Desi Design Thinking -02
Yesterday under the topic “Desi Design Thinking” I was giving an example from an oil and gas industry… Today I am going to share another interesting story of Desi Design Thinking from the oil industry… Actually this time, the story is not the petroleum oil industry, but an edible oil industry.
This interesting case study on innovation is from Marico industry, the consumer products division Bombay Oil Industries. Marico was selling Parachute coconut oil in 1971, with low margins. Parachute was sold primarily in bulk, in tins of 15 litres to wholesalers. As oil was having nice aroma and the quality was better than other brands, the wholesalers were happy with the product . They started selling the oil in smaller packs.
Seeing the potential of the market Marico started appointing distributors and gave them retail packs to sell the Parachute oil. All these retail packs were metal tin containers. Business was ok. Now Marico wanted to uniquely position their product and wanted to bring in some kind of differentiation. Instead of tin containers, they started packaging the product in plastic bottles. The plastic containers were much cheaper and looked more attractive on the shelves.
After launching the new package. Marico did a market survey and the feedback from the traders was really shocking. Any guess? You would be surprised to know the reason, why the traders were not happy… The reason was rats… Yes’ Rats love coconut oil . After smelling the nice aroma of the coconut oil, rats in the shops started biting the plastic bottles… Oil started oozing from the bottles… The shops became a big mess and their other commodities also got damaged.
Harsh Mariwala the founder knew the market potential of his product and hence did not want to give up. He hired Mr. Bindumadhavan, a professional working at Ranbaxy to solve the issue. Bindumadhavan and his team did a deep dive to understand the problem. They found that the problem was with the design of the bottle… The cross section of the bottle was in square shape. That made the rats to get a good grip of the bottles and started biting them.
So the team decided to change the shape of the bottle. They made the bottle made the shape into a simple cylindrical, round shaped one. The bottles were also made from high quality plastic.
They thought that because of the shape of the bottle. the rats would not be able to get a grip on the bottles, and therefore, would not be able to sink their teeth into the plastic. They sent the consignment to the traders and assured them that they are leak-proof. But the traders were apprehensive and were not willing to stock the coconut bottles. They did not want to take any risk. They said a big NO.
Marico industry was in a fix. They pondered over the problem for quite some time and finally thought of an idea. They put eight to ten bottles of parachute oil in a cage with along with some rats. They left the cage locked for two days. After two days, the result was great. As expected nothing happened to the newly designed bottles. The entire experiment was recorded on camera. The clippings were shared with the traders. Now the trust level of the traders went up. They were ready to accept the new consignment. Slowly the news was shared among the traders and the Parachute coconut oil bottles started occupying their shelves. Within few years the brand became a market leader.
In this case study, Marico industry was bothered about their sales. But they were also empathizing with their sellers. Then they quickly came out with an innovation. When the first version failed, immediately they immediately resolved with another innovative idea. Is it not a classic case study of design thinking and innovation?
Hope you liked this design design thinking case study… Let me share some more aspects of design thinking in the next episode… Please keep watching sharing your feedback. Bye!
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