Visionaries: Everybody has had a bad boss; Sanjeev Bikhchandani reveals inspiration behind Naukri’s famous Hari Sadu ad

When Sanjeev Bikhchandani started InfoEdge, they had no money. They were left with no choice but to skip advertising at the time. Answering the question ‘Is it possible to build a strong brand with no advertising money?’ during a fireside chat moderated by Vani Gupta Dandia, Bikhchandani added, “If you are solving an unsolved problem, chances are that customers will buy your product without you having to sell. In all our categories, we have done well where we created and pioneered the category.” He said reffering to food tech Zomato which Bikhchandani and Info Edge backed and invested in early on.

Product innovation is a huge part of the business, said Bikhchandani at the recently held Visionaries event by Storyboard18. He believes that a brand is built by managing multiple touchpoints and advertising makes a good product succeed faster and a bad product fail faster.

Read More: Visionaries: Successful businesses are built on deep customer insight, says Sanjeev Bikhchandani

The session also featured the famous 'Hari Sadu' Naukri ad released in 2006 which was conceptualised by FCB Ulka. The advertising budget allocated for this commercial was a total of Rs 5 crore. There was a study on ‘Why people switch jobs?’ The insight derived, as per Bikchandani, was that 80 percent of the people are ‘bullshitting’ when they say that they left for better career opportunities.

He explained, “It might be the reason afterwards, but they began their search because they were ‘mad’ at the boss. One of the creative professionals in an ad agency mentioned that there are three types of relationships which are very important in India.” One is the ‘mother-in-law-daughter-in-law’ relationship which has been done to death in the saas-bahu serials, and which is very important. The second is the mother-son relationship which has been done to death in Hindi movies. The third relationship which nobody has talked about is the equation shared between a boss and a subordinate.

He added, “Everybody, at some point of time in their life has had a bad boss. That is where this commercial came from.”

Other highlights from the Visionaries program

In the first edition of Storyboard18’s Visionaries recently held in Gurgaon, Suresh Narayanan, chairman and managing director of Nestle India, delivered a keynote speech.

The evening also included stimulating panel discussions on key topics. One of them, modrated by Storyboard18’s Delshad Irani included prominent names such as Kulmeet Bawa, president and MD, SAP India; Aseem Kaushik, MD, L’Oreal India; Prativa Mohapatra, VP and MD, Adobe India; Sukhleen Aneja, CEO, Good Glamm Group; Madhav Sheth, CEO, HTECH; and Devendra Chawla, CEO, GreenCell Mobility. The panel shared insights on a rather interesting topic—the relationship between CEOs and their CMOs and if CMOs can be CEOs.

The event included valuable discussions on the state of media quality in India by Saurabh Khattar, country manager, India, Integral Ad Science, and the promising future of generative AI in marketing by Gan.ai’s founder and CEO, Suvrat Bhooshan, both moderated by Storyboard18’s Shibani Gharat.

Storyboard’s Visionaries was an occasion to celebrate marketers who have made a deep impact through their work that has catapulted the growth of their respective companies and brands. This first edition of Visionaries at Gurgaon felicitated leading lights such as Shashank Srivastava, executive director, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd; Paras Sharma, director and head of content and community partnerships, Meta India; Anita Nayyar, COO, media, branding and communications, Patanjali Ayurveda; Sumit Mathur, CMO, Paytm; Sahibjeet Singh Sawhney, marketing head, Zomato; Ruchira Jaitly, CMO, Diageo India; Tarun Bhagat, CMO, India beverages, PepsiCo; and Vikrant Mudaliar, CMO, Dream11, Anoop Manohar, CMO, Axis Bank, Kartik Mohindra, CMO, Pernod Ricard India, Rajat Abbi, VP, global marketing, Schneider Electric, Sunil Suresh, CMO, Air India Limited, Raj Rishi Singh, CMO & CBO, MakeMyTrip, Rahul Talwar, CMO, Max Life, Rajeev Jain, Director - corporate marketing, DS Group, Pooja Baid, CMO, Philips Domestic Appliances, Anukool Kumar, head of marketing, India, Tinder, Ankit Desai, CMO, Hersheys India, Rahul Singh, vice president and head of marketing and sales, SAP and Ashish Tiwari, CMO, Home Credit India, Virat Khullar, group head - marketing, Hyundai Motor India and Saurabh Jain, regional marketing director, South Asia, Reckitt Hygiene, among many others.'

For more on Storyboard18 Visionaries click here.