The first focus area for us, at Navneet Stationery- Youva, is ‘Speed & Agility’
Abhijit Sanyal, Chief Strategy Officer, Youva
As is universally known, the pandemic has completely changed the dynamics of a functioning organization. Consumer behaviour, and consequently, Organisational Operations – especially in the areas of Sales & Marketing, Production and Supply Chain – are already undergoing a sea change.
The first focus area for us, at Navneet Stationery- Youva, is ‘Speed & Agility’. This will be essential to win in a dynamic, ever-changing and unpredictable market place of 2021. As educational institutions are opening up, albeit gradually, there will be a huge backlog of exams etc. to be cleared. Effectively, in 2021, there should be 1.5 times the normal BTS (back to school) annual peak. Unlike in normal years, where North/East started the new sessions in the Jan-Mar quarter, followed by West/South in the Apr-Jun quarter – 2021 is likely to see the whole country having its BTS bunched up together. This has ramifications for manufacturing, inventory management, supply chain, trade stock build-up, and consumer off-takes. Exactly how the scenario is likely to pan out is yet to be seen. All Stationery players have to face the challenges of Sales projections, Raw Materials build-up, Production & Inventory planning, and Logistics. At Navneet, for the brand Youva, we are working on various alternate scenarios.
Digital penetration has been growing exponentially, as more and more households find it imperative to develop their tech savviness, for a plethora of needs – children’s education/classes, WFH – and thus, frequent virtual meetings, and online purchases. This leads to the second & third key focus area – E-Commerce and Digital Marketing. E-commerce is going to play a much larger role in industry revenues in 2021, compared to previous years.
Consumers have developed the habit of online buying, and are less inclined to visit physical markets, unless absolutely necessary. Ensuring product availability, and visibility, on online marketplaces is another key challenge for this year.
In-home entertainment consumption is swinging substantially away from traditional media (TV…) to OTT platforms, and devices. Thus, exploring these platforms for consumer communication will be the next focus area.
Lastly – continue leveraging the efficient virtual meeting formats to accelerate the decision making process.
