Rakesh Kaul on digital transformation and innovation

our next guest is Rakesh from LivePure. Rakesh welcome to the show. Thank you so much Jasper. Now here when let's get into the heart of the matter when you think about market expansion of course it's not just a marketing topic is it it's a big business topic absolutely and talk to us a bit about because LivePure or the many other brands you work with may have this or that identity this or that brand ingredients but you have interest you have a very interesting thought process around business models and how innate that is to expansion talk to us a bit about that Rakesh. Yes Jasper you're right I mean as far as the expansion the market expansion is concerned it doesn't necessarily cover the the brand it covers the newer consumer cohorts it addresses

if any unmet needs of the consumers and that's how you can do market expansion through various you know areas as such so we at LivePure have been an 11 year old brand and been primarily into water purification and we know water is a big big issue in India the availability of the water I must give you some details which will actually be you know eye-opener say India constitutes of 17% of world's population but has just 3% of world's water resources and even out of the 3% water resources 92% is not portable so here is India is actually facing a scarcity of water and you also hear about cities going without water for days together and there's no groundwater table as of now so we actually are understood this

need and we felt that the water purifiers as a product the penetration in the market is not is hovering around 3 to 5% as such and here we found that how do we expand the market how do we democratize drinking of purified water across millions of Indians which they don't have access and we went deeper and a lot of consumer inciting as such and we we saw that typically a water purifier costs you between 12,000 18,000 Indian rupees and after every one year you got to pay four to six thousand rupees in order to maintain that water purifiers because the filters go bad depending on the quality of the water depending on where you stay because India again has got various quality of water across the across states

so we thought you know the consumer had a big problem while they bought a product and after every one year they're going to pay one third of the product cost back into the annual maintenance contract and they have all the pains of you know calling the technician he coming there you know addressing the problem changing the filters so while companies made revenues out of it you know based on the service needs of the consumers of the water purifiers we felt there was an unmet need we felt that the consumers needed we needed to expand the cohort we needed to democratize water purification as such so we thought of and we did a lot of consumer insights and we felt these are the pain points which needs to be addressed and we came

up with a unique what we call the subscription model and you know today we actually build a very very strong tech stack around it invested millions into building a very very consumer friendly tech stack whereby which consumer does not have to own a machine he does not have to own a machine all he has to do is to have a subscription which can range from 3 to 12 months and even more and all he needs to is you know we we address these consumers through digital marketing other avenues of marketing where we reach out to these consumers

and you know we go and you know install the water purifier at his place and absolutely he does not have to worry about anything he or she doesn't have to worry about anything these are IOT machines whenever the filter goes bad we get a prompt on our server the engineer calls up does an outbound calling calls the consumer

okay can I come and you know get your filter change he says okay please come in and we get the filters change so for three years and years and years on he doesn't have to worry about any acquisition cost he doesn't have to worry about any maintenance contract as such so it's zero for maintenance zero cost and hence and also at the same time the consumer is based out of say for example in Bangalore and he needs to shift to good gov we actually do the shifting of the product for him and he needs to shift to good gov we actually do the shifting of the product for him and he needs to shift to good gov we actually do the shifting of the product for him and he needs to shift to good gov we actually do the shifting of the product for him and he needs to shift to good gov and he needs to shift to good gov and he needs to shift to good gov and he needs to shift to good gov and he needs to shift to good gov and he needs to shift to good gov and he needs to shift to good go

you know what's the water solutions business was there something in there about reflecting on what kind of a business you are right because you're sort of a water business but you're also a sort of tech solutions business was that was that fundamental to working out your expansion plan not really because at the core of our business thought was that how do we address the needs of the consumers how do we make the lives of our consumers easier while we were still in the larger water business so i'll give you an example you know related to the market expansion so while we have acquired more than a

gross acquisition of more than 300 000 consumers and we believe that in the next two years if you reach one million consumers the current size of water purifier as a product itself is three million so we're actually expanding the cohort we're expanding the consumer base as such and you need tech solutions because you know at the end of the day it's a business where we don't really want to engage the consumers in conversations time and again it's all he has an app on his phone we can really diagnose the quality of the water at his home as well so to that extent tech was important to build and scale up the business

okay let's stay on this sort of let's stay on this rail track so live pure is a is a very big kind of a term is is that because from a from a growth and expansion perspective rakesh you aspire to be more than water is there something deliberate in this yes of course i mean the core at the core of our business philosophy is you know we are into health and wellness you know wellness is a much bigger word than being healthy it talks about comfort it talks about being more productive

productivity more productive being more productive so when we talk about health and wellness what we say is that loop your aspires to be a player of significance in kitchen space which includes water purifiers by the way and other kitchen appliances and we want to be a player of significance in the overall home space so which gives us a positioning whether it's in the tech space in the iot space and the eventually the whole idea is you know 50 to 60 percent of our revenues is coming from the digital channels so to that extent you know while we are in the while our anchor

business still remains water we have you know we have you know we have you know we have revolutionized the concept of bringing technology into this category so as to again you know to see that the engagement within the consumer is seamless and uh he's he's a happy consumer at the end of the day

and are you just just staying on this sort of fundamental thing about what enables your market expansion i mean you've been in phillips whirlpool you know tons of businesses is there something about live pure that's uh it's almost like a new type of business because before we had white goods right or we had a service contract is part of your thinking around expansion that actually you're kind of a new category of brand and business right i think the world has changed quite a bit

particularly india also postcode i think the uh the holiness around the brands and the category extensions which used to be a big debate earlier is no longer the debate now the new age consumers the general the millennials are looking at the deliveries they're looking at how how brilliant the brand is teaching you or how brand is treating you at the end of the at the at the delivery time the post sales experience so i think towards that i think the brands are no longer halos it's about experience what you give them but with respect to our consumer insights and a lot of engagement with our consumers we believe

that this changing world requires a very dynamic solution to the consumer problems which are addressing through this business uh solution okay and if we define rakesh the market as india you offer a solution as you describe very well thought through from soup to nuts or or soup to water or water to nuts whichever one it is how different are the customer behaviors in terms of engaging with your brand from kashmir to kerala bombay to bengal i mean of course i mean uh as rightly pointed out we have several indias within india as such and water purifier perspective is it all kind of you know kerala guy is the same as kashmir guy when it comes to a water purifier is it quite quite a kind of utility in that sense you know as far as addressing the needs of

the consumer is concerned the water quality is different in different states as such you know we call the totally dissolved solvents which is you know called tds in the common parlance is different in different states so we actually don't give one solution which fits all basically we do a customized solution to the customer in terms of what is the right kind of a water purifier which he requires for his his or her home so if your tds is low you could just have a ue water purifier if you could have you know if you have you know higher tds you could do with a reverse osmosis technology so we do our customize our solution and customize our marketing to the various cohorts of the consumers when i go

home i'm going to check which one i've got but i'm going to chuck this over to amit right so amit you're interesting because because you very kindly gave me a a heart-shaped or a flower-shaped bar of soap right so you're kind of in this water game as well you must be yes right in your 23 years building soul flower how much of you i'm trying to connect these two brands how much has water been part of your customer water is very important so for us the way he's selling water for the intake water is so critical so india is the highest balding country and the one reason is water in india so if he has a technology tomorrow to convert that high tds water for people having bath to a lower tds

water or a better quality water india might have lesser skin issues lesser hair fall issues i mean we'll amit we'll come and talk about we'll come and talk about soul flower in a second but water's interesting in that sense is it connects to all sorts of stuff yeah sure right i think this is this is the first example of a trailblazer brokered brand collab thanks for that okay okay let's get back on to you rakesh thank you thank you amit so we're in the home straight here as a man who's been at the helm of a bunch of brands do you have a sense of why one brand or agency or media agency is better at market expansion than another is it a kind of ethos thing is that a technical thing

i think you know if you if you go for the pre-covert times you know distribution was a big leverage in india you know today you talked about india is having around 17 000 pin codes across the country and earlier distribution used to be the holy grail of brands you know brands who've been invested in distribution marketing for several years used to be the brands where no other could get entry into but post code and even before covert the digital economy took over that and today you can address your 17 000 pin codes through e-commerce as well because e-commerce has become a substantial part of your business to the level of even 30 to 35 percent so so distribution is no longer the weapon which

you used to have in the earlier time so it's smart marketing it's focused marketing it's reaching out to the consumer through this digital landscape and giving your entire profile of your products which you have to a consumer cohort at a much faster pace and of course at an optimized cost too well and you know we we need a whole nother show to do this but you're onto something very interesting in the sense that alexander the great did what he did yeah because there weren't micro alexander the greats everywhere he went now true it's not enough to be tartar reliance godridge etc you've been a fantastic guest rakesh thank you so much for coming so much for having me thanks so much