Latest news with #AmbiParameswaran
Time of India
7 days ago
- Automotive
- Time of India
Tesla's California cool aura faces big test on Indian terrain
As Tesla gears up for its next showroom unveiling, this time in Delhi following the recent Mumbai debut, it is clear that the brand remains a big draw despite its limited numbers and high price tag. This was more than evident from the media hysteria accompanying the Mumbai event which dominated the headlines through the day. 'Tesla is a much admired brand, not just in India but all over the world. In India, it is always seen as a cool brand given the fact that it is very popular with the Silicon Valley IT crowd and the budding tech millionaires in India also want to own one. So do the stock brokers and equity traders.' says Ambi Parameswaran , noted brand strategist and author. Observers believe the charm lies in its disruption. On US roads, a Tesla is as common as a Toyota Camry and yet it still carries the sheen of Silicon Valley sophistication. It represents something far beyond transportation. In India, this halo still exists, albeit dimmed by sticker shock. According to Sandeep Goyal, Chairman, Rediffusion, 'More than anything else, it is the badge value. To be one amongst your social and work group to own a Tesla gives you bragging rights - the glow of that social esteem is incomparable!' Diminishing aura The fact that the company has lost its aura in recent times thanks to competition from Chinese carmakers, especially BYD, could be of little consequence to buyers in India. Many are also aware that the electric movement is already underway here thanks to local brands which have thrown their hats into the ring. 'Maybe the Indian-made cars from Tata and Mahindra may be better, or BYD may be better, but Tesla has the California cool aura, so there will be a long waiting list,' says Parameswaran. Vinay Raghunath, Partner, Automotive and Mobility Sector Leader, EY India, echoes these sentiments. 'Tesla's arrival marks a milestone in India's electric mobility journey. It will elevate consumer awareness, set benchmarks in connected and autonomous mobility, and prompt OEMs and ecosystem players to invest and innovate.' Tesla is also about the charisma of its CEO, Elon Musk, who has a huge fan following among India's young techies who almost revere him. This kind of hero worship may not resonate across the US and Europe where the Tesla chief has faced a lot of heat in recent times. The Elon Musk factor He has also had a publicised falling out with US President, Donald Trump, and subsequently exited the White House administration. Musk has raised the hackles of many people in the West with his provocative comments but India could not care less. 'Tesla is an Elon Musk statement. It is a statement of futuristics married to technology. Therefore, Indians love the Tesla story,' reiterates Harish Bijoor, Business & Brand Strategy Expert, Founder – Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. Perhaps, this may not be entirely true, argues V.G. Ramakrishnan, Managing Partner, Avanteum Advisors LLP. 'Tesla's aura in India has faded slightly from five years ago. Back then, it was the ultimate symbol of aspiration. Today, some of that sheen has worn of partly due to its pricing, Musk's polarising leadership and partly because American brands have struggled to localise in India. Apple is the exception; most others—Coke, Pepsi, Domino's—had to adapt to survive.' High levies In its turn, the company cannot ignore India either even while there have been constant cribs about the high import duty levels prevalent here. The Model Y shipped from Shanghai will, consequently, cost a bomb at over INR 60 lakh and it remains to be seen if this will still attract customers by the droves to Tesla showrooms. The price tag immediately sparked a wave of memes online, with some branding the vehicle 'TAX‑LA.' On offer is the base Autopilot suite (Level 2 ADAS), while Tesla's full self-driving (FSD) package—currently restricted by Indian regulation—remains off-limits. Yet, this is of little consequence when the top priority is to test the waters here. "Tesla or for that matter any other brand in the world of auto cannot ever ignore India. India is just too big to ignore. We host the largest number of potential consumers in the world, a wee bit of a notch above China as well. India is a "never mind the price" market at the top of the pyramid hierarchy of auto. This fact is scented by Tesla,' says Bijoor. Gauging market response The market response will also give the carmaker a better idea of its longterm business plan and if it makes sense to manufacture in India. Tesla's India debut has been long in the making—delayed by red tape, regulatory uncertainty, and Musk's well-documented standoff with India's high import duties. "In many ways, Tesla delayed an Indian entry as far as possible till friendly tariffs fell into place. This is just yet to happen, but might just. Tesla does pack charm. Its charm is in its differentiation,' continues Bijoor. While no 'friendly tariff' resolution is yet in place, Tesla has decided to test the waters. And true to its style, it arrives not as a mass-market disruptor, but as a high-end provocateur. It's no secret that the Centre tweaked its electric vehicle policy to suit Tesla except that the company was in no mood to bite the bait. Whether the India-US trade pact will offer import duty concessions is also a moot point since there is now no love lost between Trump and Musk. Tesla's influence is catalytic, rather than competitive—at least for now. With luxury EVs forming just 4 per cent of the 1.5–1.6 lakh EVs sold in the first half of FY25 (roughly 5,000–6,000 units), Tesla's positioning is elite, aspirational, and niche. It does not rival Tata, MG or Mahindra on volumes but its arrival will compel everyone, from automakers to policymakers, to look up and take notice. To what extent this attention or adulation will translate into sales remains to be seen.
The Hindu
10-07-2025
- Business
- The Hindu
Marketing Mixology: A No-Jargon Guide to Success in Brand-Building
Published : Jul 10, 2025 14:42 IST - 4 MINS READ I finished reading Ambi Parameswaran's Marketing Mixology the same day I came across a rather mournful article on the future of business consulting in the age of artificial intelligence (AI)—an article that had the air of an obituary. It offered dire predictions about what might happen to human-led strategy once machine-led optimisation took over. It was, in a way, the perfect mood-setter for Parameswaran's book because it allowed me to approach Marketing Mixology from two perspectives: one that looks at the craft of marketing as we have traditionally known it, and the other reluctantly adjusted to the LED glow of a world where bots have started writing press releases, proposals, and brand kits and automating sales funnels. The book is structured around what Parameswaran calls 'four essential ingredients for marketing success': understanding the consumer, building the brand, selling and negotiation, and communication. It is a neat quartet, but Parameswaran is not trying to be flashy here. In fact, Marketing Mixology is notable for its refusal to pander to the usual genre tropes of self-congratulatory business books. It has no tortured or clichéd acronyms. It also stays away from those overcooked metaphors that make many, like me, put away business books instantly. And there are no proclamations about paradigm shifts. Marketing Mixology: Four Essential Ingredients for Marketing Success By Ambi Parameswaran Westland Business Pages: 172 Price: Rs.350 Instead, what we get is a slow-brewed collection of stories, frameworks, reflections, folk tales (Birbal makes an appearance, as he should), case studies and occasional theoretical nudges, all delivered in a matter-of-fact tone that suggests Parameswaran has been teaching the same lesson in various rooms for decades and still is not bored of it. Also Read | We are all living a lie This is a small compact book. The prose is simple. The jokes are gentle and often self-effacing. One gets the sense that the author has spent enough time in conference rooms where the air-conditioning is more aggressive than the marketing plan, and he is here to talk plainly. 'Intelligent marketing professionals do both: understand data and also understand consumers,' he writes, and this feels like common sense—until you realise how many campaigns are built on the exact opposite assumption. Anecdotal account Parameswaran blends anecdotes from his years of experience in advertising and brand consulting with empirical insights, old-fashioned wisdom, capsuled insights from marketers that made it big, and the occasional chart. But at no point does he try to position himself as a guru. He is closer to the seasoned colleague who knows how the procurement head thinks, where the bottleneck is buried, and when not to press 'send' on the big client mailer. In one moment where he discusses the art of negotiation, he recounts missing a connecting flight in London en route to Chicago. What happens next is a simple, almost throwaway incident—but it lands as an allegory for one of the fundamentals of negotiation: Just ask. While this book does not offer grand insights, it respects the intelligence of the reader. There is no evangelical promise here that branding will save your company. What Parameswaran does instead is remind us that branding is the act of listening—really listening—to what the consumer wants, fears, buys, and does not talk about in surveys. Parameswaran, who has straddled advertising, strategy, and brand stewardship with equal competence,has become something of a chronicler of the marketing industry—writing books not just about brand-building, but also about religion, rejection, personal growth, and the business of advertising itself. Marketing Mixology may not be his most ambitious book, but it might be one of his most useful. For younger readers, it serves as a practical toolkit without the jargon. For older readers, it is a gentle reminder of the deep human intelligence that underpins good marketing—an intelligence that no AI can yet convincingly simulate. Ultimately, what I found most refreshing about this book was how it avoided noise. In an age when marketing advice is available in 90-second reels, Parameswaran offers a long-form antidote: calm and deeply grounded. It is the reassuring voice of someone who still believes that a brand is built on trust and time. Also Read | Reading is good when it disturbs you: Amitava Kumar In a world where AI might soon be writing banner copy and predicting click-through rates with uncanny accuracy, this book emphasises human judgment and reminds us that clarity, empathy, and experience are not (yet, and that is a big yet) programmable. That is reason enough to read this book. And perhaps reason enough to keep your consulting gig, for now. If one were to nitpick—and what is a review without a little nitpicking—Parameswaran could have offered a longer list of curated resources, especially for readers looking to dig deeper into each theme. An index of topics would not have hurt either.
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Business Standard
19-06-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Smart glasses: Can the Apple's new device change how we capture moments?
For smart glasses to get past the chasm, brands will have to do a lot more than just lower prices, though that will help. They will have to actively create use case scenarios Ambi Parameswaran Listen to This Article 'Apple plans smart glasses for 2026 as part of AI Push', read the headline of an article in this newspaper (May 26, 2025). With Meta having stolen the lead with its Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, Apple has its task cut out. Can it do to the smart glasses market what it did with mobile phones when it launched the iPhone in June 2007? Looking back, Apple was not the first to launch a mobile phone. Brands such as Nokia, Motorola and Sony had beaten it to it. BlackBerry had the enterprise market in its vice-like grip, with even Barack Obama
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Business Standard
10-06-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Marketing Mixology: Ambi Parameswaran's book on the ideal cocktail
Marketing Mixology: Four Essential Ingredients for Marketing Success Published by Westland 172 pages ₹350 In a business-reading landscape awash with jargon-laden tomes and MBA-speak, Marketing Mixology: Four Essential Ingredients for Marketing Success is refreshingly unpretentious. The author, Ambi Parameswaran, a veteran marketer whose career straddles consumer staples, pharmaceuticals and tech, has produced a guide that feels more like a hands-on workshop than an exposition in a lecture hall. He does not march the reader through the usual catechism of STP (segmentation, targeting, positioning). Instead, each chapter opens with a problem drawn from the industry trenches and closes with a practical tool you could carry straight into Monday's team huddle. Almost every concept in the book is introduced with a relatable case that will imprint on the reader's mind the concept to be grasped. Each idea is anchored by a real-world situation: A bungled launch, an unexplored opportunity, an over-engineered presentation, a tone-deaf e-mail. This approach keeps the reader honest; you cannot skim a page without confronting a familiar real-life situation. By comparing steps to understand consumers taken by a range of organisations — from large fast-moving consumer goods companies to direct-to-consumer startups — the author illustrates how the same insight, cast in a different light, can transform a strategy from myopic to breakthrough. This makes it a good read for everyone. The book is a useful and absorbing read whether you are a recent graduate, a mid-career professional or a business leader. For a rookie graduate, the book will provide foundational knowledge with contemporary insights for a digital First World. For a mid-career professional looking to transition from tactical execution to strategic leadership, this book can address the competency gaps that emerge at this stage of a career. For business leaders, this mixology will be an essential toolkit to make informed strategic decisions even if marketing isn't their primary area of expertise. In fact, for practicing professionals, Mixology is an excellent refresher on branding. In a world where 'performance' marketers are often given sales targets, this book is a reality check. The section on myths about branding is especially relevant for new age startups and entrepreneurs. The author impresses upon the reader the importance of branding but goes one step further. He lays down a road map on the steps to master branding right from brand appraisal to brand expansion. As we go through the chapter, you realise that branding need not be a substitute but should complement all the digital spends that brands are doing almost like clockwork these days. The quote ,'If you can't measure it, you can't manage it', may not be found in many branding books, but Marketing Mixology explains it with elan. Another feature of this book is the number of pages. At less than 200 pages, this mixology can be drained in a few sittings. This book is not a tome, yet it does a wonderful job of fulfilling readers' needs. You can read this in four sittings of 30 to 45 minutes just before you sleep, or even on a Delhi-Mumbai flight. The chapters on customers and branding are fast-paced and you will find that you revisit these often at work or even at a B-school. For me, the highlight of the book was the section on sales and negotiation. We are entering an era where every marketer is part of sales conversations and vice-versa. Common sales techniques have been 'reframed' in a fun way — in this case the explanation on how a mother could cut slices of pizza among siblings is an apt example. So what might you miss in the book? To start with, this is not the book for optimising your 'click throughs' or for lowering your 'cost per lead' — not in the short term, at least. This book has many digital era connotations, but in the larger context of 2025 marketing, these are cameos, not starring roles. But the book does a great job of doing what it proposes, which is to talk about the 'four essential ingredients of marketing success'. For those new to marketing or from a non-marketing background, I would recommend this book as their first read on the subject. It's a gateway to the world of marketing that isn't intimidating but fun. Kudos to the author and the publisher for keeping it uncomplicated.
