 Namaskar. I'm Professor Devdeep Purukayastha from IT Bombay and I welcome you to my course, Business Fundamental for Entrepreneurs Part 2, External Operations. I also welcome you to this industry practice of you of how to discover your customers so you can launch new products to meet their needs whether you are a startup or whether you are working for a large company and grow your business. So today's speaker is Dr. Nishant Tikkar. Dr. Nishant Tikkar has done extensive work in the domain of medical devices at the Betty Club in IT Bombay. He has also been an adjunct faculty at the Dear School of Entrepreneurship at IT Bombay. Prior to joining IT Bombay, he was in the United States and he did his engineering at VNIT and then his master's and PhD from the University of Utah. He has done extensive research and publications in the domains of medical sciences, medical devices. With that, I'm handing over to Dr. Nishant. Welcome back. Let us try to study some product examples to understand what can be the customer expectations from potential products. Let's take a simple example of a new perfume that you're about to launch in the market. We all know that there are plenty of perfumes to choose from for the customer. There is no shortage. In fact, the market is saturated with a lot of perfumes. So what can be done about the perfume to attract the customers? Obviously, you will have to make it very unique in terms of the way it smells or the flavor it carries. You may have to add some kind of an exotic aspect, an exotic appeal to the perfume to attract the customer. But while doing this, you may still have to keep it affordable. Now typically, perfume companies target the customer directly. Either you reach the customer directly and you have to do it on a mass scale. So B to C stands for business to customer. B to M stands for business to masses or business to mass customer. In doing so, not only do you have to offer the best possible unique kind of smell or flavor for the perfume, but you also have to keep it affordable. Only when you are able to do that, you will be able to appeal to the masses. You may have a marketing strategy in which you first try to appeal to again to the higher income, the better educated, maybe women only or maybe a unisex perfume. That depends on the kind of perfume you are making as well as the marketing strategy that you choose to adopt. Depending on that, you can initially target high-income category customers. And then as you reach more and more customers, make more and more sales, you may want to expand it to the mass level where you may reduce the price so that more and more people with less income may be able to afford it. Let's look at another example. This is an example of an foldable phone or a foldable tablet. Now, we all know there are plenty of cell phones and tablets available in the market. Why would anyone want a foldable phone in particular? Now, someone like me who falls in the higher educated category takes an interest in technology products, tries to understand every feature of the new technology or the new product that comes in the market. So, what can be most appealing to a highly educated individual for a new foldable phone? Note that chances are if someone is less educated or not educated at all, he or she may not require a foldable phone, a high-end computing phone. So, what is required and what is expected in a foldable phone is first, does it have sufficiently high computing power much better than the existing non-foldable phones? Other aspects are it has to be completely portable, pocketable. It should not exceed my pocket size by any means and it should preferably have a higher battery life because chances are foldable phones will have bigger screens. I would want to use them also as computers not just as phones. If it comes with a pen, I may even want to use it to take notes, write things, send WhatsApp messages, all kinds of functions that I do as an educated professional. All of these has to be provided as product features and highlighted in a manner such that they are good value propositions for higher educated, higher income customers. Now, depending on your marketing strategy, you can choose to go directly to the customer that would be B2C. You can go choose to, I mean these customers would be higher income, so you know elite customers, higher income customers, educated customers. Or you can choose to make your phones available in the market at a mass scale. As a startup, that's not easy because there are already companies like Samsung or Motorola and other companies that are making foldable phones and have the capability to fill the market with their phones and not let you enter as a startup. So, before making a decision on your marketing strategy and entering the market, you need to weigh the pros and cons of your marketing strategy carefully. So, in this case B2M may be possible. It may not be possible depending on your capability. But another approach that you can take is what is called B2B, meaning you can go to certain corporates and appeal to them to use your phone over already existing phones in the market. This was once done by a company called BlackBerry. Based on that, once you capture certain high level executives, high educated people that are working with corporates, the product can become appealing to other people who may not be working with those corporates and they may want to buy your foldable phones. That's when you start developing marketing strategies and campaigns to reach the customers and then to reach the large masses. So, depending on these products, you have to determine how to enter the market in the first place, making sure that there is no risk of product failure, how to sell quickly so that you are able to generate revenue and make some profits as soon as possible and then how to reach the best possible customers and maximum possible customers. Let's look at some unusual products. The image on the left in this slide is a bamboo home. Now bamboo is nowadays being marketed as a good alternative construction material. Bamboos typically grow very fast in a span of few months. They are very inexpensive. They can be grown in different geographies and the best part is they are green and recyclable. We live in a world where we have global warming happening and we have to make sure that we develop products that are green and recyclable and help us live in a sustainable manner. So, this is a large bamboo home that was constructed in Bali. Obviously, when you build a large home, the cost of construction is higher. But can you use this concept to develop products for the regular customer as much as possible? So, let's say you come up with a home design that is just sufficient, not too small, not too large for an average family of 3 to 4 people and can be afforded by people that may not have very high income. If you can build, make such products, come up with such ideas, build such products, then you can address the customer directly in large masses. What you can also do is try to make exotic furniture out of bamboo or try to make it fashionable to have a second bamboo home for the rich people who may have additional properties. That way, you can target richer customers who would be willing to pay more for your product. Third possibility is again you approach, you know, let's say large scale hotels or vacation stays or corporates and businesses who can build such homes and provide incentives for their employers to invest or buy into such properties. So, again, depending on the product, even if it's a not so common product, not so well-known product, you can devise strategies to understand what the customer wants and then appeal to those wants irrespective of their background or their income category. Now, let's look at a more social problem, especially in developing countries. These are very relevant problems and solutions. We live in a world where I can order a pizza in a span of 30 minutes in any part of the developed or developing world and it will be delivered to me. Can I say the same thing about an ambulance in a country like India? Not sure. Some of the regions in India are not served by ambulance. Some of the urban regions in India have so much traffic that I cannot guarantee that the ambulance will reach me or the patient in a span of 30 minutes. So, what can be done to solve this problem? Similarly, I can look up airfare prices, compare them and go for the best possible value or least possible cost for my air ticket. But is it possible for me to get the best possible medical care for the least possible cost? Certainly not. I do not get any discounts. I don't even know whether the doctor or the hospital that is giving me medical service is good enough for me to want to go in there. Can we develop a solution for that? These are the needs of the world today, certainly in developing regions, developing nations, underdeveloped nations, but sometimes even in developed parts of the world. So, can you devise a product or in this case a service that is readily and easily available and accessible? At the same time, quite affordable. Medical bills are non-affordable even to people in the United States, one of the richest country in the world. So, can you develop such services and companies that are not just easily available and accessible, but also affordable to everyone in the society? And then take a step further to the point where they become completely automatic, readily, easily, automatically available to anyone in need, anyone in an emergency situation so that lives can be saved and people feel good about the society in which they live. Now, as far as the marketing strategy is concerned, you can choose to do B2C directly go to the customer or if you have a robust business model, a robust service, you can even directly approach the government, the local governments. It can be the state government, it can be the city municipal corporation or it can even be the national leader that you can go to when you have a good service or a good product for the betterment of the society. This has happened in the past including in countries like India where some students came up with great ideas for the social good and they even directly approach the home minister for getting entry into the market. So, let's reflect again on what can be the potential products and the potential customers. In the column in the left, what I have done is listed four different types of products and in the column on the right, I want you to match with potential customers. Each product has to be matched with one potential customer. We will give you a short span to work on these exercise and then we will come back to wrap up this video. Thank you. Welcome back. Hope you got all your answers right. So, we will wrap it up in the next two slides. What you see here is what is called a customer value proposition canvas. What this comprises of is what are the products and services that you are trying to create? Will they act as pills, meaning will they solve a customer problem, cure a customer problem or will they act as vitamins or gain creators? Meaning the customer may not have a necessary problem to solve, but your product may enhance their lifestyle, their life experience, their happiness levels. That can be considered as a vitamin based product. This has to match perfectly with the customer pains and gains and serve to the customer needs and desires. Only when this is done, you have a good product that you can make and launch in the market. It is important that every startup entrepreneur, every co-founder fills this out with as many points in each of those boxes as possible before launching the product in the market. So, in summation, what needs to be done as a startup entrepreneur is that you develop a product that has some uniqueness which helps you differentiate it from other existing products but also makes it difficult for anyone else to replicate in the future. This will guarantee that you will have longer times to launch your product and work in the market. At the same time, your product should provide some kind of pain relief for the customer or be a gain creator for the customer and directly address the customer desires, the customer needs and solve the customer's problems. Only when you get this golden triad right, do you have the right golden product or a diamond like product that is ready to be launched in the market. And finally, do not forget to build a relationship with the customer, a mental connect and emotional connect with the customer for long-term sustainability. All successful companies do that. The Nike's, the Sony's, more importantly the Apple's and Steve Jobs and Amazon and Jeff Bezos make it a point to develop a relationship with the customer as a company as well as at some kind of a personal relationship with the customer. That is how they capture large number of customers, large market sizes and have long durations as successful companies. I hope you will be able to do that as entrepreneurs. I look forward to hearing about your success stories and seeing you in the media as a successful entrepreneur in the future and wish you all the best in your entrepreneurship journey. Good luck and goodbye. Thank you.