Case Study: Bhavsar’s Herbal Smoking Device: Nirdosh Herbal Dhoompan

About the family business

Maans Products Ahmedabad is a bidi manufacturing unit run by Mr. Natwarlal Bhavsar, a local
businessman, who had been running the business successfully for over 2 decades and was supported by
his two sons who joined their family business. The bidi business was a flourishing business for him and
Mr Bhavsar decided to diversify his business and enter the line of producing herbal cigarettes.

The Idea
The idea struck Mr. Bhavsar when he was contacted by a group of vaidyas to roll special bidis for them,
which, instead of tobacco, contained herbs and other natural things and unlike bidi and cigarettes were not
harmful to the consumer. Mr. Bhavsar realised that there existed no such product in the market and after
successfully identifying the gap, he spent two years into the development of these herbal smoking
cigarettes, which he aptly named “Nirdosh” which translates into being Innocent and Harmless. This was
made from 14 herbs, which were turned into granular form and rolled into tendu leaves in the shape of
cigarette. These were then packed into a cigarette-type cardboard box which was in turn covered by
cellophane wrapping (See Figure 1 for the product and its packaging).

Challenges
Mr Bhavsar is currently facing several hurdles during the course of the development of this product and to
identifying the correct Target Market for his product and marketing it to the segment of consumers who
would be interested in buying his products. Entering this market of hybrid cigarettes, Mr Bhavsar is
facing a lot of competition in positioning his product from the bigwigs in the markets such as ITC,
National Tobacco, Godrey Philips, Golden Tobacco etc and some other herbal cigarette players such as
Organic Smokes. Mr Bhavsar lacks the resources, which these companies possess, and hence, as a result
could not establish a proper distribution network and hence was not able to generate enough revenues
until now. He now is reviewing his experience of developing the product "NIRDOSH" (a unique non-
tobacco smoking device) as well as the marketing strategy for popularizing "Nirdosh.

Based on the above information and challenges, which Mr. Bhavsar is facing to market Nirdosh, answer
the following questions:
1. What according to you should be the value proposition of Nirdosh ?
2. Recommend a consumer profile and the value they might seek from using Nirdosh?

Figure 1: Nirdosh Herbal Filter Dhoompan Packets