study time, creates another challenge for Simon to focus on the project. Simon also mentions that endurance is one of the most important attributes to develop the project further. On the other hand, there are also some benefits of being an entrepreneur. For example one of the advantages he highlights is flexibility, since he can work or make time for vacations whenever he wants. He can apply his learning directly to the business and face situations that schools or university cannot prepare him for. In addition, the project will become meaningful work when it generates value and more jobs for people. Finally and most importantly, entrepreneurship creates the opportunity for him to chase his dream and live with his passion.
As the founder and the CEO of AdBag Simon launched the company in 2019. The idea is to turn the backpack into an advertising tool while solving a student problem, which is a lack of money. AdBag targets the niche market that creates promotional services oriented towards young people. This creates the opportunity for students to earn some money after every campaign they participate in. The cost of the backpack will be reduced in the first- campaign salary. By using the backpack, the advertisement can access every building including schools, railway stations, and city centers more freely and less costly. Currently, there are three models of the backpack for male, female and unisex, and Simon mentions that he will develop two more models using recyclable materials. On each backpack, there is a tracking system that actively connects with the smartphone to track the locations that the participants go to. This information will be saved in the database anonymously to respect the participant’s privacy. One of the key partners of AdBag is Stifung MBF in Stein AG, they are responsible for producing the backpacks, stocking and delivering them to participants.
COVID-19 creates a big challenge for AdBag since the campaigns have to stop running and also postpones most of the plans that Simon and his team made including the expansion of the business.
– Written by Ngan Nguyen & Gizem Avci
Joel Kistler & Syed Shad, BBC – Working with India
BBC Bircher Smart Access offers sensor solution for access system and was established in Switzerland. They are a part of the BBC Group and have many production and distribution sites worldwide. At present, BBC Bircher Smart Access is yet to set up any legal entities in India. Being a part of BBC Group has enabled the sale of the products through sales packs under the agency agreement.
As project manager strategic marketing at BBC Bircher Smart Access, Joel Kistler is currently leading a team working for the market development in India. He is also the former project manager of Focus India 2019, in which he had the opportunity to establish connection with the BBC Group. In that context, he wrote a bachelor thesis focusing on the market entry strategy to the Indian market. His findings have led to the reinforcement in decision-making to enter the Indian market due to its big market size and a promising growth of the metro system. The main challenge at the time was that the products developed for the Swiss market must be changed and adapted to the requirements of the Indian market.
Syed Shad joined the company later, during the pandemic in May 2020. He is a seasoned sales professional with a great deal of experience in the railways market. According to Syed Shad, the pandemic has created many challenges as well as opportunities for the team. For a new established business as theirs, it is critical in the Indian market to increase customer reach and interaction in the first 4 to 5 months. However, the situation has discouraged the traditional face-to-face interaction and supported the dramatic acceleration of digital transformation. This has provided a more cost-effective approach for which customers have come to accept the way things now work. BBC Smart Access has made a big impact through the quality and global recognition of its brand.
Joel Kistler experienced many differences between the two markets in marketing strategy and recommended channels. In Switzerland, the partners work directly together; while in India, the team has to establish the connections and networks from the ground stage to senior position who eventually makes the final decisions. He also indicated that the Facebook platform was not an appropriate tool for B2B market in India. The team focused on railway newspapers that well-addresses those customers who read it. In addition to that, Linkedin is also highly recommended. His advice for a new company when doing business in India is that it is a must to conduct thorough research and be clear about its products, markets and its targeted customers before presenting it to the customers.
In terms of sustainability, for a startup it could be understood in business context which depends on many factors from policies, market demand to market dynamics, or in environment friendliness. Joel mentioned that safety is of high importance in the Indian market.
– Written by Thu Do Anh Vo & Larissa Hänni
Joel Kistler, BBC
Prof. Dr. Mathias Binswanger – Developing Markets
Prof. Dr. Mathias Binswanger
Mr. Binswanger gave us a fascinating insight into how the global economic growth was created and how it developed over the years until today.
Until the 18th century the economy was dominated by agriculture. Just two factors were important at that time: land and labor. There were almost no opportunities for growth. In the 19th century the industrial revolution came. Land, which was naturally given by nature, was replaced by capital. Capital, which we use for production such as computers, machines could be increased by investment. In a constantly growing economy, an increase in net lending is always the case in the long term, as more and more credits are needed to finance investments. There was the need and opportunity to produce more and more. Then the economy started to grow. Nowadays we talk about the 4th industrial revolution. According to Mr. Binswanger we still live in the industrial age.
Nowadays we see growth as normal. If there is no growth, people think that something is wrong with this economy and that it is not functioning. The gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate measures how fast the economy is growing. GDP is the monetary value of all goods and services that are produced within a certain country during a specific period. Growth does not only have to be quantitative; it can also be qualitative. Qualitative growth is when a product/service is improved and because of that the selling price is set higher. It is difficult to measure the improvement. In GDP only goods traded on the market are included. Everything that is not exchanged on the market for money is not calculated. This can lead to a distortion. People tend to underestimate the economic situation. The world economic growth was generally between 2 and 4 % in the past. However, in 2009 there was a first interruption in the growth due to financial crisis. The second interruption was in 2020 because of Covid-19. Western Europe, Japan and the United States, which are the traditional industrial countries, have a lower average growth rate than before. Currently, these economies are not the engines of the world economy anymore. East Asian countries such as China and India but especially China had a strong growth rate. The growth rate was between 5 and 10 %. Recently the Corona pandemic hit India very hard. The economy in India is expected to decrease by more than 10 % in 2020. Economically, China will probably be the winner of this pandemic, because, despite the challenges, they expect an impressive growth. Nobody questioned the economic growth because it has improved material well-being of people and reduced poverty. Today, however, growth does not increase happiness of people in highly developed countries. Based on the world happiness ranking 2020 India was one of the unhappiest countries, one main cause is due to poverty.
Today, digital transformation is also a big challenge for growth. A lot of traditional jobs will disappear. At the same time the economy becomes more complex, professional and bureaucratic, which creates new job opportunities.
Perhaps in the future it would be better to talk about Gross Domestic Organization, because for example in Switzerland growth does not only arise from the production of goods but from organizing production processes.
– Written by Florian Sennhauser, Julia Estermann & Vithursha Nallathamby
Prof. Dr. Nikolina Fuduric – Sustainability as an Inter-disciplinary Chain of Events: A Look at the Sustainable Marketing Canvas
Professor Nikolina Fuduric explained to the Focus India participants how she got into the topic of sustainability from the view point of marketing. She was not totally happy with her career anymore and that was when she started to take a step back. She thought about how to have a joyful life and showed us how she started her journey to find her passion. A passion which has vastly enriched her life. The first step was for her to take some “time-out” and take a step back; the second was to have fun; the third to meet new people and the fourth to meet new people that change your life.
While meeting new people she met someone from VAUDE, a clothing brand with a key focus on sustainability. The company managed to actually keep doing business during the pandemic instead of losing money. They are inspired to lead the company through authenticity and courage. VAUDE focuses on sustainability challenges within their industry. This does not mean that the other problems do not matter to them, but the company has only limited capabilities to help. In their case, they focus on the textile industry.
Our speaker started to inform herself about the topic of sustainability from the perspective of marketing and noticed that there were many inputs, but no generic idea. The writers of the various papers and books seemed to lack cohesion and common ground. After a full year of reading books and full concentrated research on sustainability, she developed a remarkable step forward by developing her carefully considered “sustainable marketing canvas”. Her pioneering canvas focuses on Product, Place, Price, Promotion, Physical evidence, Processes and Employees and it has a triple bottom line that consists of planet, people and profit. After she developed this model she got back to VAUDE and together they analysed the company. The result was that the company could make some changes in their strategy and thus become even more efficient and profitable.
We also had the honour to welcome Thorsten Harstall from adidas as a presenter to our meeting. He has been working for more than 20 years in this industry and had a similar experience to Nikolina’s which led to his career in sustainability. At the end of the 90s there was a “wake up” moment when it came out that
certain other sports brands had a reputational challenge by being associated with child labour in Asia. In 2010 the change of consumer demands towards sustainable products started. adidas’ goal is that all of their polyester products are made of recycled polyester. Both Thorsten and Nikolina are convinced that business ethics becomes more and more important in today’s economy and that business schools should focus more on that topic. Becoming more sustainable is a journey for companies and society and is not done overnight. We are far away from being perfect.
Participants’ questions followed. The first questioned whether sustainability was just a trend. Thorsten believes that it is both a trend and a real change. In the moment a company has to be sustainable, if it’s not it, is very fast out of business.
The second question asked about supply chain transparency. An overnight transformation is not possible for companies with a big portfolio of products. But if it would be legally required or if the company would have a competitive advantage it would be made possible.
Another question concerned sustainability measurement. Here Adidas has an innovative score of how satisfied employees are. There are also NPS and INPS and measurements.
The final question looked to the future and asked what we could to ensure that all companies become sustainable. As consumers, we have an influence with our purchase decisions. So, if we only buy sustainable products, companies would have to adapt to that consumer behaviour. We have to focus on what brings us joy as well as how and where we work.
– Written by Katharina Schenkemeyer
Nikolina Fuduric
Mr. Uttam Tripathi, Google – Startup & Digital Ecosystem in India
Around 1700 there was a shift of the global economy towards Europe and the US. Which started with the colonialization of large part of India through different European powers such as the British, the Portuguese, the French as well as by the Dutch. Before that India’s GDP was around 35% of the worlds GDP. This dropped to only 1 % after being colonized. However, China as well as India are bouncing back now. This is also due to the regain of independence in 1947, which almost simultaneously introduced women voting rights to the country.
India is the second most populated country after China with 1.3 billion people. 600 million people are below the age of 25 years and the country has 22 official languages and the 2nd largest Internet population of the world with 458 million users. In comparison the USA has a population of 330 million in total. On picture 1 on the left it is visible how many states in India are equal population wise with some of the biggest countries of the world. Clearly India is a hugely attractive market for start-ups and tech companies. Which is proven further with the following data presented by Mr. Tripathi.
Google has four offices in India, in Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad. Most of the products used are Google Chrome, Android (nine out of ten smartphones, because Apple is too expensive), YouTube (mainly used as a video channel), Google search and Google Pay. Google Pay used to be used less when India had a cash economy; this changed three to four years ago. Digital transaction volume increased by 61% in volume and 39% in value from 2015 to 2019.
– Written by Andrea Haueter