Nokia’s is the Indian Market’s Juggernaut – What are the lessons Gleaned?
Well, not just that, we could perhaps extrapolate Nokia’s Success stories by tracing whatever it did when it first came into the big league Indian market. Nokia today has about 58% market share and is one of the first companies to have focused entirely on mobile phones, infrastructure, Branding and distribution. While this bit is very much a known fact, what really caught my attention is the fact that Nokia did something very simple. It first tied-up with HCL in India, which already had a very extensive network formed for distributing its own products. Call it tagging along a big-wig. If you ride on the back of a superstar, you would be featured on the same hot cover story.
Then a thought struck my mind – Nokia is a mobile phone company. It is all about products. Well, what about services? What can a small business do to piggy back on a bigger and much more famous competitor? Does piggy-backing work exactly like the Nokia Story? If it cannot, why not?
I then thought, well, products can be distributed, services cannot be. Products are physical – Produced and then hauled off. Services have to be produced by someone who is competent in doing so and it is usually consumed immediately, so where is the question of distribution?
If there is no distribution, how should a company in the services sector, rise to Nokia’s fame? Innovate? Putting customers first? Just what works?
Would mere aping of some successful companies rendering services help? How could it do the trick? The services rendered aren’t the same, are they? It should be different with different classes of services, in different countries, in different markets.
Service- based companies deal with people. People need to feel important, feel loved, feel respected, feel the feel. So perhaps that’s why, customer service is such an important thing here. The companies ought to master this first. Innovate and think of better services next. Or perhaps, play the juggling act and manage both. Maybe having processes in place might help. A clear strategy and focus should do well too.
products or services, planning to take it up there is certainly important. Think about it.
