American product, ayurvedic twist
THE WEEK India|November 26, 2023
I HAD BECOME CEO of Richardson Hindustan Ltd, the company where I had started at the bottom…. I wasn’t sitting pretty. The company was in serious trouble. I didn’t know to which port we were sailing; no wind was favourable. The socialist government had instituted severe price controls on medicines, threatening to bankrupt us. Our labour force was hostile, coming out of a seventy-seven-day strike. The chemists’ association had just announced a boycott of our products to force higher trade margins. With sales plunging to zero, we might go bust. I called a meeting of the management committee….
American product, ayurvedic twist

The brainstorming was a disaster. I chalked it to our differing mindsets. Theirs was more traditional, hierarchical style; mine was consultative, participative, maybe because I had grown up in democratic America. Nevertheless, I wasn’t deterred and called for a second brainstorming session. This time, I did a better job. They had also begun to trust me a bit more. I guided the discussion more confidently, focusing sharply on the key issues. Ideas began to flow. At one point in the flowing stream, the Gujarati head of marketing said almost absent-mindedly, ‘What if Vicks VapoRub had been an Ayurvedic medicine, not a Western drug?’ Someone snickered, thinking it a joke. But behind the ‘what-if’ was a hope—Ayurvedic products did not fall under price control.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة November 26, 2023 من THE WEEK India.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة November 26, 2023 من THE WEEK India.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

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