Welcome again to Talking Davos here live from the World Economic Forum annual meeting. We have another really special guest, and our special guest is Mr. Adi Godrej, Chairman of the Godrej Group in India. Sir, welcome to the show.
How many times have you been to Davos so far?
I've lost count, but I think around 25.
Wow. And over the 25 years, how have you seen this event evolve, and how has India evolved over the years?
Well, it's changed dramatically over these 25 years. The number of people attending is much, much higher. The Congress Center has changed, more hotels have come up in Davos, so it's a much bigger event than it used to be when I first started coming here. And India, of course, has evolved tremendously also in these years. I started coming here just after India had its major reforms in 1991. So from a very socialist economy, we became a more free enterprise economy, more global economy, and India has dramatically changed. When I first came here, hardly anybody spoke about India. Nobody even mentioned India much. There weren't too many sessions around India, which has changed quite a lot. Now there are quite a few sessions around India. People talk about India. Now, of course, India has evolved into the fastest-growing major economy in the world. So this year, for example, there's a lot of attention on India.
And from that, your experience, you changed a shift in how India is perceived here in Davos. Can you tell us more about even the shift of the themes? Did you see any change since like 20 years, 10 years to now? Now this year is about the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Yes, well, the themes have changed quite a lot. The world is moving on tremendously, the world is changing tremendously, and the Davos themes have always reflected the latest changes. So I think the themes in Davos have always been in line with the changes the world is undergoing.
You are one of the oldest business houses in India, and Godrej, everybody knows with the locks, Kala soap, and now you are reinventing your brand to this new age with technology and all those things. Could you talk a little bit about your rebranding?
Yes, we are an 118-year-old group, and clearly we've evolved a lot over the years. And about six, seven years ago, we did a lot of market research with our consumers, and we got feedback that many young consumers were saying this is not our brand, it's our parents' brand, or some even our grandparents' brand. So that woke us up, and we decided to reposition the brand. A lot of people thought we were connected with products that were low technology, like locks and soap that you mentioned, but we also have very high technology products. We, for example, supply to the Indian space program, we supply to the Indian nuclear program. A lot of our even consumer products have high technology. So we decided to reposition the brand. We worked out the same logo which was used, which was my grandfather's signature, which was used over the 118 years, was repositioned in a standard color format. People were using it in different colors, and we reached out to our employees, we reached out to our consumers, and research now shows that a lot of young people identify well with the brand.
Sure. In fact, I like the new color scheme, that's very, very youthful. And you also do a lot of work targeting the rural masses, and there were some really high-impact products that you created. One of them is Chotukool, is a refrigerator. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Yes, so we designed Chotukool with Professor Christensen advising us, and it's a refrigerator which doesn't need electricity, which is very economic to purchase, and it is quite popular in rural areas. It's also now being redesigned slightly to be able to keep some pharmaceutical products like vaccines, etc., and so that it's available all over the country. It's been quite successful, and we've had many other innovations which are very successful. One of our most successful innovations has been what we call Good Night, which is our household insecticide brand, Fast Card. It's a piece of paper which you put on a saucer, burn it for three minutes, and the room will be mosquito-free for six hours. And it costs only one Indian rupee. And last year we sold more than a billion pieces of this Fast Card. So there are many innovations, I'm just giving you a few examples, because innovation, especially at the bottom of the pyramid, affordable products, is what leads to success in India.
And what does innovation mean to you? How do you define innovation?
