R&D plays a vital role in shaping an Organization's future prospects. Every company invests lots of their funds on R&D activities as they want to tap the potential market on their respective fields. In this blog I want to list few examples on how R&D played a role in understanding customer requirements.
Example 1: Ather is one of the top brands in E-vehicle category for two-wheelers. They need atleast one month time to deliver the vehicle since booking is huge for Ather vehicles. Ather is based out of Hosur as they have a manufacturing plant in Hosur. Such was the demand that Ather decided to open second plant to Hosur to fulfill orders. Since they were closer to Karnataka and ladies sitting in the backside often prefer to sit with leg on both the sides hence they skipped the side step. This was all fine in Karnataka but when they reached Tamil Nadu market they saw ladies sitting on the back seat one-sided hence they badly wanted a side step to balance their legs. Ather realized this was a miss and they introduced Side step as an accessory later after they rolled out to many cities. See how R&D played a role in a very simple accessory which had huge impact on two-wheeler audiences.
Example 2: Mail In Rebate program is a famous program deployed by many US companies to woo customers. Basically a company may ask you to buy a product for XYZ amount and promise they will refund you portion of the money upon you sending list of items they request you to send. Let us say you buy a TV monitor for 1000$ and company promises to return 100$ back to you upon you sending bill, serial number and form filled in. R&D says on an average 40 to 60% of the US people don't end up redeeming the funds for reasons unknown. Had the same Mail-in rebate program deployed by Indian Companies then people would just receive the parcel and right away photocopy the bill, tear the serial number, fill in the form and post it right away. Redeem percentage would have been 80 to 90% and that is why such programs are not deployed by Indian companies.
Example 3: Ramraj Veshti is very popular brand and big thanks to the "Velcro" method of wearing the veshti. Such a simple idea which made the brand what it is today. R&D realized one of the main reasons people are not wearing a dhoti is because wearing a dhoti often loosens out thereby leading you to tie up again and again. With Velcro right from a toddler to old age people everyone is able to wear dhoti at ease.
Example 4: Kurl-on is a famous mattress brand and they did extensive research on coming up with a mattress for patients with back pain. Kurl-on introduced something called as STR8 technology where mattress bends it remains straight and does not sag. Kurl-on has tested for people who weigh even 120 kilos; Basically they want to attain firmness as well as softness through STR8 technology. R&D team constantly works with Orthopaedic specialists to deploy new innovations in their field.
Example 5: If you think of a brand in Sesame oil then no.1 brand comes to you is 'Idhayam"; Idhyam brand is a global brand used wide across the Indian people living in different parts of the world. Idhayam introduced 'Oil Pulling' way back in 90's. They gave a small sachet and upon opening it you need to goggle 10ml of the oil in empty stomach. You need to swish and swirl the oil (like how mother in laws used to do their daughter in laws) for 10 minutes and then expel the oil and rinse with water. This went viral and soon their brand got attention everywhere. Their think tank through their R&D worked very cleverly to reach a common citizen living in a remote village to a millionaire living on a posh Bangalow thereby establishing their brand to people from all walks of life.
As you can see these are just some of the examples I listed out where R&D played a major role which paid rich dividends in return to the company.
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