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Rule No 1 in any expat survival guide is: "Learn the language and local culture". By that yardstick, Stefano Pelle, vice-president and chief operating officer of the Perfetti Van Melle Group, isn't your everyday expat manager. First, he has been in and out of India for 15 years now but has picked up only a handful of Hindi words - the regulation "namaste" and "dhanyavaad" among them. That too, after being married to an Indian for seven years. Worse for me, he shares nothing of the average Indian's passion for food, writes Alokananda Chakraborty.
But don't be fooled - food and foreign language may not be his strong points, but this guy cracks new markets for a living, which means constantly working through the financial and emotional ups and downs of a peripatetic career. When Perfetti came to India in 1998, it was a brand no one knew or cared about. In any case, confectionery was a low-on-technology, low-involvement category in which consumer promiscuity was (and remains) a big problem. The job was harder for Pelle, then overseeing Perfetti's India operations, because he had to take on numerous low-priced local competitors, on the one hand, and some highly aggressive multinationals, on the other.
Despite the odds, it took him five years - and, admittedly, some mistakes - to put Perfetti Van Melle firmly at the top of the Rs 3,500-crore confectionery market in India.
With a track record like that, I was really looking forward to the meeting - until I get this call from his office the day before. A slightly harried voice on the other end says: "I'm sorry, but Mr Pelle will probably not have a 'proper' lunch." Because? "Lunch would be too hectic." He already has a lot on his plate between meeting local managers to get a sense of what's happening in the Indian confectionery market and attending press meets in different cities to mark the launch of his second book, When Not in Rome, Don't Do as the Romans Do. So, could we "pleeease" meet somewhere between Gurgaon (Pelle's office) and ITO, Delhi (mine)? Say at Vasant Continental? Unimaginative, I mutter under my breath, but decide to be a good journalist and arrive well ahead of schedule.
As we settle down at our table at Eggspectation - the Canadian chain restaurant that serves as the hotel's coffee shop - I realise Pelle is accompanied by two public relations people. Thank God, we weren't doing a "proper" lunch! I wasn't sure my credit card had enough balance on it to carry the five of us through - Business Standard photographer Dalip Kumar included.
Pelle, who was based in New Delhi for close to eight years as managing director of Perfetti's India business and now operates from Dubai, takes seconds to choose his lunch: tomato soup and nothing else. The soup would be enough to keep him going for the next few hours, he says. And guess what, we can concentrate on the conversation, he adds brightly.
By this time I am reconciled to the fact that it was going to be soup for me, as well. It was only polite.
But that's as far as my manners went. I open the conversation by telling him I found the title of his book… umm… well… "cheesy". Why call it "When Not in Rome, Don't Do as the Romans Do", and not "When in Rome, Do as the Romans Do"? Isn't it the flip side of the same coin? No, there is a difference, he is emphatic. "'When in Rome…' upholds the virtue of adaptation, whereas 'When not in Rome…' talks about the things you need to unlearn as an expat manager. Every marketer knows the strategies that work in one market, may not work equally well in another. But when it's time to get down and dirty, we all make the same mistakes," he says. In other words, to be successful, one must unlearn some lessons and learn new ones at every given opportunity.
My next question is obvious: what were Perfetti's early mistakes in India and what did he learn from them? Unfazed, he says the first mistake was to get the entire marketing mix wrong. That's quite an admission! The company entered India with chewing gum because the category was not developed at all. There were candies, but they were of low quality and sold as commodities. So, there was a big opportunity. But the whole marketing strategy, he says, was centred on standardising products and communication. The format initially produced and marketed was similar to those used in Italy, the home country, namely stick packs of five pieces - both for Big Babol, a bubble gum, and Center fresh, a liquid-filled chewing gum. These packs were sold in display boxes of 24 pieces at a consumer price of Rs 7 each (that is, Rs 168 for a display box). That was way above the prevailing prices in the market: local gum was sold at 50 paise per piece or Rs 1 for the "premium" ones, and they were sold in mono packs. "We also overlooked the fact that India is a hot and humid country, and the gum melted and the liquid leaked out. There were all sorts of problems," he admits. Add to that the advertising was completely out of sync: Perfetti was dubbing Italian ads in English for India.
Pelle and his team moved quickly - changing the formulation to create a tropical recipe that would withstand the local climate, bringing down prices and introducing single-piece packs. Over time, the company changed its communication to include stars from Bollywood. The clincher was associating with cricket.
Pelle makes it all seem easy when it couldn't have been, I point out. "As I said, we all make mistakes but companies that are smart pick up the signals early and make amends without delay. That's why we are No 1. We completely have our fingers on the pulse of a market," he replies. "Mind you, this was not a new formula; this is what an average No 1 does or would do," he adds, as if to clear the air.
Pelle's eat-or-be-eaten management style got its start at when he worked as the head of marketing at Iberia Airlines in the early nineties. Next, he worked as director of sales and marketing at Italian Railways, before joining Perfetti, the third-largest sugar confectionery group in the world in 1998. With a marketing career that spans more than 25 years, Pelle had plenty of insights about working in India - tips that cover how to negotiate traffic in the country, how to deal with street food and the danger and wisdom of unsolicited feedback that Indians excel at offering.
Not that he minds all the chaos and the frenzy; in fact, he finds a lot of similarities between the chaotic ways of Indians and Italians. Then there are things that really bother him about these two sets of people. "You see, like Indians, we are really bad at marketing. India has such rich culture and heritage - just like Italy. One would have thought India would be the ultimate tourist destination, but just look at what you have done. Now, look at Dubai, the city that rose from the desert sands is now a glittering monument to Arab enterprise. It's all about marketing in the end," he sums up.
It all adds up really. "When not in Rome, don't apply the rules of Rome. At every stage, in every country, you'll have to figure out what is that one thing that makes the best connect. That's how we won in India," he says, as he spoons up the last of his soup in readiness for his next appointment.
