All these years I thought Bata is an Indian Company! Is it my Ignorance or Powerful Brand Penetration of Bata? Excellent Case Study to Read!

Dear Friends and Students

I have been wearing Bata products for decades. I always thought it is a local brand till I read the story of Sandeep Kataria (49), Indian CEO of Bata elevated as Global CEO.

 *Just to give you the background of Sandeep*, did his Chemical Engineering from IIT Delhi (1987-91), PGDBM from XLRI (1991-93). Started with Kimberly-Clark Lever Pvt. Ltd as Brand Manager, Hindustan Lever, Unilever, Pizzahut UK, Yum Restaurants as CMO, Vodaphone Director, Bata India CEO for the last 3.5 years!

Coming back to Bata's story, it is a Switzerland-headquartered footwear major! *It is founded by Tomas Bata in 1894, a Czech entrepreneur often called the Henry Ford of the footwear industry. It is a family-owned business.*

 *Can you guess how many pairs Bata produce annually? * It is whopping- 18,00,00,000 (18 crores or 180 million shoes). Do you know how many stores they have? 5,800 stores, 22 manufacturing facilities across 5 continents/70 countries, operated by 35,000 employees.

As we are from India, we have obvious curiosity, *how many are sold in India?* It is 5 crore pairs and they serve 1,20,000 customers every day! It means, 4,38,00,000 (4.3 crores) customers visited yearly.

*How big footwear market across the world?*

Indian market is 2.2 billion pairs per year! It means every person in India buys 2 pairs per year! Do you agree? The global footwear market size was valued at $365.5 billion in 2020 and is estimated to reach $530.3 billion by 2027 (source: alliedmarketresearch.com/footwear-market). It means, worldwide, every person on average spends $52 (3,800 rupees) per year on footwear. Of course, it is not the case with lower-middle and middle-class people. Luxury footwear accounts for most of the pie.

*My Proposal to Tata*

*When Tata is successful in Salt to Steel*, why Tata International (Footwear division of Tata) is not penetrating deep into Indian style footwear? This could be big opportunity right? Tata Group can plan big!

*My Childhood Ignorance!*

In my childhood, I used to think BATA is a TATA company Maybe, the name synonym worked out for Bata in penetrating deep into the Indian market? I may be wrong! Of let, their platform named *Surprisingly Bata* is a super success. Anyways, I appreciate Tomas Bata for establishing an organization, which is still growing after 126 Years of its establishment. Hats off to their Marketing and Branding Strategy!

Congratulations Sandeep Kataria! Wish you success in this new Journey.

*We have a new addition to the Global Indian CEOs list- Arvind Krishna - CEO, IBM Group, Sundar Pichai - CEO, Google LLC & Alphabet INC, Satya Nadella - CEO, Microsoft, Shantanu Narayen - CEO, Adobe Inc., Ajaypal Singh Banga - CEO, Mastercard, Jayshree Ullal - CEO, Arista Networks, Rajeev Suri - CEO, Nokia Inc., George Curian - CEO, NetApp, Nikesh Arora - CEO, Palo Alto Networks, Dinesh C. Paliwal - CEO, Harman International, Sanjay Mehrotra - CEO, Micron Technology, Laxman Narasimhan - CEO, Reckitt Benckiser*

Best wishes to all Indian born CEOs! India going places

Your well-wisher

Ravi Saripalle

http://i2itm.blogspot.com 

Source Inspiration: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/retail/an-indian-to-lead-bata-for-the-first-time-in-126-years-of-history/articleshow/79502853.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst&fbclid=IwAR0hd4_grzBa1v14fGkpBiWr4Xi1KZmOXDzlLiOV1A0YF7gb7y4wQcgI9zg