STRATEGY
Sales & Marketing A bamboo-based housing solution Can Bollywood help it grow? Bamboo could help address the housing shortfall in India. Its distinctly lower construction costs will make housing more affordable for villagers. That’s the logic that brothers Vaibhav and Nachiket Kaley started off with when they founded Wonder Grass in mid2007. So far, they have been working on projects like staff-facilities buildings, gazebos and outhouses on some big farms. Meanwhile, they are perfecting a prefabricated-modular approach to rural housing—with solar lighting and waterless toilets. They have not finalised the cost of their 300-square-foot rural house, but know that it has to cost less than a kuccha house, which costs about Rs 1.5 lakh. The Nagpur-based company plans to market its services by tying up with NGOs. Four entrepreneurs weigh in on how they would market Wonder Grass. —Jacob Cherian
How would you sell that?
PITCH NO. 4: Nano, downsides, celebrities, events Vivek Pahwa, CEO of Accentium, a consumer internet company Pitch it as the Nano of housing— fully loaded, yet affordable. Possible downsides, such as stability and structure, should be addressed head-on. Their company would need the buy-in of local development authorities to provide a big push. Marketing this to the government is critical—it could provide subsidies, funding and additional marketing push. They could also hold live events where people can come and see the project. Get a celebrity to stay in one such house for a day to get some good buzz.
PITCH NO. 1: Spread the word through movies and cricket Neetu Bhatia, CEO of Kyazoonga, an online ticketing platform Bamboo allows you to build temporary structures and so the company should leverage that. I suggest it should look at Bollywood and cricket—a product placement in a movie, where the protagonist visits a rural setting that has houses built by this company. Film marketing is becoming common these days and allows the message to be spread to a much wider audience. The other idea is to build on all this hype around IPL. There are a lot of stadiums that don’t have proper box offices for ticketing. They could build temporary structures outside these stadiums, which can serve as ticketing booths.
PITCH NO. 2: Set a world record Sasikanth Chemalamudi, founder of Ludus Entertainment, a recreational and educational destination They should try and bring in a sponsor, and create a record that would get into the Guinness Book or Limca Book of Records. Depending on how long it takes to build each structure, they could try to set a record like the highest number of 300-square-foot houses built in a day, or in a week. Or maybe, take a shot at the largest bamboo structure ever built. A world record for building 200 or 300 houses in a single day would definitely draw attention.
Modern treatments for bamboo can extend its life span to more than two decades.
PITCH NO. 3: Raise awareness through social media Harish Jain, CEO of GreenRootz, a placement firm specialising in media and entertainment sector This requires experiential marketing to highlight the benefits. They should spread awareness using online applications that allow users to design their own structures, and award the most popular design online. To get corporates to take notice, build a caravan out of bamboo and park it outside office buildings to serve natural drinks during lunch hours and evening.
FEEDBACK ON THE FEEDBACK: A bamboo house as a prop in a film might work. With the IPL idea, we notice that no one is talking about even the basic amenities at stadiums. Therefore, this might be ignored as well. We are already talking to software developers for an application for our site, which lets people design a structure. Building a caravan and parking it outside corporate buildings would take us away from our core competency. Bamboo is already associated with temporary structures and we want to move away from that. Getting local development authorities involved is a good idea, but it would be difficult to get them to experiment. They might opt for it only if there is market pressure. MAY 2010
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