Anurag Das on LinkedIn: Porsche 911 is one of the greatest cars ever built, and Porsche is an… (2024)

Ever seen a woman smoking? You might have, but women were never meant to smoke because cigarette companies brainwashed women into loving cigarettes. And this was an unethical yet brilliant business move.How? Let's figure it out. Welcome to day 86 of Unlocking Business Brilliance 100-Day Challenge. In 1924, if you are a man, you basically smoke all day every day. And thus, tobacco companies started making millions. But guess what? The growth of these tobacco companies stopped because every man smokes and there is no one new to sell to anymore. But then a man named Edward Bernays gets an idea, that was about to change the world forever. And the idea was to target the second biggest market after men, which was women. Because if women, like men, started smoking, then the tobacco companies would make billions. So they started spending millions on marketing targeted at women. But isn't smoking for men? Women asked, and their marketing failed. But later, Eddie realized that women don't want to smoke, but they want equality. And thus, Eddie convinced female feminist protesters to smoke as a symbol of going against the patriarchy and being equal with men. And what happened later is history.

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Did you know that shampoo is a scam that was created in order to make your hair even worse? Procter & Gamble basically lied to the whole world and gave birth to the multi-billion-dollar industry of shampoos.But what's the story? Let's wash it out. Welcome to Day 84 of Unlocking Business Brilliance, a 100 day challenge. You see, we didn't use shampoos for centuries because our hair is magical and has its own cleaning oil.You see, in the 1920s, women started using a sticky substance to style their hair. Also, they used normal soap in order to wash it off. P&G noticed this and said it was not healthy to use normal soap for your hair. They launched a liquid soap which was basically shampoo. But then, as time passed, the trend of using sticky liquids to style hair went away. So people stopped buying shampoo, and P&G had a problem. Now, what P&G did was brilliant. They started marketing shampoo as a health product instead of relating it to style, creating a fake notion that the natural oil on your head is unhealthy and needs to be rinsed and removed daily. They even used fake doctors to communicate this in their ads. You never needed shampoo, but it still makes 100 billion dollars every year.

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Did you know that weekends were invented by a famous businessman to get richer? Let's figure out how Henry Ford invented our most beloved concept of weekends in order to make billions of dollars. Welcome to Day 83 of Unlocking Business Brilliance, a 100-Day Challenge. In the 1900s, factory work sucked. The workers were forced to work seven days a week with very little pay. But one factory owner noticed that happy workers built better and more stuff when compared to sad and tired workers. The factory owner was none other than Henry Ford, and he decided to increase their pay and decrease their shift times. This led to better cars being built. But due to increased income, these workers started buying cars. But they didn't have the time to drive them, so they demanded more time off. But this would bankrupt Henry Ford, because he was already paying them more. So Ford pulls a brilliant move. He gives the workers a weekend, but he also gives them an employee discount on company-produced cars. This resulted in thousands of Ford cars being sold to their employees. And today, Ford earns a quarter billion dollars selling their own cars to their own employees. Share this with a friend you celebrate weekends with.

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Did Ratan Tata just lose to Piyush Bansal? No. In fact, he's an investor in Piyush Bansal's Lenskart. But Lenskart has beaten players like Titan eye+, and has become a 3000 crore spectacle giant. But how?Let's figure it out. Welcome to Day 81 of Unlocking Business Billiance 100-Day Challenge. Piyush Bansal was an electrical engineer who knew nothing about spectacles. So how did he create such a huge company that beat players like Tata?First of all, Lenskart started in 2010, when the Indian eyewear market was highly unorganized. Which it still is. And Piyush, knowing this, also noticed that there was no single big brand from which people could buy spectacles. People depended on their neighborhood optical shops in order to get their glasses made. And this is where Piyush positioned Lenskart. But where they actually hit a gold mine was to let people try glasses on their website online. This gave them their unfair advantage and put their sales through the roof. Lenskart also perfected their price points because it had to be affordable and at the same time they needed to provide premium services to their users and customers. Also, when other brands stood for being a medical requirement provider, Lenskart made buying glasses and frames a fashion statement. Share this with a friend who wears glasses.

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This Marwadi guy leveraged a simple logo in order to create a 17,000 crore jewellery brand. Mehtun Sachete founded Carat Lane in 2008 with the prediction that people in India would like to buy jewellery online. But Carat Lane was failing miserably and was about to shut down. So what insights did they crack in order to crack the jewellery e-commerce market in India? Let's figure it out. Welcome to Day 80 of Unlocking Business Brilliance 100-Day Challenge. See, India, being India, trusts companies not so easily. And who would want to buy diamonds and jewellery from a website? And this was the exact reason why Carat Lane was facing crores in losses every month. At this time, the investors and the marketplace gave up on Carat Lane. But in 2016, something happened that changed Carat Lane forever. Titan, a Tata entity, came forward and acquired Carat Lane. After this, Mehtun figured out that buying jewelry for people is a touch-and-feel experience. And thus, buying jewellery should be a physical experience instead of being just a digital experience. Physical meaning physical plus digital. Because the conversion might happen online, but the conviction has to take place inside a real store. After this, Carat Lane went on to open physical stores. And when people visited their stores, they got to know the quality of their products, and they started trusting them more. Also, for the final touch-up, they started marketing themselves as a Tanishk partnership in order to borrow some of that huge Tata credibility. Brilliant. Share this with a Marwadi friend right now.

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Intervue: a company that appeared on Shark Tank is solving a big problem by hiring the right people. And by doing this, they have become a 75 crore company. Basically, they're helping companies outsource the process of taking technical interviews with the help of engineers who want to get paid in order to take these interviews. That's great. But for their product to work, they have to convince two types of demographics. First are the companies that want to hire new people, and second are the engineers who are going to conduct these interviews. But who should they target first out of both? It's such a chicken and egg problem, but let's figure it out. Welcome to Day 79 of Unlocking Business Brilliance: A 100 Day Challenge. Let's take Uber for example. They needed both the drivers and the riders for their platform.So there must have been a confusion on whom to onboard first, the drivers or the riders. See, riders were ready to adapt to Uber, but the drivers were doubtful because their livelihoods depended on it. Also, onboarding many riders with no caps to book would destroy the experience, right? And that's why Uber focused on onboarding drivers rather than riders, because more drivers would automatically result in a great experience. Thus, a startup should always focus on onboarding the harder-to-convince category of users to build an efficient user base and make the development process easier. Share this with someone who watches Shark Tank.

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2ND HAND CARS SIRF WOHI LOG KHARIDTE HAIN JIN KE PAAS PAISE NAHI HOTE!This sentence right here is the biggest problem for companies like Cars24. Meet the co-founder of Cars24, who built a $3.8 billion company by selling used cars. But in a country like India, where buying a second-hand car is considered taboo, what's the insight on which they built such a huge startup?Let's figure it out. Welcome to Day 78 of Unlocking Business Brilliance: a 100 Day Challenge.Cars24 was started with the vision of organizing the unorganized market of used cars in India. The insight was that if there is friction involved in carrying out a task, then there's opportunity for business over there. And we all know what a task it is to find the right buyer for your used car or buy the right used car for yourself without getting scammed. Even startups like No Broker and 99 Acres were built on this exact insight. Also, you might think that Cars24 earns its money solely based on the buying and selling of used cars. But that's not the case. You will be surprised to know that Cars24 makes 35% of its money from financing these used cars. So it's also a non-banking financial institution because three out of five cars they sell are sold on financing. Don't forget that they use AI to determine the prices and value of these cars. Customer-centric approach inside full products and scalable tech can be credited for their success. Share this with a friend who owns a car.

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Watching IPL is a waste of time, only if you don't understand how it works. Because sometimes you may have asked yourself questions like how does RCB make money even after losing for so many years or what's the business model of IPL. So let's figure IPL out. Welcome to day 77 of Unlocking Business Brilliance: a 100 day challenge.IPL was the brainchild of Lalit Modi. He understood the power of national leagues like NBA and its influence over people and he wanted to do something similar in India and thus IPL was born. See the IPL ecosystem works this way. First there are the administrators and organizers which are BCCI and IPL governing council as IPL is the asset of BCCI. Then there are franchises which are your teams. Then there are streaming platforms and broadcasters of IPL. Streaming rights belong to JIO and broadcasting rights belong to Star Sports and these rights are bought by these companies for thousands of crores from BCCI and they earn a profit by selling ad spots to brands that play between these matches. And a certain percentage of the money that BCCI makes by selling these rights is then later distributed among the franchises. And that's how the fundamental side of IPL works.

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Byju's is dead. The once valued at $22 billion giant is now in deep waters and that's the case with majority of edtech startups. But there was a time where the edtech space was booming with unicorns and billions of dollars of funding. So why did the space grow so quickly and came crashing down minutes after that? Let's figure it out. Welcome to Day 76 of Unlocking Business Brilliance, a 100-day challenge. First, let's understand why edtech startups had leverage over offline coaching centers. When you own an offline coaching center, you have to pay salaries to the teachers, non -teaching staff, pay rent and incur other huge marketing expenses. Also, you can only teach to people within your geographical limits. But in the case of edtech, the teacher had to record the course just once and then it can be sold to the entire nation using social media marketing as social media consumption was increasing due to cheap internet. Also, the profit margins of edtech startups were way better when compared to offline coaching centers. And looking at these VCs funded these startups left and right. But as the barrier of entry went down, the competition in the space grew and the customer acquisition cost of these startups kept on increasing and their margins became thinner and thinner until they converted into losses. And as the pandemic ended, schools, colleges, coaching centers started functioning as normal and this triggered the downfall of edtech space in India. Share this with someone who needs to know this.

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