We have managed the TVS brand much better than we were able to do earlier.

Call it coincidence or the result of a well-planned investment in talent, the fact is that ever since Harish Krishnamachar joined TVS Motor Company Ltd as vice-president - marketing, things have been looking up for the Rs 2,800-crore company. Its flagship motorcycle brand Victor has surpassed all estimations to emerge as a major success story in Indian biking. And the company has been able to shake off some of the perception problems that have dogged it since the very beginning. Krishnamachar, of course, dismisses credit attributed to him with a wave of the hand and an easy laugh. An ex-agency professional (with longish stints at Mudra and Lowe), Krishnamachar speaks to agencyfaqs! about the success of Victor, the new assertiveness at TVS and the myth about TVS being just a 'strong South-Indian brand'…

Edited Excerpts

Like in everything else, there are pluses and minuses, and we need to be careful about what we take out and what we use. I believe the best expression I have heard - and it easily applies to the two phases in this company, as they are interchangeable, in a sense - is that there was a time when we had a certain set of constraints, but we also had a certain security. There was somebody else to carry the decisions in the truest sense. Today, we are a lot more responsible for our actions because there is nobody else to take a call. But it also gives us a lot more flexibility to determine the course and direction we want to set for ourselves, as a company, and as a brand.

I think that is the important distinction. You turn around and say, look we had a certain set of securities and a certain set of learnings, but we also had a certain set of constraints. It is not as if we do not have constrains now - we have a different set of those now. However, we have greater freedom and a much greater responsibility in the market. I think that is really the characteristic of how the company has changed. Whatever else we might say, the fact is you cannot manage two brands (in terms of the entity). You can manage one because you are clear what direction you want to set for it. Even in a situation where two brands coexist, you can manage only one, and that's the truth! Today, I think we have managed the TVS brand much better than we were able to do earlier. Okay, maybe even if I do not use the word 'better', at least it would be right to say that we have 'managed' the brand TVS.

We live in competitive times. We need to ensure that we not only survive, but also survive and gain share. First, we had to be competitive, and second, find ways to be that. We believed that the imperative for us was to establish a 'product brand' before going all the way to describe the mother brand TVS. I think that paved the way for creating a strong product brand at every level, and we ended up strengthening all our brands - Scooty, Max… Then we were able to chart our course ahead.

With hindsight, I genuinely believe we made the right decision to back Victor. We decided to back the market (the 100-cc segment) which, we thought, had the bigger size and capacity for growth. We went after what most marketers describe as 'the belly of the market'. And we also believed that since we had the superior product, it would deliver a sizeable chunk of that belly. There was no way we could have imagined that the volumes we have garnered with Victor could have been garnered in any other segment. That really was the basis on which we deployed our resources, our focus, everything that the company did.

Every company aspires to create something original and successful, and some may even have the luxury of using a design developed by somebody else. But if we wanted to be a national player in the two-wheeler industry, we had to create a product from scratch that could fulfill our ambition. The Victor has outdone our expectations. It accounts for 12 per cent of the total motorcycle market. After Splendor, it is the second-largest bike brand. It is a remarkable achievement.

(Laughs.) No, I think the company decided to shift gears before I joined, and it decided that it needed certain resources to do this. I was part of that set of resources it needed to achieve its goal. I think that's the truth. It is not because I came in that the company started moving in a certain way. In fact, it would be absurd to think that it happened because I joined.

I think this is a seasonal issue, nothing that a good monsoon or a buoyant sense in the economy cannot set right. Besides, it's something that has affected the entire industry. However, the fact remains that two-wheelers will outperform the toplines of most other businesses. That it might not live up to its rather fantastic growth rate is a reality we have to accept.

Last year, the industry grew by 25 per cent of thereabouts. This year, I don't expect it to be over 15 per cent. Even that is fantastic, if you ask me, though 'guesstimates' vary in the industry. But at the same time, I would hesitate to say that the industry has reached a certain stage of maturity. I believe that the industry still has a long way to go, as the per-capita-usage of vehicles still has a lot of room to grow. Penetration in certain parts of the country is fairly low, so there are a lot of areas that still offer scope for growth. As long as infrastructure remains what it is, two-wheelers will remain the most preferred mode of transport for the people of this country.

I am not particularly comfortable talking about variants in the future, as that is part of competitive strategy. It is sufficient to say that variants have become a necessity and are no longer a luxury. For anybody to remain competitive and keep the vision, variants will become imperative.

Every brand has a blueprint that one works with. We want certain brands to adopt a tone and a manner in the consumer's mind. Again, there are brands that have certain benefits and values that they offer. I think the driving force behind brands need not necessarily be cubic capacity alone… It is what values and benefits you are able to offer consumers.

I don't want to get into a situation where I say this brand will only be of such-and-such cubic capacity. I think what a brand offers to a consumer needs to be constant, relevant and fresh. If variants can do that, good. In other words, product configuration should not dictate what a brand offers. We believe that the Victor is bang in middle of the commuting market. In Fiero's case, we are leading up to a re-launch of the bike in three weeks time.

I don't think there was anything wrong with the Fiero. There was just too much activity in the market. Fiero started being perceived as a product that had outlived its relevance for that particular consumer. And it was more because of what the category did, rather than a function of what we did not. It became a scenario where we had a product brand that had a certain relevance at the time it was launched, and then the market for premium bikes became so active, it became imperative for us re-launch it. After the CBZ, the Fiero was the second to launch in the category, and together the two brands ruled the roost for a year-and-half before anyone even thought of getting into the business in a serious way.

Sure, but then look at what happened to both the brands. Okay, I will not talk about a brand that is not ours… But we had to worry about continued relevance, which brings me back to what I said earlier - that variants are an imperative, not a luxury. Also, at that time, we needed to deliver to the belly of the market rather than elsewhere. We are now turning around to re-haul another segment - scooterettes.

We are clearly leaders in that segment. I think it is important to change the benchmark, to re-asses it and raise it higher. Every time we look at the Scooty, we realize that what we offer to that particular consumer - who is really in the market for a very transient period - is a better standard. We have the right size, the right weight, and what's more, the latest technology. We have now upgraded it to being a four-stroke product. We have been quiet on this front because this market is not pan-Indian in nature. It has certain markets that are better disposed to it than others. For example, we are very vocal/visible in this segment in the western markets, rather than say, in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar.

We are re-looking at the entire portfolio. Take Max, which, until now, has done well. It has been one of the earliest definers of 'rugged, maintenance-free bikes' in more ways than one in semi-urban and rural areas. We'd like to extend Max's 'utility' proposition further, across territories, and make it more of a pan-Indian brand. We are also looking at mopeds where we have 80 per cent share. In fact, another decision has been that all our future offerings and investments will be in the area of four-stroke products.

(Smiles.) I'll give you numbers. Over 60 per cent of scooterette sales of TVS Motor comes from outside 'South India'. Over 60 per cent of our motorcycle sales comes from outside of 'South India'. Yes, over 80 per cent of our moped sales comes from the southern parts of India. That's the reality in the face of the myth that we are strong only in this part of the country. Besides, the Victor contributes to 30 per cent of our sales. So, obviously, mopeds - where we actually dominate in the south - cannot be the only defining factor for our identity. Every motorcycle market is our strong market. This has happened over the last three years, and this has been done not only by the Victor, but also with the help of Max.

Sachin is the brand ambassador for the TVS Group, and we will continue to rely on him whenever we feel it will help us. Besides, the ad for the Victor with Sachin was effective. Will it win awards? The answer is, I do not know, nor do I care. It has effectively helped us bridge the perception problem we faced earlier, and made the Victor cut across boundaries. It made consumers from all over relate to the brand. Sachin has that ability, he is a symbol that cuts across languages, regions…all sorts of barriers in the country. Sachin has helped in making our brand highly visible in regions where we were not known earlier.

Big change? No, let me set the record straight. We were a company that had a set of brands that were not necessarily active. Therefore, we allocated the brands to the agencies that worked with us at that time - Saatchi (& Saatchi) and McCann-Erickson. As business and opportunities grew, we needed incremental resources on the agency front. And it just so happened that we moved one brand (Fiero) from Saatchi to Orchard. It was a question of getting extra creative capacity on board to devote fresh energy on a brand. As far as the media AOR is concerned, we had a very good tenure with Universal McCann, and when the two-year contract ended, we wanted to re-evaluate and check if our bearings were right in the marketplace.

Difficult to say but let me put it this way. If the industry were to grow by 15 per cent, I think we would be less than aggressive if we settled for less than the market growth. We have to beat the market growth rate, whatever it grows by.