The Co-Founder of Druva, the Pune-based cloud data protection software provider, once narrated the story of how his company broke into NASA.
Its sales team was pursuing the prestigious American space administration agency for months with the usual sales approach spanning demo, proof-of-concepts, requirement study, and so on, but didn’t get much joy.
Apparently, the Indian origin of the product and the relatively unknown nature of the company were the killjoys.
Then, one day, NASA suffered a data breach. The next day, its IT honchos called Druva to supply its product immediately. The product’s country of origin and relative lack of branding suddenly didn’t matter any more.
The aforementioned co-founder summarized this episode with the following lesson learned:
When there is a fire, nobody asks what is the brand name of the extinguisher.
We saw a “house on fire” situation recently with the coronavirus pandemic.
Since the sanitizer is the only weapon the world has against Covid-19, there was a frenzy among the general populace to buy hand sanitizers. Soon stores ran out of stocks. A bevy of companies introduced an array of sanitizer products to fill the vacuum. Anyone who had even a halfway decent product could capture the market.
To paraphrase the above saying, when there’s a pandemic, nobody asks what is the brand name of the sanitizer.
But I’m not sure how many of these products will outlive the virus. As ET Prime warned, while sanitizer is an “easy-to-start business and extremely profitable, there could be a shakeout in the sector“.
It was during this time that Dr. Batra’s launched its hand sanitizer.
Perhaps in a nod to ET Prime’s warning, Dr. Batra has kept the long term horizon in mind while developing its sanitizer’s branding.
Here’s what I found impressive about Dr. Batra’s branding.
Alcohol-free positioning. Many people learned only during the Covid-19 crisis that the biggest component of hand sanitizers is alcohol. This includes the Chemical Engineer me! In India, hundreds of millions of people eschew alcohol owing to faith and religious reasons. Dr. Batra did a smart thing by leaving out alcohol from its hand sanitizer. Not only that, the company highlights this fact by making it an integral part of the brand name: Dr. Batra’s Non-Alcoholic Hand Sanitizer. This differentiates the product loudly and clearly.- Enriched with Tulsi. Tulsi, or “Holy Basil” as it’s called in English (botanical name: Ocimum Tenuiflorum), is an aromatic plant that’s native to the Indian subcontinent. Indians have used tulsi for ages as a cure for insect bites, fever, cardiac diseases, gynecological disorders, respiratory problems, skin disorders, etc. In the absence of any cure for Covid-19, the average Indian might be hoping that tulsi could have some therepeutic value in preventing / curing the disease. Dr. Batra’s has nicely played to the gallery by using tulsi as a key ingredient.
- Formulated by Dermatologists. Many people avoid creams and sprays, fearing damage to the skin. That’s bound to cause a reluctance to try out Dr. Batra’s hand sanitizer, which is in spray form. The company has preempted this objection by securing the blessings of skin specialists upfront.
- Fragrance. Most hand sanitizers I’ve used in the past have a neutral or slightly acrid odor. But Dr. Batra’s hand-sanitizer has the pleasant fragrance of Eau de Cologne.
- Packaging. I found the semi-transparent packaging of Dr. Batra’s hand sanitizer very cool compared to the other hand sanitizers I’ve used in the past.
Spanning product management, product development, packaging and marketing, the above mentioned elements of branding of Dr. Batra’s hand sanitizer will not only make it an easy draw among consumers during the coronavirus outbreak but also help foster loyalty well after the pandemic ends, and stocks of hand sanitizers go back to their pre-crisis levels.
While its market entry was opportunistic, Dr. Batra’s hand sanitizer has kept the long term in mind in its branding. Kudos to the company for eschewing short termism even in these trying times. I expect the company’s approach will pay rich dividends in the future, well after the current crisis blows over.
Here’s a sanitizer that will outlive the virus.
If you came across any other sustainable brands launched during the coronovirus crisis, please share in the comments below.
PS: Dr. Batra’s is a well known homeopathic brand in the hair and skincare space. Ergo, its newly launched hand-sanitizer product is not a brand but a brand-extension. I intentionally skipped that technical detail since I thought it wasn’t too relevant in the context of this post.
UPDATE DATED 22 MARCH 2022:
It’s a little under two years since the above original post was published. As ET Prime predicted, there has been a shakedown in the sanitizer industry. And, as I predicted, Dr. Batra’s Non Alcoholic Hand Sanitizer has outlived the shakedown – it’s widely available online and in brick-and-mortar stores. But, sadly, we can’t say for sure that the virus is dead.