With restricted overseas travel, shifts have happened from duty- free to dutypaid purchases in upscale off- trade retail formats... New routes such as home delivery are also opening
Our focus and agility resulted in a decisive early lead on competition. When the lockdown was lifted, our salesforce and supply chain were the first to be humming again. We were off the race first and kept building on the initial momentum as the weeks rolled on.
Cognizant that there would be immense pressure on revenue, we redoubled efforts on productivity across all cost lines, extracting efficiencies in advertising and promotional spending, saving in non-staff overheads, reducing interest costs, finding logistical efficiencies and practising overall fiscal discipline. We focussed on receivables and managing credit, trimmed inventory across the value chain and improved the quality and efficiency of payables. We exercised judiciousness into capex projects based on business criticality and return on investment.
Margin Boost
vides strong on-ground support to qualifying outlets, with physical equipment and ‘hygiene kits’, and helps to establish partnerships with online reservations and cashless systems.
Caring For Employees
Supporting and connecting with our people as they worked through a difficult year has been central to our way of managing the crisis. We announced work from home ( WFH) for all our office employees a week before the announcement of the lockdown. Apart from giving them the wherewithal for a seamless transition to WFH arrangements, we announced a host of benefits early April, including counselling for employees and their families, leave to care for family members impacted by Covid, and insurance benefits paid by the company to the named beneficiaries of our employees, should they succumb to this virus. We continued our focus on learning and development with ‘My Learning Hub’ serving as a distance-learning platform. We introduced ‘We Care’, a multi-pronged comprehensive programme for physical, mental, financial and social wellbeing.
Frequent and transparent communication with our employees has been central to not only sustaining, but actually building engagement. These include 15-minute Townhalls, ‘Coffee Connects’ with our leaders, employee thematic campaigns on the intranet, group discussions on specific topics and virtual social events with family.
There can be many ways to respond to a crisis. Think of this as a sharp curve on an auto racetrack — the best place to pass competitors but requiring more skill than straight roads. For Diageo India, a combination of focus and agility, partnering our larger ecosystem and keeping our employees engaged, helped us forge ahead in a competitive race under testing conditions.
I remain bullish about the long- term growth prospects of the alco- bev category in India. The country’s structural growth drivers remain intact, amplified by the added momentum during this crisis, of in- house consumption and premiumisation. As drinking has moved in- home during the pandemic, there is a silent withering of the traditional taboos on drinking at home. As consumers discover that drinking at home is safer and lighter on the wallet, there is a further impetus on premiumisation, with consumers upgrading their alcohol choices and drinking better. With restricted overseas travel, shifts have also happened from duty- free to duty- paid purchases in upscale off- trade retail formats.
New routes to reach out to consumers such as home delivery are opening. We anticipate states adopting e-governance to facilitate ease of doing business. These developments will give a significant boost to business and shape it for the better in the long-term, helping the industry and adding revenues to state coffers.
Finally, as we come out of this crisis, we are even more acutely aware of the deep and elemental need for human connection. This in turn will reinforce a changing narrative for the role of alcohol in the society, placing it in the heart of socialising and celebration.
Indeed, the best for our industry lies ahead.