Hemant
Malik

Competing With Habit

The unorganised competitor — the chakki, the thela, the local mithai-wala — is never on your competitive review deck but always in the consumer's mind.

Hook: "Your biggest competitor in most food categories in India isn't a brand. It's the memory of something homemade."

The Trust Architecture

How you build trust with a consumer who has never bought your category before — from packaging decisions to distribution to the first product experience.

Hook: "The first purchase is never about the product. It's about whether you feel safe enough to experiment."

Timing a Category

Why entering too early is as dangerous as entering too late — and how to read the social and infrastructure signals that tell you the market is ready.

Hook: "We could have launched Aashirvaad five years earlier. It would have failed five years earlier."

The Inorganic Bet

When to build vs. acquire a category — what the Yoga Bar and Sunrise acquisitions say about ITC's theory of category creation in 2024.

Hook: "Sometimes you acquire a category to accelerate. Sometimes you acquire it to learn."

Category Education vs. Brand Advertising

In nascent categories, your marketing budget is often doing two jobs — explaining the category and selling the brand. Most companies only brief for one.

Hook: "In a new category, the biggest mistake is advertising your brand before you've sold the category."

Premiumisation as a Category Signal

When the premium end of a category starts growing — that's not just a margin play. It's a signal the category has matured. What to do when it happens.

Hook: "Premium products don't just improve margins. They redefine who the category is for."

The Reliability Brand

Why consistency beats creativity in FMCG — and how the most durable brands in Indian food are built on predictability, not personality.

Hook: "Consumers don't love brands. They develop habits. Habits require reliability above all else."

Distribution as Brand Building

The 10 million kirana stores in India are not a distribution problem — they are the most powerful brand-building channel that most marketing teams don't own.

Hook: "The most important brand touchpoint for an Indian FMCG brand is a shelf 4 feet off the floor in a 200 sq ft shop."

The Premium Paradox

Why building a premium brand like Fabelle inside a mass distribution company requires a completely different operating system — and why most companies confuse price with premiumness.

Hook: "Premium is not a price point. It's a point of view."

Surviving the Copycat

What happens when a category you created starts filling up with followers — and how the category creator has to shift from evangelising to defending.

Hook: "Category creation is the most dangerous success. The moment you prove the market exists, everyone enters it."

The Product IS the Brand

In Indian food, 80% of brand perception is formed by the product experience itself. The consequences of underinvesting in product quality vs. advertising.

Hook: "The most powerful marketing vehicle we have at ITC Foods doesn't come from the marketing budget."

Brand Extensions: When and Why Not

The temptation to extend a strong brand into adjacent categories — why it works sometimes, why it fails more often, and the discipline required to say no.

Hook: "The brand extension that makes commercial sense on paper often makes no sense in the consumer's mind."

The Intrapreneur's Tension

Why building something new inside a large organisation is harder — and in many ways more interesting — than building a startup from scratch.

Hook: "Entrepreneurs get to start with a blank sheet. I had to start with a full one — and erase enough to make space."

Staying for 35 Years

What kept a high-performer at one company for over three decades — the answer is not comfort, and the lesson is important for how organisations retain their best people.

Hook: "People assume staying at one company for 35 years means you played it safe. It actually means the opposite."

The Forces Reshaping Indian Leadership

Speed, diversity, digital fluency, the expectations of a Gen Z workforce — how leadership requirements are changing and what experienced leaders must unlearn.

Hook: "The skills that got me to this role are not the skills I need to lead from this role. I had to relearn to lead."

Failure as Institutional Memory

Specific bets that didn't work — and what ITC's culture of learning from them taught you about how organisations should treat failure.

Hook: "The most valuable meetings I've been part of at ITC weren't celebrating wins. They were honest autopsies of things we got wrong."

The Long Game in Health

Why consistency beats intensity in personal wellness — and how thinking in decades (not quarters) applies to both your body and your career.

Hook: "I treat my body the way I'd treat a brand. Consistent inputs, long-term view, no quick fixes."

What I Eat vs. What I Know

The personal food philosophy of someone who has spent a career studying Indian food — what it's changed, what it's reinforced, and what surprises remain.

Hook: "Running a food company for 22 years changes how you eat. Here's what it changed for me."

Morning Architecture

The structure of the first two hours of the day — what it enables, and why the most productive leaders are almost always protecting this time.

Hook: "I haven't missed a morning run in — I don't want to count. The number is less important than the identity."

Energy, Not Time

Why time management is the wrong frame for senior leaders — the real currency is energy, and wellness is energy management at its most foundational.

Hook: "At this stage of my career, I don't manage time. I manage energy. The difference is everything."