4 P's of Marketing by Kiran Shah - Apsara and GoZero

Products are same

Price is fixed

Everybody's Promoting

Then how do you compete?

Think School Podcast with GoZero's founder Kiran was surely a masterclass on the 4Ps of marketing which I just crammed from my textbooks and hated it because of that. (And never really understood it)

He applied it in his ice cream business in both Apsara and GoZero:

Product - it is ice cream, you can't differentiate much with competitors like Amul, Mother Dairy, etc. so they went in with some fundamentally different products. They launched a different guava flavor in their Apsara stores to compete with their closest competitor that is Naturals.

Simply telling the customer you are different isn't enough. 

Price - he explained the significance of "Anchor pricing" in the industry, i.e., by benchmarking price against the leading brands currently holding the most market share like Amul. It's not easy to charge a premium in a commoditized industry like ice cream. 

Promotion - while books teach it as advertising sort of thing for brand building, he explained that promotion for the brand Apsara involved leveraging customer reviews on platforms like Zomato, which were relatively new at that point in time gave social proofs and credibility.

For GoZero he beautifully explained modern advertising - from search-merch strategy, visibility on app or leveraging quick commerce growth, seasonal output and data-driven timing for advertisements.

Place - which in my view may be the most important P in this business. This includes distribution channels. If someone knows your brand and likes the flavors of your brand but if your ice cream is not available nearby then there's no use of that. And in case of quick commerce, you need to be available on these quick commerce apps.

My favorite part of the podcast and also of the Shark Tank Pitch was how he determined the place for opening the store by checking the bill numbers of the nearby Naturals store.