Pressure cooker different in south and north, says Anuj Poddar of Bajaj Electricals on scaling challenge

He noted that the diversity in consumer preferences extends beyond pressure cookers and mentioned even the ceiling fans, whose colour, speed were factors that consumers saw differently in different parts of India.

“Even the fan that will sell in south of India will not sell in north of India and vice-versa. Consumers have their strong preferences and behavioural tendencies and beyond the functional needs there are these diversities that exist,” he said.

This diversity in consumer behaviour poses a challenge for companies seeking to cater to a wide range of preferences while operating at scale, he said.

“I look at McDonalds product and then I look at the local restaurant Shiv Sagar which has such a long menu. How will Shiv Sagar ever become McDonalds? If I want to give everything to everybody, I will never build a company of scale. So we need to find a confluence between this need to personalise and yet operate at a scale at some kind of common homogenous platform or whatever we call it.”

A pause in interest rate hike and inflation could push up demand and spur spending among people in the next two quarters, hopes Poddar.

Citing his company’s strong Q4 results, Poddar said this had come against strong headwinds. Demand was not there and we had to really work hard for it.

He said that they discovered that the per capita GDP was not really a proper metric to gauge demand and found that median GDP was a better metric.

“The top 1% is consuming. The median is not looking so rosy. That’s where the challenge lies. Can we get the median up rather than the average? That’s when we unlock the demographic dividend,” he said.

Poddar then noted that the interest rate hikes in the past several months had hurt the common man’s pocket. Net disposable income has come down due to this.

In this regard, he said he wished for a status quo on the rate hikes and inflation. If done, this would improve demand and people could be seen spending in one or two quarters.