Plans That Gel

ouncing around in his Ford Fiesta on dusty tracks or hanging on to buses and trains is something Ajay Gandhi, area sales manager, Godrej Sara Lee, is used to. And it’s made him a happy man. Last year, selling five key Godrej Sara Lee brands in over 10 districts of Maharashtra has meant he’s on the road 3-4 days a week. If there’s anything Gandhi has learnt about selling national brands like Brylcreem and Good Knight in the hinterland, it’s that relationships matter. Building a personal rapport with distributors and retailers is the key to doing good business in small towns like Phursungi and Loni on the outskirts of Pune. Which is why, he and his team regularly “do the market”—visit different cities and towns to meet distributors and retailers.

“I see a tremendous propensity to spend, and prosperity in the rural markets,” he says. Products you wouldn’t expect to sell in such small places fly off the shelf—the market’s graduating, for instance, from using coils in the Good Knight range to refill packs. In Phursungi, the sole chemist and provision storeowner is happy with the sales of Brylcreem Gel—thanks to its brand ambassador Mahendra Singh Dhoni, most of the younger crowd in the mofussil towns go for it.

What’s also helped this MDI, Gurgaon, graduate blend in is his ability to learn local languages. He knows that greeting a retailer in Marathi has a different impact. Having completed most of his education in Switzerland and Poland, he is used to learning languages and getting used to different cultures. Being adaptive is a definite plus in his work.