With a presence in over 40 countries, Brady Corporation specialises in identification and protection solutions, primarily targeted at high end electronics for the manufacturing industry. Its products include labels and signs, safety devices, printing systems and software, and precision die-cut materials. Founded in 1914, the company has customers in electronics, telecommunications, manufacturing, electrical, construction, education, medical electronics and a variety of other industries. Brady established its presence in India in 2006, and started manufacturing in 2007. In India, the company is primarily focussed on electronics manufacturing, mobile phone manufacturing, telecom, and asset-tracking, automotive and brand protection solutions.
In a conversation with Srabani Sen of Electronics Bazaar, Prasenjit Datta, managing director, Brady Company India Pvt Ltd, talks about the company’s growth in India and its marketing strategy.
EB: How important is the Indian market for Brady?
As the Indian electronics market is in a state of evolution right now, we consider it as a good consumer base for identification and protection solutions, and hence, a key market for the growth of our company. We look forward to seeing India as another important market in Asia, after China.
EB: In terms of business volumes, where does India stand?
In terms of business volumes in India, we are still relatively small compared to our position in countries like Korea, Japan and China. Six years back, when we started our operations in India, we hoped that the market would grow substantially. But due to the global recession in 2009-2010, a lot of investments in India have slowed down. Now, with the demand-supply equation changing slowly, we hope to see manufacturing companies re-investing in India for two reasons—first, in China, which has been the largest manufacturing base for these companies, there is the threat of a price increase due to high labour costs and the high exchange rate. On the other hand, India is steadily emerging as a cost effective and economical manufacturing base for most companies. Second, the Indian consumer market is quite big, so you need to have the supply chain close to it, without which this market cannot flourish.
EB: What has Brady’s growth rate been in India?
In India, we have been growing more than 100 per cent every year. But we wish we were growing at 200 or 300 per cent every year; that was the original idea. If we look at the electronics manufacturing market in China, which took off in mid 1990s—in about 10 years, it grew exponentially by almost 250 per cent every year. We were hoping for the same rate of growth in the Indian manufacturing industry as well. But due to the global recession, the growth rate of the manufacturing base in India has slowed down, though the growth continues. So we are also growing. I believe in the next three to five years, we will see an exponential growth in the manufacturing base in India as well.
EB: What has been your marketing strategy in India?
We capitalise on growing niche markets in India by leveraging our distribution network, global footprint and strengths in manufacturing and materials expertise. We increase our market share by leveraging our investments in new product development, further expanding distribution channels, and making strategic acquisitions. We try to enter new and adjacent markets where Brady’s core competencies can be successfully leveraged. Our business in different countries provide us the opportunity to be close to our customers, utilise technical talent from around the world and speed up the deployment of our new product developments.
In India, our marketing strategy has been unique, as the typically localised companies are not always aware of all our products and solutions. We do not have a ready made market for us. We have to reach out to our customers, rather than them coming to us with enquiries. We go about doing this in various ways. Since our solutions are not standardised, advertising does not necessarily create awareness, which is largely created by personal visits, and other one-to-one interactions with our potential customers.
In India, we also need to provide Indian solutions. With global solutions, we can approach only a small portion of the Indian market. So it is another marketing challenge for us. We make an immense effort to find out local solutions for the local markets—whether it is developing products, developing raw materials, or application engineering.
We actually do direct marketing and selling. In the customised solutions area, we don’t sell to the distributors. However, as an experiment to see if a channel partner can actually take forward a customised solution, we have appointed a partner in Delhi who is promoting our products. Our standardised solutions and products are completely delivered through channel partners.
Right now, our focus is on brand building. We are yet to successfully reach out to all our customers. Our aim is to build a reputation amongst our existing customers. The formal feedback that we get from them along with our own research in the market, have helped us make a strong impact.
EB: What are the technological advancements that you offer?
One of our major drives is towards innovation. In the business of offering customised solutions, we don’t necessarily develop standard solutions. Our focus is basically on three major technology areas—materials, electro-mechanical systems and software. We create value by leveraging these technologies into new products and look to combine these technologies to achieve unique solutions.
In India, apart from developing products that are economically viable, there are some applications which are not necessarily applied in the rest of the world. So, to customise our products for these applications, we need to be technologically advanced. Currently, we are developing products that are used to identify hot rolled steel products. Earlier, these products were identified with batch numbers that were hand written. Now, we are developing a product that can embed all necessary information on a hot rolled steel product. This advancement has been done only for India.
