strategy thesis on how to grow FMCG in the India of today and tomorrow

Reading Time: 6 minutesUnambiguous, meaningful and absorbent strategy sentences 10X your chances of success

Reading Time: 6 minutesWhen technology shatters old moats, new moats must be built. Lab grown diamonds have dulled the sparkle of De Beers’ moat. in the 1880s, Japan’s Quartz technology disrupted the Swiss Watchmaking industry. But instead of sending them to their grave, it became an opportunity to forge value in two opposite directions. The diamond industry can learn from them. 

Reading Time: 7 minutesIf Colgate can integrate the tacit knowledge that BSC brings to the table, it will be set up for success over the long term

Reading Time: 5 minutesBelief+Aspiration+Choices+Ambition make a complete strategy. If you base your strategy only on what you see -> ambition, you will find yourself in an over-competed market.

Reading Time: 8 minutesModern workplaces are like royal kingdoms. Leaders are like Princes, hoarding power. Employees are like courtiers, competing for Princes’ approvals. In all of this, the market remains under-served.

Reading Time: 4 minutesWhoever owns the scarce bottleneck captures value. In Rockefeller’s time, the bottleneck was transportation. Today, for FMCG brands, the bottleneck is attention. That’s why platforms are charging ‘toll’ and squeezing margins. But if you keep renting that bottleneck, you are not building a business.

Reading Time: 7 minutesThe same financial instruments can build a demand engine like it did at Coca-Cola, or distract you from real demand creation like it did to Nestlé under Mark Schneider. The difference is in the lens – do you see like an operator, or like a money allocator?

Reading Time: 6 minutesExecution is ‘seen. Strategy is ‘felt’ That’s why the right conditions that allow for strategy to emerge are critical. I have tried to capture the look and feel of strategy vs. execution spaces, so you can self-diagnose.

Reading Time: 5 minutesToo narrow and you don’t grow. Too broad, and you become undifferentiated. The way out is to ‘see’ the underlying invisible math and expand into the adjacent possible,

Reading Time: 6 minutesCarlotta Perez’s technological revolutions thesis that the industry is mid-cycle with playbooks that are still WIP. The only way to get ‘unstuck’ is to grow their own playbook from the ground up

Reading Time: 6 minutesThe four horsemen and covid disrupted old moats and unleashed the age of abundance

Reading Time: 5 minutesEach FMCG company will need to decide which is the cheap layer they will industrialise and which is the expensive value layer they will invest behind