Abhaya Gorkhalee started his corporate journey in 1994 as a marketing officer at Surya Nepal. Since then, he has worked at various companies including Gorkha Brewery, Standard Chartered Bank and Sujal Foods. Now Senior Manager—Marketing with Dabur Nepal Pvt Ltd, he is well versed with the pushes and pulls of the competitive marketplace and what brands need to do to get ahead. In this interview with the Post’s Alisha Sijapati, Gorkhalee shares his insights on brands and their saleability. Excerpts:

How important is the company’s brand for the saleability of its products in the market?

Our kind of business, at Dabur Nepal, is called fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). As a leading FMCG company in Nepal, our business has to take brands very seriously, because we sell brands not products. For instance, when customers visit a store to buy juice, they don’t ask for juice they ask for Real (juice) and it’s the same with our other products too—be it Dabur Chywanprash, Hajmola or Glucose. Businesses are based on trust. The ultimate goal of any organisation is to have its customer trust the consistent quality of its products and return time and again.

What are the keys to retaining a company’s brand value?

To retain the company’s brand value you need to consistently deliver on the brand promise. In this competitive world, one needs to delight consumers and exceed the consumers’ expectations through innovation. The market today is highly competitive; from global giants to local companies, the competition is getting tougher by the day. So, we have to consistently deliver on the promises made to the consumers. Consumers are very demanding and to keep meeting those demands. It could be through creating a new product or promotions—innovation can come in different forms. We, at Dabur Nepal, have a huge responsibility as a multi-national company and we try our best to make our consumers happy.

Once a brand loses its reputation, how hard is it to regain the trust of the customers?

Once you lose consumers trust, it is extremely difficult to regain that trust again. Forget about brands, it applies to all of us in all our lives. Once you lose the trust and confidence of people, it is tough to retain it again, and it’s the same with brand too. That is why many companies remodel their brand and come up with a whole new avatar to regain the trust and confidence of its customers. I am not saying it’s not possible but it will take a lot of time and effort to do it. A lot of hardwork is needed to regain lost confidence. However, hardwork always pays off at the end of the day. 

In the age of the internet, how important is branding your products online?

Digital is the future and you cannot ignore it any longer. The youth today are online most of the time, whether on their phones or their laptops. Everything is available online and the youth are more interested in the digital media rather than traditional media platforms. We are in such an era that nobody can ignore it anymore, even though digital media is so vast. Our company has just stepped into this world. However, we are concentrating on making it more structured and organised. We don’t want to get on board in just bits and pieces; we’d like to make a concrete strategy before divulging into the online world.

What advice do you have for young entrepreneurs looking to bring new products into the market?

You need to have thorough consumer insight. You need to know what your consumers want. Many people think that marketing is right pricing and promotion. I think marketing process starts way before developing the product. Before starting a new product, you need to understand if you can make it successful. If the product is already available in the market, you have to question how your product is going to be different than the existing brands. You cannot get into something half-heartedly; you need to have passion for what you do.