I, Me, Myself and Mandi

Me before Mandi
When I first saw the toys and heard their prices, I immediately had an imaginary conversation with my father where in I was selling the products to him. Hi! Dad! This is a mathematical education toy called Jodo. It costs Rs 250. Yes, I know. It sounded a pathetic attempt even in my head back then. But at that point of time that was the level of my marketing strategy. My imaginary conversation ended there because I knew that my father wouldnt think that the effort and so the wonder toy in my hand deemed an answer. So one can imagine how sceptical I was of the whole process. The idea was great. It was exciting to think that I would be selling those toys on the street and people would get impressed by the toy (I had no trust in my marketing abilities as demonstrated earlier) and buy it. The excitement was solely because Dr. Prasads enthusiasm was contagious but deep down I was not very sure if I would find at least one person who would be willing to shell out Rs.250 for a toy which had plastic straws and plastic encased metal connectors. After I had been given the various applications of the toys I had some vague idea of what more I could add to the sales pitch I had originally come up with. Now it went somewhat like this.... Dad.... This is a toy called JODO. See these straws and connectors......These can be used to make numerous 3D figures. Anything from Alphabet to complex Organic structures can be taught using it. It costs Rs. 250.

I improve..............
My next barrier was that how many people on the street would really be ready to make an unplanned purchase of Rs. 250. I had nightmares of being the only person in the whole college who had managed to sell just one item and maybe the one was because I sold it to myself. GULP!!! Some classes in week before were spent in knowing more about Mandi, the toys and the NGO Navnirmiti. Again, thanks to the able guidance of Dr. Prasad, it was during these times that some home truths dawned on to me. It was then that I realized that whenever I was having these imaginary sales pitch I was always selling it to my dad. Now, my father is a very meticulous person. On a scale of 0 to 10, if he were to be rated on impulsive or unplanned actions it would be 0.5 and I am not exaggerating. So I started thinking again What if I instead of selling it to my dad I sell it to my cousin who has a 6 year old and who works for a software firm. I suddenly identified myself with Archimedes even though I was probably some of the last persons in the class to have come to the same conclusion. But to me it was better late than never... So, I modified the imaginative sales pitch the most noticeable of which was that I wasnt selling the toys to my father any longer. It now went something like

Hello Sir/Madam. We are students here on behalf of an NGO. We have come to sell these educational toys (I would be having an excellent demo of JODO....something like an aeroplane perhaps!!!) These toys would be very helpful in making the learning a fun filled experience right from alphabet to geometry to complex organic structures in chemistry. Not only academically but also for the creativity this kit can unleash in your child. I was making progress. Initially, I was hung out on the price aspect of the toys. But by now I had realized that the toys had more than one selling factor the fun filled learning, the novelty of the teaching mechanism, the creativity it can flare and where all else fails the NGO factor. I had begun to think marketing. Yippee!!!!

On the big day..........

From here on, I was a little more confident about what the big day would bring. I was actually looking forward to it like the rest of the class. On the big day, I and my partner Ravi met soon after the inaugural function of Mandi-2009. Each pair was given inventory worth Rs. 2145 the previous night amidst chorus of the Mandi slogan Socho Becho, Becho Sekho, Sekho Socho. We shifted our inventory into our back packs and started our discussion on which place to hit. I had absolutely no idea about the kind of crowd in various places of Mumbai. Fortunately, my partner was more useful on that. We eventually decided on some place like a mall, where the weekend crowd would be our angels in disguise. So Andheri and Infinity Mall it was. Market segmentation was the thought running in my head. Our original plan was to go to Andheri in the college arranged transport....namely the bus. But the bus was over crowded. Change in plans....we thought. We took a rik. The reason for this was twofold. On one side it would mean we didnt have to stand and on the other it would mean we would reach our target audience sooner before the place would get saturated with at least 25 odd people selling the same product. Werent we using all our conceptual knowledge for Mandi???!!! So thinking we reached Infinity mall at around 11:45 am. And here we realize that we didnt get our demo items prepared the night before. The sales pitch with an aeroplane went into air..... At the mall, when we were asked to do all the dealings of Mandi on the pavement and not in the mall premises. We opened a box of JODO, which my friend had originally planned on buying himself, and started putting it together for some semblance of a recognizable shape.

How it started..............
And fate smiled on us. A middle aged lady who was going into the mall, double backed to us and asked about the JODO kit which we had in our hands. Till then I had never thought how I would actually go and approach a person for the sales pitch. Somehow that thought never crossed my head. So with the half made (I really didnt know what I was making at that time) article in my hand, I went to the lady and a kid who perhaps was her grand child of 6-7 years. I am generally not shy or afraid of talking to strangers. But when I started talking to this woman, the croak in my voice would have made a frog jealous. I had trembling hands, cold with sweat and I didnt know why. I would like to attribute all that to my flu but my conscience does not allow me the luxury. So here it was - the fear of rejection or worse - ridicule if I wasnt able to explain it well

enough. Fortunately for me, the lady was really the angel in disguise we were looking for. She listened patiently to our garbled explanation of the toy. I much later discovered that we were talking in Hindi. I guess most of the effort was made by the half made demo in my hands and the fully made ones in the hands of some other team to which I was pointing to. She was really impressed by it and was ready to take one. And then fate laughed at us. She casually asked the kid next to her if he would like one. And the kid adamantly refused. He didnt want it!!! Drat the kid.....I wish I had been more general when I was praying for angels in disguise. The lady said her son was inside and that she would get back to us in some time.

The day progresses...........

But after that we were a more complacent pair. I then approached an elderly gentleman who had a hearing aid to his ear. And I struck gold. I was able to sell one JODO and one Tangram a Chinese puzzle. After that in the next two hours we were able to sell nearly 80% of the merchandise. And almost all were to young parents and grandparents. We appealed to all points we thought we convinced them. We would start by saying we were students, on behalf of NGO and then describe how the toys aid in the development of the child. We would show them the jumbo kit first, then the smaller JODO kit then the rangometry and finally the Tangram.

Learnings???????
We came across people who werent really interested in buying it for the educational applications, but more for the creativity it promised. To many, the NGO factor was the buying point. So much so that one gentleman after hearing us out was willing to just give us money without taking the product since he didnt have any use for it. After the first half an hour, we had become reasonably good at identifying which idea would sell the products just by talking to them for the first 30 seconds. And also, which of them wouldnt buy it even after we had talked our throats sore. We came across people who were kind enough to tell us that they had a pressing appointment, they would get back to us later and some others who were kind in the short time they took to say NO. To my surprise, I later realized, we hadnt come across many people who thought the articles were expensive. In another interesting incident, we directed a pair of people towards the nearest ATM when they said they just had plastic money. Boy....were we proud of our ingenuity at that time???!!!!

Towards the end.............

Selling Rangometry was fun as well as a challenge since we didnt have a demo of it and all we were doing was showing the brochure and talking about how it can be stuck to the walls without it staining them. At around 3:30 we were left with one jumbo packet of JODO, 4 tangrams. At this point hunger pangs set in and we took an hours lunch break. Selling the last JODO was the most difficult thing we had done the whole day............we managed to sell two tangrams in the process. Eventually we managed to sell it to a lady who thought it was great what we were doing as part of our education.

At evening around 6, we were sold out. I kept one Tangram as a souvenir for the wonderful day. And so started our journey back to the NITIE grounds.........exhausted and as proud as winning warriors from a battle ground.