Lessons from a marketing journey

In January 2014, the Royal Government of Bhutan commissioned the largest cement plant in Bhutan, a 4,130 MT per day integrated greenfield project at Nganglam, Eastern Bhutan, about 150 kilometers from Guwahati, Assam, India.

In March 2014, I was one of three senior employees deputed by Druk Holding and Investments as Strategic Marketing Advisors to set up DCCL’s marketing and sales functions. A year after the challenging assignment, my reflections attempt to share some basic marketing lessons I learnt on the way from Thimphu to Nganglam to take up the assignment.   

We left Thimphu right after Losar. The horse had kicked us out of our cocoon in Thimphu to the heat of Nganglam. The fact that Losar had just exited was starkly reminded by the driver who came to pick us on the morning of March 4, 2014 – we could see and smell Ara[1] all over him. Nevertheless, we had a smooth five hours to Phuentsholing.

The drive from Phuentsholing to Nganglam is about six hours. After crisscrossing through the unkempt human and hutment jungle of Mangalbari, you hit Hashimara. Depending on your luck and timing, you wait at the Hashimara railway crossing for a British era train to pass by. After the railway crossing you are not yet ready to speed, for there is a mini-hill of a speed breaker to negotiate. Half a kilometer later, you reach a big and blessed road junction. It is blessed because there is a Hindu temple at the crossroad. Remember to take left for Nganglam, Gelephu and Samdrup Jongkhar. If you take right, you are heading for Gomtu, Samtse or Siliguri. Marketing is about reaching and serving the right market and cutting down on the lead distance.

After a wild drive through the freshly topped road through Alipurduar jungle, you reach Barobisa. Phuentsholing to Barobisa is about an hour. If your destination is Kalikhola, now renamed as Lhamoijingkha, you need to leave the highway and take a left turn at Barobisa.  At Barobisa you hit the so-called Asian Highway. From Barobisa to the Assam-Bengal border of Srirampur, the road is befitting of its moniker – Asian Highway.  Thereafter, the highway disappears and reappears in patches and all that you are reminded about is the fact that you are in South Asia. Although work started about a decade ago, several bridges on the highway are yet to be completed rendering the road rough and dusty in patches. Marketing is about exciting customers by under promising and over delivering. The Asian Highway announces itself rather loudly, but soon disappears into puddles and dust beds.

About two and half hour from Barobisa, you reach Himalaya Hotel, the popular eatery for Bhutanese travellers. Himalaya would provide quite a good case study on how to market and conduct business. The signboard is in Dzongkha and the proprietor knows the importance of targeting the drivers who ferry passengers across the dusty plains of India from various parts of Bhutan, including Phuentsholing, Gelephu and Samdrup Jongkhar.  Essentially, the hotel knows who the opinion leaders and influencers are. Himalaya caters almost exclusively to the hundreds of Bhutanese who travel across the plains of Assam to various destinations. Talk of branding and positioning!

Taxi and bus drivers who ferry passengers to the restaurant are provided with free food of their choice.  One can indeed hear hungry Bhutanese drivers demanding ‘chicken lao, machhli lao, aur phaksha bhi lao[2]…’ after all they don’t have to pay. They are also given annual and seasonal gifts. For example, in January 2014, all drivers were given a packet of 25kg superior quality rice and a tin of cooking oil each as New Year gifts.  The hotelier knows that the restaurant business is a game of volume. You cook today and eat today! Talk of rewarding your channel partners!

The bus drivers and passengers receive VIP treatment at Himalaya. There are lathi wielding sentinels making way for buses to park and escorting drivers and passengers to the restaurant.  Himalaya has two restaurants – an air-conditioned and plush looking one on the right and a dhaba[3] style bigger one on the left. Menu and food are the same in both the restaurants, but you pay slightly higher at the a-c joint, where you can also answer to nature calls in better comfort. Talk of product differentiation and market segmentation!

After a heavy lunch of skinny chicken and overcooked fish, you head to the pan shop run by a middle-aged Bodo man. He very well understands that communication is key to effective marketing. He speaks Sarchopkha making it convenient for Bhutanese customers to order doma of their choice – with or without chamanbahar, with a dollop of zarda, an extra dash of lime or a piece of coconut. After belching the chicken and the fish out of both ends, you pop a doma into your mouth. You relish it if the ingredients are in right quantity, if not, not!

Before you mount your car for the remaining part of the journey, your attention is drawn towards a row of shops that sell a myriad of children toys, cheap fake electrical and electronic gadgets and fruit. It makes you wonder about where the factories that make all these fakes are located! On their part the shopkeepers know that they are catering to bargaining and cheating that is integral to selling in South Asia.

The road onward to Nganglam after leaving Himalaya is better than the stretch you have just covered. There are fewer incomplete bridges and the Asian Highway emerges out of the puddles once again. As part of our pre-departure briefing at DHI, we had been instructed to keep an eye for hoardings and signboards of Dragon Cement and other companies. Pema and I split sides. He kept watch on the right side of the highway while I surveyed the left. At the Bijni junction, we were greeted by a huge hoarding of Dalmia Bharat Cement. Mari Kom, the Indian Olympic boxer endorses Dalmia Cement as their brand ambassador. Bijni, in case you didn’t know, is infamous for confusing Bhutanese drivers, who head straight on instead of taking a right turn to go to Gelephu and Phuentsholing. About five kilometers on, we spotted an entire building painted in red with a pronouncement in large letters: Star Cement: Solid Setting. We were beginning to get some ideas of how hoardings for Dragon Cement should look like.

Near Barpeta, we saw a picturesque hoarding with a beautiful picture of a waterfall and a river dam. As we drove past, we could barely read the product brand and the tagline: Dragon Cement: Majbuti aur Suraksha Sath Sath. It looked different from the hoardings installed by Star Cement and Dalmia Cement. We were a bit confused. 

At Pathsala, you leave the highway and take a left turn to go to Nganglam. Nganglam is about 50 kms from there. The road, built by the government of India as part of their assistance to Dungsam project, is generally in good condition and you can pick up good speed. With several lively Indian bazaars along the way, the drive is pleasant and you soon reach the Indo-Bhutan border. On the way, you pass by a couple of signboards that read, ‘Elephants have the right of way. Drive slowly’. Fresh elephant dung and huge footmarks on the side of the road indicate that a pachyderm has just exercised its right of way. You get some goose bumps and drive on. As an Indian advertisement slogan says, there is victory ahead of fear. So far so good, wild elephants seem to have succeeded in fighting competition and have re-launched themselves in the area.

What stands out at the Indo-Bhutan border is the complete absence of human settlement.  Unlike the borders at Samdrup Jongkhar, Gelephu, Phuentsholing and other places, it is a silent half dried stream that separates the two neighbours and not monolithic concrete gates with picture of snarling dragons.  Nganglam town is about 15 kms from the border. Security concerns due to constant disturbances on the Indian side perhaps prompted the Bhutanese authorities to locate the town and other facilities further inside Bhutan.

Before long we are at the Rinchenthang border gate. I am beginning to relish the prospect of finally being separated from the smelly Santa Fe and its equally smelly driver. Pema and I decide to advise the front office at DHI to conduct better due diligence before hiring cars for official uses. Two important factors, we suggested, were the cleanliness of the car & the driver and his attitude (such as use of mobile while driving and safe driving). We knew that this particular driver didn’t market himself well!

Later that evening as we hit the sack after a dinner of masala curries, rice and chapatti, I suddenly realized that our marketing assignment would begin the next morning.  Am I ready? Although I haven’t sold a loaf of bread or a khamto of doma by way of real life experience in marketing and selling, I knew the team had to hit the road running. Cement had to be marketed in India even if it meant taking coal to New Castle.

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[1] Ara is the popular locally brewed spirit in Bhutan

[2] Give me chicken, give me fish and give me pork also

[3] Indian style roadside restaurants

Tribute to the women in my life

Politicians, policy makers and social workers around the world have found reasons to celebrate women on the 8th of March every year. I believe someone as special as a mother, sister, niece, girlfriend and wife need to be celebrated more frequently. Nevertheless, I take the opportunity of this year’s women’s day to pay tribute to the beautiful women in my life. As I do so, I wish that these same women happen to me in my next life. I know Buddhistically, it calls for good karma.

My mother died of complications from postnatal placenta retention when I was barely five years old. Seven months earlier she had lost her husband – my father. My youngest sister, who was the product of that fatal delivery died fifteen years later. As my maternal aunt raised her, we grew up as cousins rather than as full blood siblings.

After the demise of my parents, my paternal uncle took care of my siblings and me. However, tragedy was to continue in our family. Barely a year later uncle lost his wife in another post-childbirth complication. The male baby survived and today he is a confident young man taking good care of his family. He bears a bit brownish façade and has light resemblance to Barack Obama.

 My eldest sister was given away on marriage to a man who had long stayed in our family as a long-term member. His ToR included tilling the land with the help of a pair of bullocks. He was a moody, yet genial man. My paternal uncle had decided that he was the best groom for her. Everyone in the family kept a dignified silence on the decision. My elder brother and I, who were expected to resist and challenge uncle’s matrimonial decision, were too young to do so. My sister and brother-in-law started their independent lives under a tree. House there was none and the two struggled for about a year at the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Two of my elder sisters are in the USA, said to be the land of opportunity. However, they didn’t go there on their own as Mexicans and other illegal immigrants would do; destiny took them there. The detour from remote Neoly to Rhode Island and Virginia was long. The stopover on the way was two decades long as political victims and refugees are wont. One of them is making her living tossing towels into a laundry machine and bending her back ironing and folding the products. The other is busy taking care of her lovely doll of a granddaughter.

Together, my three elder sisters (and particularly the eldest), tried their best to fill the vacuum left by the early demise of my parents. They provided me with near maternal love and care. I still remember the many times that I ran away from my uncle's house to my eldest sister's place. In between my uncle's and sister's house was a narrow gorge and semi-forest and a perennial stream ran through it. I would stay late pretending to study and just when everyone settled into their rooms for the night, I would snatch my school bag and run away. The little runaway boy took about fifteen minutes to run through the gorge. The narrow path was either pitch dark or frighteningly bright depending on the lunar phase. I did not care as there was plenty of love waiting for me beyond the gorge and the narrow uphill climb. Although there was no mobile call, short message or a Facebook post to inform my sister, she was always waiting for me!

To this day, one of my younger sisters struggles to meet her ends. Hardly two years separating the two of us, we grew up together. I took care of her and she took care of me. Our relationship was highly symbiotic – I scratched her back and she scratched mine. Eventually, one major thing separated the two of us – school and education. While uncle sent me to school, Kaili (Nepali for fourth daughter) was kept back at home. She cooked, tended to the cattle and ran numerous household chores. When she was barely 18 years uncle gave her away to a much older man in faraway Daifam. She begot three boys; it was highly common and acceptable to have four, five, six, up to dozen children at that time. She is now beginning to see some light at the end of her sons’ education and some hope for old age support. The other younger sister of mine has had a relatively smooth sailing so far. After school she became an agriculturist. As a good civil servant in Bhutan, she continues to wrench her way through.

Beyond my mother, six sisters and numerous cousins, the second set of women I came across was my school and college mates. During primary school, girls were just students as were the boys. I was too young to understand the gender difference. As a small built boy I was considered unsuitable to be part of the boys football team. I always teamed up with the girls. By higher secondary girls meant more than just students. They provided physical attraction. The more robust and adventurous of my friends started finding girlfriends. By the time I reached Sherubtse College in Kanglung, I found that girls were more studious and scored good marks – often with the help of ogling young Canadian teachers. I was teased into becoming competitive in studies. I remember a time when my boyfriends confronted me once and said, ‘Om, you are our only hope. You must study hard and beat these girls.’ I was not sure. I comforted my mates by saying that I would beat them in the board exam. I was buying time. A compact was signed.

When I joined the Ministry of Economic Affairs after my first degree, there were very few female employees in the Ministry. In fact, at the Department of Industry, where I started my civil service career, Aum Lhamo, a rotund elderly lady, who doubled up as a steno and typist, was the only female employee. As a young officer, I had to run after Aum Lhamo for all my secretarial needs. Those were pre-computer days and the good old typewriter ruled the roost. Lhamo not only could dissect the strokes from the boss’ dictation, but was also an experienced typist. She helped me settle on my job as I worked hard to support my seniors prepare the Ministry’s Seventh Five Year Plan.

At work, I rose through the ranks and fifteen years later I found myself heading the Entrepreneurship Development Programme of the Ministry. I learned training and teaching and understood the nuances of small business management. I was part of a small and dedicated team that supported business startups and entrepreneurs. One day, in the year of the female sheep, the same year that my wife begot our third child and second boy, two young women joined my office as probationary employees. They had completed their Bachelor Degree about a year ago. They reported to me wide-eyed and soft voiced typical of novices at work. There was excitement in the office. What would it be like working with women colleagues, most of us wondered. The girls settled down quickly. Soon one of them got married and before long her impending motherhood was apparent. When she became a mother, female idiosyncrasies began to surface at work. It was an opportunity for me to exhibit my softer side. As an early orphan, as someone who was surrounded by numerous sisters and cousins and more relatedly as someone who had lost a daughter two years earlier, I was not expected to be tough. I didn’t want to be tough. The young mother reaped my softer side; I allowed her longer and more flexible maternity leave and working conditions. I feel good to this day. My women colleagues still respect me for that.

My first baby was a daughter, a very cute and loveable thing. Everyone said that she looked like me. Until she was born, I didn’t know anything about jaundice, bilirubin or hyperbilirubinemia. When she was a year old, doctors told us that our daughter had Kernicterus. We gradually came to terms that we had a special daughter. We began to love her more as she remained on our laps most of the time. She visited us for five years and left us in the spring of 2001. My wife and I still miss her and the absence of a daughter in the family has left a vacuum. However, I have two lovely boys and numerous nieces - my wife’s sisters’ daughters, brother’s daughters, sisters’ daughters and cousin’s daughters. Some of my nieces are very close to me and regard me as their own father. They also play good proxy sister to my two boys. Our boys do not miss a female sibling as much as we miss a girl child, thanks to their closeness with their cousins. Relationships are not defined by blood alone. Relationships are in our mind, our hearts and in our day-to-day deeds and behaviour towards each other.

My wife is someone’s daughter; she has three sisters and a half-sister. I met her in the summer of 1990. We fell in love in the spring of 1993 and got married that summer. Besides being my partner, she has been an excellent mother to our sons. Professionally, homemaker doesn’t sound very upmarket; housewife, the terminology used in our part of the world is even more derogatory. However, for my boys and me Tika has not only been a wife and mother, but a nurse, a doctor, a chef (she cooks damn well), a strategist and a boss. Using the Facebook language, I am tempted to say that she is the world’s best wife. Today’s generation knows how to show their adulation for their parents and partners. You are the best husband in the world, is a common Facebook salutation. I know it is literally wrong – for best is a superlative and compares between various subjects and objects of discussion. Technically, one has to experience more than one husband/wife to say that a particular one is ‘the best husband/wife in the world’. Let me buy the joke, Tika is the best wife in the world. Let others play second fiddle to her.

Tribute to YCS Part II: Some Finer Aspects

Yangchenphug is celebrating its golden Jubilee this year. As an alumnus, I recently wrote a short tribute and posted it in my blog. While many commended me and connected well with my reflections, there were a few who wanted me to write more. This sequel is for the reading pleasure of those who prodded me to tell more.

After my last story, people messaged me from far and near. A lady – Lubna Abedin - commented from abroad. Like me she is an YCS alumnus - ‘I am of the 1986 batch’, she reminded me. That makes her only a year junior to me, I calculated. Yet, I don’t remember her. One Mr. Edward Kelly connected from California, USA. He said that he had taught art to junior students at YCS in the early 1980s. I could recollect that. A tall robust white man, often in gho, used to be among YCS faculty when I was in class ten. He didn’t teach me, but I remember Mr. Kelly.

Some commentators tried to take me further back into the history of YCS. JB Tyson, RD Sing…rattled one old boy citing a continuum of larger than life principals who had governed Yangchenphug over the years. One asked me, ‘what about Mr. Verma, the then Chemistry teacher? I hadn’t written about Mr. Verma in my last story because he didn’t teach me anything, let alone Chemistry. Of course, I remember him; he was the Chemistry teacher for 9A and 10A, while Mr. John taught me the same subject in 9B and 10B. Verma was purportedly a better Chemistry teacher than John. But I had no option – John was destined to teach me Chemistry. I had to try hard to reason with my Facebook friend who found Verma missing in my story. ‘How can I write anything about someone who I had barely met?’ For me, Verma was like a movie star, I knew him, he didn’t know me!

One reader commented that I had written only about stealing apples. ‘But then we used to steal peach and plum also’, he reminded me. He is right - apple hunting was meant to be a prologue to the well orchestrated marauding of various fruit by YCS students of yore. However, while we stole peaches in broad daylight from the Indian Embassy and GREF estates, apples were mostly hunted at dark. Another mate reminded me about our regular trips to Tandin Nye. Tandin Nye was both a protecting deity as well as a romancing spot for the more romantic of us. The path to Tandin Nye from YCS ran through a sublime blue pine forest. Some of my mates used to pretend to carry a book or two under their arms and walk towards Tandin Nye. Very soon, female shapes would follow suit – books under their arms and onwards to the Nye. Whether they studied, prayed or did something else is everyone’s guess, I guess!

One mate reminded me about the boys’ toilet up on the hillock. ‘How can you forget that?’ he chided. It was a one-of-a-kind of toilet. There was a long low-roofed house with two long rows of cubicles fitted with two cement bricks about 20 centimeters apart for students to squat while emptying their bowels. The excrements - be it solid turds or diarrhoeal - flowed down a single drain. As a result, if you were using one of the cubicles towards the end, the exhaust delivered by some five to six of your mates further up the discharge chain would come gushing by and pass under you. It was fun predicting who sat and shat above you from the colour of the stool. The walls of the toilet cubicles were mini-encyclopedias of some sorts – students scrawled good and bad with the green grass they would have taken along to wipe off their under sides.

A few of my friends called me and suggested, ‘you could have written about some of our mates who are public figures today.’ Except for fleeting references to a few mates, I hadn’t written about any of my mates in particular. I was afraid of not being able to cover everyone, thereby offending those I miss. The more pertinent reason was that I wanted to focus on the external environment rather than on the details of friendship and camaraderie. Kinga Tshering, Hon’ble Member of Parliament from North Thimphu constituency was my immediate bed neighbour in the Tiger house dormitory. When I was in class nine, Kinga was in eight. He was already shining as a student. Besides his intelligent academic capacity, I remember Kinga as a good artist. Yes, he used to draw good pictures. Apparently, he didn’t develop or pursue this hobby.     Kaka Tshering, who had merited a mention in my earlier story, was also a dorm mate. He was a fine boy and a good leader of Tiger House. As the Hon’ble Member of the National Council representing Paro, Kaka continues to lead to this day.

Among my classmates, I am still in touch with many – thanks to Facebook. After a brief, yet distinguished stint in the Ministry of Finance, Sonam Jatso (the Jatso was added much later and he was simply Sonam those days – fondly known as Disco Sonam for his dancing skills) started his own business. Quite a few of my mates from YHS went on to become doctors. Dr. Shah Bahadur Gurung and Dr. Dhan Kumar Acharya immediately come to my mind. Kinga Namgay became an engineer and today, he is an executive director at DGPC. Ugyen Tenzin (popularly known as Abdul) ran a successful stint as Haa MP. Diwakar, one of my closest pals is doing well as an engineer. He has been part of the Government’s school planning and building initiative for decades now. Chandra Rimal, another close pal, is in Phuentsholing and I meet him regularly. I have lost Thag Bahadur Powdyel; I know he is alive and kicking somewhere, but I don’t know where. Three of my female mates joined Bhutan’s health services. After serving as nurses, to day, Sonam, Chimi and Sapna are either health administrators or trainers. I used to have an adopted sister – Karma Choden. She was one of two Bhutanese archers who participated in the Los Angeles Olympics of 1984. When she returned from the USA, she had brought for me a pair of socks and a very nice T-shirt, which I wore until five years later. I don’t know where she is now!

Sometime last year, I came to know that Karma Kinley was in the Bank of Bhutan, Phuentsholing. I sent him words through Rimal suggesting that we meet over a dinner. A dinner meeting was fixed for the day I was to arrive in Phuentsholing from Nganglam. Pocketful of money, I was ready to host my two old mates to a sumptuous meal. Around 6:30 PM, it started raining. I called Rimal and enquired about our meeting, as I was quite keen for a reunion. Rimal called back a while later to inform ‘Karma Kinley says it is raining; so he wants to meet you another day’. My excitement was drowned in the early monsoon shower. Friendship is supposed to be all weather, but here an inclement weather stood between my mates and me. At that time I realised that not everyone I had met at YCS wants to reconnect.

My memories of YCS are not connected through my classmates alone. Today, I count among my good friends alumni who may have been a year or two junior to me. Parsuram Sharma (GM, CDCL), Binai Lama (Senior Advisor to SNV Bhutan), Madan Chhetri (Financial Advisor to WWF Bhutan), Wangchuk Namgyel (CEO of GIC Bhutan Re Ltd), Finance Minister Namgay Dorji and Suresh Nepal (Consulting Engineer of international repute) are a few with whom I meet and interact regularly.

I end my reminiscences of YCS with a salute to all the wonderful people I met there – as classmates, housemates and schoolmates! Happy Jubilee YHS!