The Invisible Hand of Business Marketing- Travel Diary-1
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The invisible hand of business marketing: From the travel diary of a marketing profess or. On October 11, 2009, Dr. Gautam Kapur (G.K.) boarded Geetanjali express, a superfast train from Jamshedpur for Kolkata. Jamshedpur (Tatanagar) is the second last station ofGeetanjali Express, which runs between Mumbai and Kolkata. It takes 4 hours to reach Kolkata. He travelled in a rented car, which was Tata Motor’s Indica, from his home to the railway station. Unable to fi nd a bench under a fan at the platform, Gautam was luck y to find a place under a roof of corrugated steel sheets. A steel structure of beams and tubes was supporting the roof. Looking up at the dirty ceil ing, he could locate fans, tubelights wi res, steel tubes and so on. He could also spot the poorly maintained water taps from which only very poor passengers were willing to drink. The well to do had started drinking the branded bottled water. Even though beyond the reach of many, but Gautam visualized huge potential for bottled water at affordable prices for the masses. After having boarded his second air-conditioned coach, he observed, it had a new type ofsynthetic leather upholsteries on the berths. He recalled that nearly 25 years back, the first class air conditioned coaches of Indian Railways used to have pure leather upholsteries for the berths which now have been replaced by synthetic leather. Other components in the compartment were lights, fans, aluminium ducts for cold air, wash basins, taps, mirrors, glass windows, curtains, paint , backing of wood below the seats and so forth. Steel was used for the body of the coach, hea vy spr ing s, bra ke li nes , bea rin gs and severa l oth er pro duct s had bee n use d for various purposes. Some of these may have been bought outs and some made by railways in its factories. He noticed that Indian Railways have replaced lot of bathroom fittings of steel with plastics and aluminium. He wondered the time involved in this change. The picture of a huge office of Railways Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO) in Lucknow flashed in his mind. This huge monolith of Indian Railways is the watchdog to approve and develop standards for(each and every product that goes in to running of the entire Railways. The RDSO covers A to Z of whatever is used by the India n Railways like locomot ives, the rail tracks, signaling equipments, wagons coaches, catering services and many more areas. For each category of product and services, Railways would need thousands of parts, components, material and a multitude of services. Railway being a public entity is accountable to the Parliament and all types of civic bodies. The issue of safety being very important, Railways have to be very careful in approving its suppliers for various parts. This makes the entire process of adoption ofnew parts and substitutes very slowl. Gautam felt that Indian Railways, in-spite of the slow and long processes, seem to have several p roducts of sub-standard quality .Playing in his mind were the plastic fittings used in the bathrooms already broken within a few days. Gautam was aware that for any new supplier, it takes several years to get a breakthrough for the Railways business. But in spite of such efforts, the final outcome appears to be nowhere near the global standards. Is it due to lower standards of Indian Railways or is it lowest price obsession of government 1
The Invisible Hand of Business Marketing- Travel Diary-1
