EAST INDIA

CHEMICALS
PROJECT REPORT

Guided by:- Prof. Subhasis Ray

Group -9
UM18079 – Anjaneya Sahu
UM18085 – Barunendra Nanda
UM18086 – Basu Suman
UM18119 – Sawan Kumar
UM18142 – Ankush Agrawal
UM18143 - Annada Shankar Sahoo
 CONTENTS

1. Industry at a Glance
2. SWOT analysis of EIC
3. How to increase visibility?
4. How EIC should communicate?
5. Generate More leads
6. Expansion In and Around East India
7. CAPITALIZING ON E-TENDERING PLATFORMS
8. Marketing Strategies:
 1. INDUSTRY AT A GLANCE

Chemical Industry in India is one of the fastest-growing industry which

is 3rd in Asia and sixth globally. Chemical Industry in India is highly broad and diversified which
covers more than 80000 commercial products. It is classified into Basic chemicals, Specialty
Chemicals and Agro Chemicals. India is the 6th largest producer of the chemical industry in
the world. India is a global dye supplier that accounts for the world’s 16% of the entire
production of dyestuff and dye intermediaries. The Indian chemical industry is expected to
grow from USD 163 billion to USD 360 billion by 2025. The demand for chemical products is
expected to grow at 9% per annum over the next five years. The growth in the demand is
expected to be driven by the end-use segments especially in specialty chemical as well as
petrochemical intermediates.

In the year 2017-18, the total production of chemicals stood at

47,882,000 MT which is a 2.6% increase over the previous year itself. Alkali chemicals had
the largest share in the Chemical industry in India with approximately 69% share in the total
production. It is being expected that the petrochemical market in India will grow at a CAGR
of 10% over the next 5 years to reach $ 100 billion by 2022. The specialty chemicals market
has seen a growth of 14% over the last five years and the market size is expected to reach
$ 70 billion by 2020.

East India Chemical Private limited is a chemical industry that is

headquartered in Kolkata and has been running for the last 50 years. It is an MSME category
business unit. The company has created a strong brand for itself over the years which has an
annual revenue of 1.1 crores over the last year. Currently, the owner of the company is facing
a challenge to capture the market share. At the same time, it is facing stiff competition from
Indian and multinational players.
 2. SWOT analysis of EIC

Strengths

 Offers products mostly at low and competitive prices as compared to its rivals. This
will be a huge advantage for the company for grabbing market share in coming days.

 Seasoned player with 50 years of reputation & experience in the chemical industry,
with strong presence in Kolkata & close ties with national level industrial association

 Household name for good quality products in metal, defense & institutional
customer segments

Weakness

 Lack of robust production facilities & required workforce to support production

 Lack of reach to high value customers as well as to other parts of the country

 Unsustainable dealer distribution network, as dealers don’t favour sales due to

inadequate profit margin

 Insufficient budget allocation for marketing and advertisement

 Weak supply chain network

Opportunities

 Capitalize on government e-tendering and procurement platforms to bag more

business orders

 Being a MSME player, make use of Government-approved affordable loan schemes

like CGTMSE, financial support to MSME’s to raise capital for business
  Leverage on digital marketing & social media platforms to promote flagship products
in different product segments

 Start commercial production of highly differentiated chemical products to generate

perennial & hefty cash flow to organization

Threats

 Fierce competition from other big players TATA chemicals, Pidilite etc.

 Lack of diverse portfolio of products to cater to the growing needs of the Indian
market

3. How to increase visibility?

Maintaining a long term relationship with the dealers

The company sells with the help of the dealers in West Bengal. There are around 40 dealers
present in West Bengal who generally have a long term relationship with the company itself.
But the dealers like to sell the products of big Indian companies and MNC's as the products
are sold at a higher price than the company's products and this enables them to get a better
margin on those products. So the company should try to ensure that the interest of the
dealers is taken care of by providing them a higher profit margin. This is definitely going to
increase the visibility of the company amongst its dealers.
Increase spending in Promotion and Advertisements
The company needs to communicate with all the institutions present in West Bengal. For
this, the company should try to allocate a separate budget to make the advertisements and
promotions. The company should make its presence felt in the trade fairs. Once the
company starts growing, they should hire a digital marketing team that can help them
communicate their intended messages through their websites.

Penetration into diverse segments of the business

Currently, the company is only working with metal, defense and institution segment. It should
try to get into pharmaceuticals, agriculture and consumer products. This definitely will
increase the visibility of the company in other segments as well.
Leveraging on E-tendering platform
The Public Sector Companies, Government agencies and institutions are more easily
accessible through the e-procurement forum, which helps EIC by providing information and
details about its potential clients, their projects and the intricacies involved. Through this way,
their interaction with the government agencies and the public sector companies is going to
increase. This, in turn, would give a fillip to their visibility in the market.

4. How EIC should communicate ?

East India Chemicals Pvt Ltd is one of those companies which is

present in the market since last 50 years as an MSME. Earlier it had a strong brand name and
used to provide good quality chemicals. The quality and price were drivers for sale of EIC. But
it could not take the advantage of that brand image created earlier and as a result of which
they are not able to grow in the manner the chemical market has grown over the years. The
main problem here was that there due to lack of budget, there was no advertisement and
sales force allocated. This led to decrease in the number of existing buyers like institutions
which do not have a brand recall of the company. Secondly there was lack of communication
from the company to its customers and prospective customers about their product and
existence and hence there was no brand recall for the company.

Lead generation: The Company is already using one to one communication to generate leads
from different institutions. But due to lack of sales force, it is not able to do that in continuous
basis. For this purpose the company should try to focus on temporary work force which they
can avail by hiring students from colleges for unpaid internship. The students should be given
a formal training to groom them regarding lead generation. Also there must be a dedicated
database where the information collected by the student interns should be available for
future reference purpose and also it will make the communication easy in future as instead
of visiting directly, digital means like mails, SMS, calls can be made. Also after making a visit
to the concerned person from the institution or industry, there should a formal mail detailing
the company products, online catalogue and contact information. The communication part
should emphasize the brand image the company had due to its quality and competitive
pricing. Apart from this there should be a dedicated sales force team of 3 to 4 members
maintaining the data which these interns bring so as to track the customers and future
prospective customers. This team shall focus on training the interns, converting the leads
generated by them, maintaining a schedule to continuously monitor prospective customers
for buying process. The main task is to channelize the interns and get the work out of them.
Brand Recall: Customers in chemical industry are ready to switch brands if they get chemically
equivalent product. So company has to fight hard to build a brand name. Delivering quality
product consistently and providing support and consultancy can make a way to build unique
brand name. As a result branding is highly dependent on price and performance. Also to tackle
with the situation EIC chemicals should have a brand name and logo which should be easily
identified or recalled by customers. The main task here is to communicate the same while
generating leads. These can be done in multiple ways like using the logo and company name
using display catalogues during lead generation, using the logo while sending E-mails or
notifications regarding product arrivals or communication of a new product launch. For lead
generation the student interns should be gifted t-shirts and bags with the company name and
logo embedded on them, so that whenever they visit a customer carrying them, if they able
to or not able to convert the leads, there can be brand recall by the customer, which may
benefit in future approaches.

Digital communication: Digital form of communication is most sought after and cheapest
form. This shall help the company with low budget to advertise and make their presence
among its customers. Digital communication in form of social media handles, surveys, e mails
shall enhance the brand recall procedure and make the probing phase for the customer easier
by making the information available on the site and mails. Nowadays search engines play a
great role in digital marketing. The company should do its work in terms of product offering,
pricing and other services. So it becomes essential for companies to enhance their online
presence using search engine marketing. YouTube videos can play a significant role as they
are cheaper and visual way of representation which may appeal to the customers. A mix of
traditional and online marketing often delivers results in terms of lead generation and
conversion.

5. GENERATE MORE LEADS

 Step into new avenues and target high-net worth customers in market segments like
Agriculture, Pharmaceuticals, Textiles, Petrochemicals & Mining etc. These business
sectors are booming or already developed in Eastern India & will help EIC a lot in
coming days
 Being strategically located in Kolkata, should participate or organize trade fairs &
shows to attract local industries. By these trade fairs, they will get an opportunity to
showcase their flagship products (Experience Marketing).

 Outsource their sales activity to new & effective local sales teams to build
partnership with local bodies like city waste management bodies, warehouses,
automobiles, laboratories, ports etc.
 Being located at a strategic geographical location as compared to rest of the country,
EIC should look forward to market demands in untapped areas like North-East India,
Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar etc.

6. Expansion In and Around East India

1. Appointment of sales person or giving contract to agency for e-tendering process in

the PSU sector. As keeping experienced trained person on direct payroll would be
very much costly to the company, they can give the contract and pay them in terms
of incentives.
2. Targeting laboratories of medical college and science institutions as well as hospitals
with required chemicals like dialysers, biogics, etc
3. Entering into technical collaboration with any high tech start up/company which can
provide technical help and any R&D support for the betterment.
4. East india is the major hub for sea food import and export , so supplying chemicals
like formalin to the seafood industry.
5. There are about 200 Small scale industry in eastern india which can be directly
targeted by company with the specialised chemicals.
6. Targeting all pharma company in eastern india providing them all type of specialized
chemicals which can’t be manufactured by the big companies in small scale.

7. CAPITALIZING ON E-TENDERING PLATFORMS

1. With the objective of the Indian Government, EIC can leverage upon the e-
procurement systems. The open platform can reduce trade discrepancies between
vendors and suppliers.
2. The online tendering process helps reduce the general and administrative expenses
of the tender application process, thereby saving significant time and cost for EIC.
3. The Public Sector Companies, Government agencies and institutions are more easily
accessible through the e-procurement forum, which helps EIC by providing
information and details about its potential clients, their projects and the intricacies
involved.
4. Online Procurement expands the marketplace for buyers, hence, increasing contract
opportunities for EIC. Enhanced speed of supplier registration, improved cash-flows
due to shorter procurement cycles, payment automation and streamlining of
tenders, all lead to transparency and accountability which help in improving their
relationships with the buyers.
 5. As EIC currently caters to metal, defence and institution segment, e-procurement
can open its access to other sectors such as hospitals, fertilizer companies and water
treatment plants.
6. Being present online also provides EIC with a chance to redesign its website and
redefine its presence in the digital market.

8. Marketing Strategies:

EIC having a portfolio of 3 categories of products, viz, Basic, Specialty, Knowledge, it would serve
them better to have a differentiated marketing strategy for each of them. It would serve them best
to use the following three strategies:

i. Digital Marketing
ii. Events Marketing
iii. Face to Face Marketing

Digital Marketing should be used the focus for Basic Chemicals, through
means of developing a website as well as listing of the offerings in B2B e-commerce platforms. The
target audience for Basic Chemicals are price takers, who are not seeking any value addition, the
channel of digital marketing will provide them with the information they seek as well as provide them
a seamless and hassle free experience of buying high volume low priced products. It should not
however be limited to just a website and listing of products on B2B e-commerce sites but also include
regular blogs and vlogs, use of Facebook for Business and listing on Google My Business to provide
accessibility and engaging content to the buyer. A digital presence and compatibility with digital
platforms and ease of handling digital operations would also help serve them well to handle
Government E-Tenders and since they do not have in-house expertise on the domain, it is advised to
hire consultants in the digital domain or outsource it completely to a third party that is well equipped
to handle such matters. Since digital medium is cost effective, the benefits of reaching out to a vast
spread of possible buyers should outweigh the cost of consulting or outsourcing.

Specialty products are best served through Events Marketing, since they are low volume,
high margin business and need value addition and servitization of their products. A Trade Expo or
Industrial fair presents the perfect platform for marketing such products where there will be a thick
concentration of probable buyers. In addition to events marketing, building an email marketing funnel
should be considered for such products. Since these are industrial grade products, which will find
buyers in industrial clusters, dealers should be identified in these industrial pockets and they should
be incentivized for converting sales, through commissions, awards and rewards such as sponsored
vacations that make selling EIC Specialty products lucrative for the dealers in contrast to competing
products.

Lastly the knowledge products should be handled by a small team of 2-3

experienced salespersons, who visit buyers, understand their business process and then report back
to EIC to provide customized solution. Since this business would see minimal volume and maximum
margins, experienced salespersons working on a high degree of variable pay component, should be
leveraged for this segment, which should serve EIC well, since they do not have great manpower at
their disposal.
Recommendations:

In addition to the above, since logistics cost are a drain on the resources, EIC is
advised to explore opportunities of partnering local chemical B2B MSME’s which are smaller in size,
to supply their products under EIC’s branding, subject to quality checks, to business hubs in their
vicinities. Also since EIC itself is stretched by larger MNC’s, it is suggested to turn these MNC’s to EIC’s
customers by supplying them chemicals which these larger players can then market under their
brands.

It is strongly advocated for EIC to build a presence in digital marketing, which would
help them serve buyers pan-India as well as use the medium of e-mails to maintain a connect with old
and existing customers like schools and colleges, which seem to be changing vendors with change of
management.

The Marketing strategy should be three pronged, differentiated for each portfolio
of products and EIC should be compliant of all packaging and industrial regulations that should keep
it in good stead for Government contracts.