 "<b>40 Years Ago... And Now:</b> Adapting to a new environment")
The 1970s were a watershed period in the history of Dabur. After nearly a century of Dabur's birth in the bylanes of Calcutta (now Kolkata), the Burman family decided to shift base to Delhi. It was a difficult decision and we had to start all over again.
What went in our favour was the fact that we knew what our consumers wanted. Also, our products and brands were popular household names. So we hit the ground running. The early 1970s saw the family moving to Delhi and starting out from a rented shed in Faridabad, on the outskirts of Delhi. We established our new manufacturing facility in Sahibabad, Ghaziabad, and soon, we were back on track.
This was also the time when the world of advertising was seeing a period of great revolution. The professional ad agencies had come into being a few decades earlier and new avenues of advertising were opening up. Cinema advertising had just taken wings and bigger changes were coming around in the industry as televisions had started populating households.
Birth of a new medium
The 1970s saw a media boom in India with the emergence of Doordarshan as a household name and the birth of a number of special magazines targeting women and families. Rural India too saw the advent of a number of vernacular publications. So, it was time for us to reinvent ourselves and, more importantly, reconfigure the way we reached out and spoke to our consumers.
Television had begun invading Indian households. It was that magic box that enthralled one and all. The viewing time was limited to a few hours in the morning and in the evening.
Dabur was one of the first companies to look at television as a medium for advertising its products. Special commercials were created for television, some of them running for close to two minutes, a first in the history of Indian advertising. In those years, we spent a lot of time discussing concepts with advertising professionals and creating storylines that would appeal to all segments of the society. Some of the advertisements that Dabur created are still etched in the consumer's memory till date.
The popular 'Masterjee' commercial for Dabur Lal Dant Manjan was a runaway hit. This was followed by the 'Hajmola Sir', the popular Dabur Chyawanprash ad featuring senior actor Shriram Lagoo and a series of commercials for Dabur Amla Hair Oil with its popular jingle Ghane Mulayam Kaale Baal; Khule Khule Matwale Baal. In those years, people not only consumed every bit of the programme that was being aired but even the few commercials that aired between two programmes.
While we had captured the consumer's eyeballs with our catchy commercials, we also invested heavily in expanding our distribution footprint across the nation and in reaching out to our consumers. The rural haat and mela was one such opportunity that we used to connect better with people. The fact that most of these haats and melas were post-harvest events meant that people had more disposable cash in their pockets. We started setting up special stalls for Dabur at the Kumbh Mela, Sonepur Mela and the dozens of other haats across the country.
A host of other advertising firsts were introduced by Dabur during these years - product sampling with newspaper ads where consumers could exchange a Dabur advertisement cutout for a product, and advertising on gramophone records. Dabur was also one of the first companies to advertise on satellite television when it reached Indian homes in the early 1990s.
The next big leap
The next big turning point for Dabur came in the late nineties when we, the promoter family, decided to divorce ownership from management. While the family had been successfully steering the company all these years, we realised that if we wanted to put Dabur in the big league, the Burman family needed to take a backseat and have an experienced professional management team to lead the company.
In 1998, the Burman family handed over management of the company to a professional CEO and limited its role to strategic inputs at the board level. The decision was taken in response to the changing business environment and to inculcate a spirit of corporate governance within Dabur India. It was a tough decision to take, but it was in the long-term interest of the company. We believe that the family has a trusteeship role to play both in terms of perpetuating the family business and in preserving and growing the business. For Dabur, the family and the business are institutions to preserve.
When I look back today, I feel it was a timely decision and a good one. Since the professionalisation of Dabur, we have seen the company's revenue grow from just over Rs 800 crore in 1997-98 to cross Rs 7,000 crore in 2013-14. Our market capitalisation, which used to be under Rs 1,000 crore in those years, crossed Rs 31,000 crore in 2013-14.
Dabur is today ranked among the top five FMCG companies in India and its products are sold in over 100 countries across the globe. Did you know that 2.5 crore Hajmola tablets are consumed every day in the country, that the number of consumers of Dabur Amla Hair Oil exceeds the population of Italy and the amount of Dabur Chyawanprash consumed every year equals the weight of three Eiffel Towers? These are just a few of the many milestones in the history of Dabur, and many more will follow in the years to come.
Vivek C Burman
Chairman Emeritus, Dabur India
What went in our favour was the fact that we knew what our consumers wanted. Also, our products and brands were popular household names. So we hit the ground running. The early 1970s saw the family moving to Delhi and starting out from a rented shed in Faridabad, on the outskirts of Delhi. We established our new manufacturing facility in Sahibabad, Ghaziabad, and soon, we were back on track.
This was also the time when the world of advertising was seeing a period of great revolution. The professional ad agencies had come into being a few decades earlier and new avenues of advertising were opening up. Cinema advertising had just taken wings and bigger changes were coming around in the industry as televisions had started populating households.
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Dabur was always seen as a thought leader in the advertising industry. In the late 1800s when there were no known avenues of advertising, Dabur came up with the concept of direct mailers and started sending postcards about its various ayurvedic medicines to consumers. In the early 1900s, as we forayed into personal care products with the launch of Dabur Amla Hair Oil, we explored newer avenues for advertising that were opening up in the market. This period saw Dabur acquiring a small aircraft, the belly of which was painted with the word 'Dabur'. This aircraft was used to drop product pamphlets over Mumbai and Jaipur. It was the biggest attraction in those days with special ads coming out in newspapers announcing this event and people thronging the venues to watch this advertising saga unfold. We also introduced the concept of wall painting in villages and used it to spread word about our products and medicines.
Birth of a new medium
The 1970s saw a media boom in India with the emergence of Doordarshan as a household name and the birth of a number of special magazines targeting women and families. Rural India too saw the advent of a number of vernacular publications. So, it was time for us to reinvent ourselves and, more importantly, reconfigure the way we reached out and spoke to our consumers.
Television had begun invading Indian households. It was that magic box that enthralled one and all. The viewing time was limited to a few hours in the morning and in the evening.
Dabur was one of the first companies to look at television as a medium for advertising its products. Special commercials were created for television, some of them running for close to two minutes, a first in the history of Indian advertising. In those years, we spent a lot of time discussing concepts with advertising professionals and creating storylines that would appeal to all segments of the society. Some of the advertisements that Dabur created are still etched in the consumer's memory till date.
The popular 'Masterjee' commercial for Dabur Lal Dant Manjan was a runaway hit. This was followed by the 'Hajmola Sir', the popular Dabur Chyawanprash ad featuring senior actor Shriram Lagoo and a series of commercials for Dabur Amla Hair Oil with its popular jingle Ghane Mulayam Kaale Baal; Khule Khule Matwale Baal. In those years, people not only consumed every bit of the programme that was being aired but even the few commercials that aired between two programmes.
While we had captured the consumer's eyeballs with our catchy commercials, we also invested heavily in expanding our distribution footprint across the nation and in reaching out to our consumers. The rural haat and mela was one such opportunity that we used to connect better with people. The fact that most of these haats and melas were post-harvest events meant that people had more disposable cash in their pockets. We started setting up special stalls for Dabur at the Kumbh Mela, Sonepur Mela and the dozens of other haats across the country.
A host of other advertising firsts were introduced by Dabur during these years - product sampling with newspaper ads where consumers could exchange a Dabur advertisement cutout for a product, and advertising on gramophone records. Dabur was also one of the first companies to advertise on satellite television when it reached Indian homes in the early 1990s.
The next big leap
The next big turning point for Dabur came in the late nineties when we, the promoter family, decided to divorce ownership from management. While the family had been successfully steering the company all these years, we realised that if we wanted to put Dabur in the big league, the Burman family needed to take a backseat and have an experienced professional management team to lead the company.
In 1998, the Burman family handed over management of the company to a professional CEO and limited its role to strategic inputs at the board level. The decision was taken in response to the changing business environment and to inculcate a spirit of corporate governance within Dabur India. It was a tough decision to take, but it was in the long-term interest of the company. We believe that the family has a trusteeship role to play both in terms of perpetuating the family business and in preserving and growing the business. For Dabur, the family and the business are institutions to preserve.
When I look back today, I feel it was a timely decision and a good one. Since the professionalisation of Dabur, we have seen the company's revenue grow from just over Rs 800 crore in 1997-98 to cross Rs 7,000 crore in 2013-14. Our market capitalisation, which used to be under Rs 1,000 crore in those years, crossed Rs 31,000 crore in 2013-14.
Dabur is today ranked among the top five FMCG companies in India and its products are sold in over 100 countries across the globe. Did you know that 2.5 crore Hajmola tablets are consumed every day in the country, that the number of consumers of Dabur Amla Hair Oil exceeds the population of Italy and the amount of Dabur Chyawanprash consumed every year equals the weight of three Eiffel Towers? These are just a few of the many milestones in the history of Dabur, and many more will follow in the years to come.
Vivek C Burman
Chairman Emeritus, Dabur India