 Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of E4M Pride of India Brand Series, a unique effort to celebrate the efforts and achievements of homegrown brands. I am Mansi Sharma, and in today's episode, we have Mr. Manos Nicholas with us, who is the general manager for Big Cello India. Started in 1995 for manufacturing and marketing of wide range of classic ballpoint pens with important tips and German inks, Cello remained one of the market leaders in the category for the longest time. It was in 2015 that it was acquired by French stationery major BIC, and today it offers a host of innovative stationary products and is loved by millions of Indians. Today, Manos will take us through the brand journey, the role of marketing, creating the brand Cello, and the way ahead. Welcome, Manos. Thank you very much for the introduction. It's a pleasure having you for today. Great. So then let's just start and let's start with understanding the journey of brand BIC Cello, how it came into being, and how is it, you know, leading the market as it is working right now? Yep. Basically, as you correctly mentioned, in 1995, Cello was launched because it was introduced in the market of India. The team at that time had done a tremendous job, a very good job in distributing a qualitative product that has reached the heads of many consumers. And our company, we have always been looking for a distance in India, and we were following up in this report closely. And we were impressed with the level of professionalism at the job that the founders of the company have done. That came into the first meeting with the previous ownership in 2008, 2007, 2009, somewhere there. And we started discussing and trying to find ways of collaboration partnership that ended up into the acquisition in December 2023. And since then, we took over the business and we have protected and we have invested into the inherited brand because it is a beautiful brand that has been built over the years. It is enjoying the great brand awareness. If I'm not mistaken, close to 90% of native brand awareness and about 50% of recommendation by retailers for purchasing the brand, which are very, very amazing achievements that have been done. And we wanted to honor this heritage and of course, to take it to the next level and to the next generation of where we envision the product and the brand to go. So that is a short note of the story of how everything started and where we are today. That's great. That's consistent when you have acquired the brand and till now. How have you seen the market progression in the category and how have you maintained that position that you had created for yourself? Yeah, basically the interesting thing we see with the stationary category, as you may know, is that it's very linked with the application. And the important part that we have seen and we have noticed in the market of India is that the education play is a very cool control in the society. But also the government is helping and envisions and is investing in education. And first of all, that is very encouraging to see. We are very happy to see that there are governments that have as a high priority to the education and the growth of its people. And this focus that the government is putting on education, it has a positive impact in the industry of the stationary products. So the evolution of the category is positive. The long term is there. The opportunities and the potential for growth is sitting in good hands. We have meetups, as we all know with the pandemic, that they may have stopped a little bit the pace of development and growth. However, we should see that not as a major threat because it's always short-sighted, short-term, one year, two years, three years of challenge. And then what we need to look at is where things will be in 10 years, 15 years. And the important thing is that we see that it is recovering. And the good also thing is that we see that major players in the industry are investing behind the phone. So they are investing in the quality and they are increasing the quality and the level of everybody because everybody is trying to reach the other person and the other company and the other company and that is healthy because it can only bring good news to the industry. And in the end of the day for the consumer. That's great. And a positive outlook towards the business and how the industry is shaping up right now. Another thing that I feel that for brands in your categories, the digitalization of the world might have come up as an unexpected challenge, especially in the past few years. So how is the category and how is the brand reinventing itself to fit into this new digital world? The most of the things I've transferred online, so is writing, so is painting, and so is everything that Big has to offer. I have been asked several times about whether there is effect of the long term in writing instruments. And to my personal view, and there is no studies that we have done, the pen will always stay. You will always keep writing. First of all, when you start your basic education, you don't start your basic education with a laptop or the computer all the time. You start your education with a pen in the hand. You have to learn how to write. Absolutely. We can see that with the example of the calculators. Everybody who has, you know, with a lot of calculators, then you will forget how to make additions and subtractions and multiplication and divisions and all this thing. No, you keep on learning this, but then the calculator makes sure your life easier and makes it faster. However, the knowledge has been there. Second very important part is you will always have the need to express yourself. Whether you need to write an essay, whether you need to write a poem, whether you want to draw, whether you want to write a quick note, a quick telephone number of somebody, something not to forget, even writing in your own hand something to remember after a long hour. This will always stay. So the future of the pen, the future of writing is going to be there. It might check out, but there is no fact that it will disappear. Yes, it will have other use just which I am not in a position to tell you how it's going to be in the future. However, you will keep writing. You will still be needing to try to express yourself and also to keep your notes. There are even people, as you may know, that the learning process is different between the individuals. There are people that they need to write in order to learn. Others, they have the photographic memory. Others that they don't keep notes and they remember everything. Everybody has his own thing. So the pen, the notebook will always stay. It will have their role. The question is how it's going to work. And to the first part of your question with regards to digitalization and how the world is evolving, especially over the past year when we saw the booming of the eco. This is not new news. The changes that we see, the fact that we are today in Zoom and we are having a chat and we are not having a couple of courses together like you know in our office and chatting, is what's going to come. There are no anymore borders across the globe. The technology has helped to bring people closer. What has happened with the pandemic is that it has accelerated the pace of reaching where we are today. Otherwise, we would be the position where we are today, maybe two years or four years. So what the pandemic brought was an acceleration of usage of the technology and reaching there. And the eco-business. The eco-business was gonna go where it is today and maybe grow even further. It's just that it has accelerated. So there are evolutions in the trade. There are changes. The key question is every organization, how agile they are, how they have foreseen these changes and how well prepared they were with plans, plan A, plan B, plan C in order to adapt themselves to these kinds of evolutions. Any such situation? How important do you think is the role of marketing the product right? For a category like 10, not many people, especially when their students are aware about the brands they are available. When I was a student, what I used to do was go to the shop and try 10 different trends, writing them in there on the paper and saying, which feels more comfortable and which feels more okay in my hand and which is giving me a better handwriting. So in that case, to build a brand name and to stay on top of the mind, how important is the role of marketing and how is Big Selow going towards it? What's your approach to marketing? Marketing is essential. And the role of marketing is especially to products that they could be either considered seasonal or like the station products or commodities. Yeah. What is the role? How can I differentiate the other? Yeah. So that's a very important part and everything starts with a position. You said that you were trying to yourself to bet the features of the position. So what that we need to do in our strategy is basically to make sure that our pages are such a pudding or actually say features that meet the needs of our consumers. And consumers are different. Therefore, that's why you need to have the trend of what is an option. So they can choose what suits them best. Others, they like to run with a very fine point. Others, they prefer to write with a medium point. Others, they prefer yellow pens or ink. So everybody has its own preferences. So the first task is to be in a position to offer the alternative. The second task is also to position yourself. What do you want consumers to think when they see your brand, whatever it is. So what are you doing behind this in order to create that affiliation of the brand with something? No. In our case, the first thing that we want to try to achieve is to have lower weight and dependency on specific product segments. We are trying to diversify our offering and we have a role to play in different segments. Whether these segments or product segments call coloring, whether they call bold pens, whether they call mechanical pen sales, whether they call markers, whether they call gel pens, whether they call the roller pen. So we would like to be in a position to offer an option to our consumers that covers all the different things. The second part is that you and I may have different job encounters. You go, you take the pen and try. Yeah. Maybe my company, I don't care. I just want to click and convenient. I want to click my mobile, you know, the button and the font size goes back home from where I have the file sales sent by the e-coin platform with my order. So it is very important that we are also present in multi-channels. We want to share the general view. It is important, it's the biggest portion of the business play, but at the same time, we want to be seen by consumers in the modern way. We want to be seen in the e-coin. We want to be seen in the business and in the institute. So the strategy that marketing is playing for us in the positioning is that, first, we can offer something for everyone, different products, and you can find it everywhere, wherever it is possible to buy it at. Yeah. Whether it's for the stationary traditional trade or a modern trade or any form or in your business. So that is the strategy that we are building up. That's great. And in terms of communication, you know, a few months ago, I also did one story that how stationary brands, which were very heavy on television once in India, have slowly started moving more towards digital marketing and on-ground marketing. How has been it for your brand? And how do you see the usage of television and digital and other mediums in marketing? The marketing makes the communication makes my view to be a whole piece to your target list. You need to understand what you're trying to sell. What is the profile of your customers? And then based on that, you are building your campaigns accordingly. You cannot exclude one, let's say, particular media methodology, for example, the traditional media, which is TVCs or it is still born outdoors or whatever, or exclude or include print, newspapers, magazines, or because it is timely, let's go and put all our budgets in the digital. What you need to know here is you know your positioning of your product, and then you build the communication campaign based on who is my target group and the content. Yeah. For example, you said that I would like to see what is possible when I'm writing. So the question is, OK, which product it is very good for monthly? And this is it, because it has these features that it's a joy of writing. So I will be communicating and see the emotion of being it's joyful when you are using my phone. Somebody might think which lasts for long. My communication would be maybe less emotional, but touching the heart, but more, there is an engineer. So I would take more on the features of the product. So the community content should be aligned with the positioning of the product, but also with the target group. And then you should be also analyzing. So Mansi, when is she spending most of her time and how are you going to do it? Where are the other things in the phone? A lot of TV shows and whatever. Do you have these links in order to come with your communication strategy? So what sort of mediums and what sort of strategies are you deploying right now, especially for the ongoing fiscal? Like what sort of mediums are you planning to be present on? What's the tone and tenure of your communication that you are planning to have on board to have to get maximum eyeballs and maximum consumers on board? And second part of this question would be, as you said, that you want to be present on e-commerce platforms and be visible there. So what is that effective strategy to be on e-commerce sites and be visible, maybe be in the top 10 products that people are looking for when they are searching for stationary products? Sure. Let me start with your second portion. We have developed specific tools, which we are currently very closely internally. There are a number of elements that are critical in order for you to be successful in any company. First of all, research. You need to make sure that when somebody is trying to find a product and searching in the search engines, they can find you, and they can find you quick. So there are strategies behind it in order to make sure that you are seeing when somebody is searching. So search is an important factor that we look at it and we try to build on it. The second element on it is the price. You need to be careful how your price position in your product versus competition, but also versus the other segments that are similar for that can be built in order to create a cross-channel business. The third part that you should be looking at is what kind of products you believe that you have in your portfolio that matches and fits the ecosystem. Then you need to look at rating. You need to look on how consumers can rate your product, which means because now it becomes as you go to any of the platforms that are coming and there are ratings and their opinion, whether they're five-star products, three-star products, whatever you see, the averages and whatever comments are being said. So the references, ratings is very important to do follow up in order to see whether you don't have a suitable product for that channel to replace it. And in case you have a product which is suitable for that channel, do very best on it and move it to make it bigger. And the last one that you need to have with this content, it is a golden opportunity in the e-con to build a content behind your product, maybe to show your picture, maybe on a video, maybe to show a picture, maybe whatever you feel that it is important that can add and help you when it comes into the content of what you're trying to communicate with consumers. Coming back to your first question, we always wanted, we are globally as an organization, very close and very good presentation. We had a vision that by 2025, we would have reached that, we had improved the 250 million children in education conditions. We are audited by that from external auditors on the actions that we are doing over the past three years on how we can improve the learning conditions of children through different means. And education for us, it is a very important element and our strategies and communication strategies to come back to your question is linked to education. We are taking initiatives. We are helping that also with our corporate social responsibilities actions that an NGO and an organization will ensure that the education conditions are constantly improved. And we do communicate that because either in addition to the business, it's also a very important part of the society and what we can offer other organizations through the society and the people. Great, great. Two points that I noted here. One is you spoke about the importance of good content. And second, you said that education is the peck that you're leading this content, this communication with. So if we talk about this content, are you generating all of this in-house or you have some external partners who are helping you in developing and promoting this content? And secondly, what sort of language, what sort of, is it more on the light-hearted side or is it more about a serious conversation that you want to have about education in India and in general, what sort of tone that you are using right now in your communications? Both, for the tone, it has to be making the fear it has to be making the fear of being happy, being a joy, you enjoy writing with our product, you might be tender, you might be for the youngsters and the teenagers, but at the same time, you need to have a message of serious, a serious message of support, whatever is needed. And also you need to have a positioning that I am trying to help towards that. You cannot, when you're talking about corporate social responsibilities and initiatives to help, for example, unprivileged children or not drop off from school or supporting female children, not drop off from school in the villages or wherever, you cannot be funny there, you cannot be crazy. You have to be serious and you have to try your best in order to be able to pass that message and give the support to have tangible results. But when it comes into a teenager who wants to be trendy, who wants to be in line with his time, you need to find that I don't, that speaks his or her language and you are in a position to pass the messages that you want, it's friendly to hold this pen in your hand and it is not. And you can show it to your friend and you wanna show it because I am trending. So it has to be mixed, it has to be studied and you know what you are doing and why you are doing it. As far as the content point that you just shared, we definitely use external third parties that they are giving us ideas, they are giving us proposals, but we do have our own communication and marketing departments and experts that they are filtering this information, we are working it together because sometimes some of the proposals might not match the character of your organization, might not match the culture of your organization. So what we need to look at is, these ideas do they match who we are or not. If it is a yes, then we try to work for them and implement it. If it is a no, but good ideas, can we have them in order to be more me? When you say me, it can be culture organization, it can be the position. So yes, but we filter and we work it and we are learning about our long-term strategies and marketing. And do you think that stationery, especially pens, do they continue to be a lifestyle product as they once were or have they got out of that area? Like having certain sort of pen was also a style statement, it was also a statement of your own personality once upon a time. Do you think that still continues or has it faded? I believe that it still is. If you ask me, I will tell you yes, it still is. I do not know the generation, I do not know which generation I'm with today. X, Y, Z. I do not know how these new generation will evolve in the coming years. But yes, and the yes, why I'm saying the yes. The yes is because you will always, as I mentioned earlier, have the need to express yourself. You cannot express yourself just to be practically out, I wanna write it. You need something that when you are writing an essay, when you are writing it like that, when you're writing a card with wishes, you are writing a poem, you are throwing. Also, it represents an extension to your art. It's part of you who are holding it. It has to be you. And you need to feel comfortable with that. You will always have the special pen that we will give maybe to our parents or we will give to them when they will graduate, that we will always believe that this pen is gonna give me good luck and I will have good results in the exams. Or I'm with that pen, my first contract, my first employment. So there is always this emotional attachment with the pen that is linked with a special moment of your life. I still, I'll tell you a secret of mine, I had a pen, and by the way, it was big. Accidentally, I was a student, but I was writing all my exams with that pen because I thought that pen was going to give me a good luck. It was the same, it was destroyed. I had it in the ages, it had no cap, but I was, I remember until the first years of university, I had that pen maybe from high school and it was never writing with it, but was writing with it during the exams because I had the feeling that it was going to give me good luck and I would pass it. So I think there's always an affiliation with the pen. There's always going to be kind of also a statement of thank you or a congratulations or I signed my first contract with that pen and so on. If it was not the case, you wouldn't see prime ministers and ministers when they do bilateral agreements, signing and throwing the pen that they are signing with. So there is always going to be something. That's great, completely agreed to that point. Now I would like to know from you what are your sort of business plans and strategies? What are the KPIs that you are chasing for this year and how about your positions to achieve them? Yeah, the KPIs are usually the same. We don't, you don't change KPIs years and years and you have selected a number of key performance indicators that will lead you to your longer strategy because if you keep on changing your KPIs, then it means that you don't have a solid plan when you want to provide the floor to you. So in our case, we look at it in three elements. One, one major family of KPIs are linked with the financials. So there are a number of financial KPIs that we are looking at, whether they are P&L related or whether they are balance sheet related, which every year we have specific targets that we try to meet and go towards those financial guidelines and directions where we want to go in order to meet the longer term objectives that we have. The second part of KPIs are the commercial KPIs. When we are looking for market shares, we are looking at distribution, we are looking at the quality of our commercial work and effort to reach to the hands of the consumers. And the third pillar or family of KPIs are linked with manufacturing KPIs, which are the products itself. So whether it is quality KPIs, the quality of the product, the rejection of the products, complain that we might be receiving improvements and efficiency or effectiveness of the product and the way we produce them. There is a big portion of KPIs, which is linked also with our footprint, how much plastic we are using. If we are reducing year-on-year the plastic on a packaging, et cetera, et cetera. So three major families, financials, commercials, manufacturing, product related. That sounds great. You also mentioned just in the tail end about how you are conscious about your eco goals and how you're thinking about plastic usage. Can you tell me a little more about it? How are you working towards effectively reducing the amount of plastic or effectively reducing your carbon footprint and you know, work towards a sustainable future? Well, the group globally, we have a specialty dedicated to sustainable development where we are looking on all the elements on how we can help globally the environment by reducing our footprint into improvements. Plastic is part of it, the amount of plastic that you use and we have specific tangible objectives set by the group by 2030 or 20, signify that they're well, that there are no ultra virgin plastic that we would be using to be zero, and so on and so on. Similarly, there are other areas on the environment that can help is that you can use the same plastic for example, that the usage of the pen is longer. So you are increasing the usage by writing more. So it's not only the raw material that you're using but also the features of the product that may last longer, which means that you don't need to produce more and more and more. Thirdly, it is whether you're looking on alternative ways of energy. Fourthly, it's as you mentioned about packaging. We are continuously improving our packaging in order to reduce as much as possible plastics and being closer to more environmental friendly solutions. Also, it is a society itself. What do we do in the society with corporate social responsibility action? How we are helping the society, whether it's keeping or supporting or helping people to understand on the footprint. So there is a very big program. It is in the public space. So you can easily go and check in our website, our vision of what are we doing and where do we want to go. And India is not out of that scope. We are also part of the global footprint. We are trying to help and we will be helping and we are improving here on the earth. That's great. And I'm glad to hear that so many companies are now consciously taking these efforts to create a sustainable business, which is much more than just money and much more than just business KPIs and creating a powerful impact on the society and on the environment as well. I think I got everything that I needed. Thank you so much for your time today Manoj. Are there any parting words that you would like to say? I just wanted to thank you for your time. I just want to thank you for the opportunity. It was a pleasure talking to you and I appreciate a lot of the opportunity to have this nice conversation and a chat. Thank you so much.