Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Selling Milk…. Sounds Exciting ???


Mark Twain in his famous book "Tom Sawyer" has illustrated :

"Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. "

Thats precisely what happened here. I was not obliged to do anything, I had not been given targets (as I had been used to earlier) and no guidelines were laid out. Amazing way to get work done from responsible citizens !

Yet, I was restless. A Humongous task lay in from of me & I didn’t know where to start !

I spent the first few days on the farm to see how cows are treated at the farm, understanding how the distribution system should be, bringing the best value to the company and the consumer.

Milk business happens at odd hours of the day. So, Next step was to build a team that I could trust and bank on at any irrational time of the day. Building an all girl team of fresh MBA grads, who would be responsible for building a customer base, Conduct events for promotions and ensure deliveries to the customers, was only the initial preparation & was no simple task. Choosing from the pool to make the best self motivated team was no easy mission.

It took me two months to prepare for launch. The Launch Strategy, Customer acquisition strategy, ATL promotions, Press meet, Press release, Initial customer acquisition, BTL promotions, Collaterals, Visiting cards, Setting up customer support team, Accounts & Finance team and the Delivery team for logistics was all put in place. 

The launch date was decided to be 10th August and we were all set, beaming with enthusiasm to embrace the occasion with open arms.

I realized, I was in a Startup mode, setting up the business from an idea, executing it on the way and bringing it to a conclusion!

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