Loving Mumbai - its spirit, its people, its conscience

Mumbai is my home. And I'm lovin it.

On the 3rd of January 2002 with my RX 100 on a train from Ahmedabad, I arrived in Borivali, Mumbai. From then, it has been such a positive ride.

Sure, I had my share of frustrations in the initial initiation to the big bad Mumbai. From getting the bike out of the Borivali train station to traveling in the local train to reach lower parel, the next 15 days were a nightmare. I was not used to such a fast life in Ahmedabad.

With optimism for life and no such great ambition, I started my journey to settle down in Mumbai, to get my rythm back and start my life.

In these 8 years, I moved from Borivali to Sewri (what a relocation; with of all that I had in my Yamaha to a place which is the other end of Mumbai), from Sewri to Shivaji Park, from Shivaji Park to Mahim, from Mahim to Sion and then to my own home in Tilak Nagar, Chembur.

Occupationally, I moved from advertising & media to making ad films, from marketing to online marketing to my current position of Head - Internet Banking, Deutsche Bank. Yes, I work in a bank handling technology after starting my career with an agency handling advertising.

Here, as surprised you might be as a reader, I am also surprised at the opportunities that Mumbai has given to me to discover myself, my talent and my latent interests. I followed my dreams and dreams became reality. With time, money ceased to be an issue for most of my waking hours. I do get greedy at times.

Now thats too materialistic a reason to love Mumbai. Thats not what I wanted to write today. I wanted to write about my experiences, my feelings with Mumbai in these 8 years of living here, of making such tectonic shifts in my life.

The essense is that I have never felt alone in Mumbai. I never felt insecure in Mumbai. It has given life to my will to hardwork, be good, have patience, have faith and keep going.

From that day in 2002, when I found a helping leg to push my empty tanked bike to the nearest petrol station to yesterday when I found a stranger helping my dad (a parkinson's patient) to walk in the dark theatre towards his seat (we were there to watch Aladin & I went ahead to find the row), I have so many good memories of Mumbai and its beautiful people that it fills my heart to become a better person myself. I wish thats an epidemic and everybody is therefore becoming a better person themselves.

Let me jot down a few of my everlasting memories of Mumbai:

# Borivali to Sewri for a 10 days old on a bike in Mumbai was tough. I didnt take a single wrong turn and I found my destination in around an hour and half. In Mumbai it seems nobody has time for anybody but I found time from everyone. Everytime I asked for directions from an autorickshaw driver to an office goer, I got clear directions. From dharavi, I actually found someone who told me to follow him till my destiny. He actually took an extra turn for me. It was such a great satisfying journey, which could have been the worst in my life with 3 bags in a RX 100 with no clue about road directions.

# I am a bit of a crazy bike fanatic. Once I stubborned my way to take my father to the hospital for his acupressure session. While returning, he was having problem in getting onto the bike. Two gentlemen came and help him get on the bike. It was good till then. On the way, he got uncomfortable and was not keeping his balance on the bike. I had to stop somewhere near Goregaon in the WE highway. The magic started then. In a matter of minutes, my dad was brought down from my bike, given water, a stool to sit and relax. After a good 15 minutes when my Dad was comfortable, they again helped him onto the bike and we reached home. I was overwhelmed beyond words. I decided to become a better man myself.

# The fact that I dont have to bargain when I get into an Auto / Taxi is such a relief that we can only realise when we go to Delhi/Bangalore/Chennai. There is of course a slight problem that I ocassionally face. The taxis standing close to office premises wont budge for shorter distances. Once it happened that two girls (quite good looking and so I was observing or you may say leering at them) were trying to hire a taxi. They tried the standing taxis. They didnt budge, so they started waving for the passing taxis. Suddenly I see these two traffic policemen riding a bike passing by the waving girls... What shock me is that they stopped after a few metres to instruct the closest taxi driver to take these girls wherever they wants to go. Now that changed my view about traffic police completely. It is actually such a good life sala.

# I am quite a party animal. And shoulder to shoulder brushes are quite common in any pub in Mumbai. So a few bad looks here and there is accepted to be quite common. For the past 8 years, I have only heard of a few pub skirmishes. I havenot seen them. In Delhi, every pub/party has one fight every night. I may be exaggerating a bit but fights, abuses and quarrels are so much lesser in Mumbai pubs. It is actually fun.

# Last night, in a fit of excitement I left my purse in a paan shop in Bandra. Can you believe that? Yes I managed to do that and fortunately remembered after about travelling 5 kms towards my home. Luckily I have the habit of checking for my purse and mobile every 10-15 minutes. I could only say "WTF, I am screwed." I reviewed my memory and the best chance was the paan shop we stopped. I am still under dis-belief that I have actually got back my purse. God bless the paan walla and I wish he open a paan shop chain and become a paan magnet. Really, that's how magnanimous my wishes are for him.

Let me not drag it now. Just one last line. Mumbai - its people, its spirit and its conscience is really something to be proud of and to be inculcated within.

Dont understand why we say BIG BAD MUMBAI sometimes.

Enfield Bullet - Should it evolve and How?

With the Pulsar craze changing the mindset to strive for more powerful bikes and the booming economy improving purchasing power of the youth, I think we are very close to moving from 100/125 CC phenomenon to more powerful bikes (upwards of 300 CC) phenomenon.

Now with the shortly to be launched Pulsar 300 cc, the shift of mindset will be even faster. Bike makers are taking advantage of this new future demand forecast. Bikemakers are finally daring to come close to the till now untouchable 350 CC.

Where Royal Enfield rules the roost...

Is there finally an atttempt at encroachment towards the enfield fiefdom?

I own one. I vehemently used to deny that.

But with digital odometre/speedometer, digital fuel gauge, digital trip metre, indicators for air filter condition, engine temperature, battery voltage and Oil level (Pulsar has all these !!) combined with a 350 CC engine makes me think again....

Consumers are shifting to technologically more advanced bikes and now with this emerging trend towards 300 CC and above bikes, it is high time that Enfield builds its high walled fort with custom made canons !!!

Its the question of keeping alive or saving the pride that an enfield owner derives...

I am not worried as such but just being in a mood to forecast the worse... the worse is Enfield Bullet needs to evolve to save its skin.

But how do you evolve from an Enfield Bullet? So much heritage, so much ego, so much resistance to change (both from consumer & bike maker perspective)..... what do you do !!!

Let me start my campaign to arrive at ideas of how should the Enfield Bullet evolve to a new avatar keeping its integrity, lineage, and everything subjective and objective about bullet alive....

I invite comments from all of you to bring about a positive change to bullet, a positive commercially viable evolution for Enfield Bullet.... lets see what comes about....

Branding Yamaha in India

Sometimes, when I go back to my agency days I just cant get over the ways that we used to give names to upcoming brands. It used to be a combination of the

• craziness/creativity of the copywriter (sometimes the art guy gets a call if he is a combination with the copy guy),
• the creative brief (often shoddily written by the client/servicing guy with no eye-sight, hand-sight or hind-sight),
• the planning guy's two-bits (literally) if he existed in the system (if he did, he was often too busy with a presentation that he had to finish two weeks back)
• and the occassional evesdropping like comments by the big bosses.

These were the ingredients to a name given to a new product offer that is intended to exist for the next generation.

Branding as a subject is so huge that I am not experienced enough to write a philosophy; however it is my passion for a brand called YAMAHA that leads me to many questions. I would like to hint at one of them. Because that's what is eating me right now...

Do we really think 20 years of history and 20 years of future before arriving at a brand name?

Yamaha created a storm with its RX100 and RD350 superbikes. It was everything going good for Yamaha. Great Bikes, Good foresight from the house of Escorts and perhaps good branding!

RX100 and RD350 are still names that youngsters take with pride. Then suddenly things turned turtle. Out of all mess, some agency named one of the new models of Yamaha - CRUX.

What is the logic behind not sticking to the numerical format of branding? When Crux failed, Crux-R failed, some one should have had the sense of getting back to the the strong numerical format of branding that has worked for Yamaha in India.

Then a miracle happened. Someone rebranded the Libero (a good bike but failed in the market) as the G5. I thought now this brand will roll in India. And Yamaha was pumping big monies into media advertising.

But today, I saw Yamaha has launched a new 106 cc model named Alba. I can only get red with anger. What's wrong with Yamaha?

Worst is the launch TV advertisement. No sign of John Abraham. Cant believe the inconsistency. If John was promoted as the brand ambassador of Gladiator and not Yamaha as a whole, it would have been perhaps okay to not take him for one product... but now it is a complete hara kiri.

They were however consistent in copying the most ordinary bike advertising using a sexy female getting attracted to the biker.

How can a mere 106 cc bike be promoted as something that girls fall for. If they had launched a 250 cc version then this kind of advertising would have made some little sense. But now... the advertising agency deserves to be sacked.

Lets look at some of the comments in other blogs:

• ...i wouldnt buy it even if i got that female model in a package deal!!
  
• I am now entirely convinced that Yamaha India is being run by people who are seriously brain-damaged, and who are incapable of running a motorcycle manufacturing operation in India. Expect the company to go bust in the next 6 - 12 months.In the meanwhile, here's the most interesting Alba in the world: Jessica Alba. You can find her here: http://www.skins.be/celebrity/jessica-alba/
  
• Alba, eh? HA HA and HA! Yamaha has gone totally bonkers I suppose if they still insist on launching such utter crap. And this, after all the auto mags have been saying that Yamaha's next bike in India is going to be a 250! If you ask me, Yamaha is now by far the worst bike company in India, with by far the worst motorcycles in their lineup. Fuck you, Yamaha!

What do I say? For sure, Yamaha Motors should do three things which is theory and one thing which is emotional:

1. Sack the marketing department - they cant do a single thing right. Even the name of the website was spelt wrong in the collaterals of Alba launch.
2. Sack the advertising agency - they are not even worth the FAF!
3. Hire a good qualitative research agency and do a India-wide research campaign to understand what Yamaha needs to do to survive in India.

Please hire people who are passionate about Yamaha - the brand. Hire people who have driven the RX100 or the RD350 at least once.

This is an absolute must.