Patanjali and Jio - A Disruptive Innovation or Patriotic Branding ?

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” – Simon Sinek

There are Challenger brands which bring new innovations, newly improved products by adding some extra tweaks and there are other brands called Disruptor brands, which comes into the market and changes the total structure of the industry. I believe Patanjali and Jio are Disruptor brands rather than mere challenger brands. 

A disruptive innovation is all about the companies which focus on customers future needs and come up with a new solution to disrupt the market, while patriotic branding is about branding the company initially by ingesting a sense of national pride among the consumers for persuading them to buy the offerings of the company.

Patanjali, a name of a company which has the power to pass cold shivers to the most reputed MNC brands in India and Jio, which flabbergasted whole India with its ground level pricing strategies in the telecommunications world.

Actually, I think, there is no one who can ever describe the revolutions which are bought by these two swadeshi brands recently. These brands metamorphosed the two lucrative industries (FMCG and Tele-Communications) of Indian economy with a considerable ease. Soon after these brands launched, people queued like anything outside the stores and not only the Indian people loved these brands so much, and also they developed an exorbitant sense of loyalty towards them. 

Why Jio and Patanjali so much successful in their respective industries even though they are mere debutants? Why are these two brands so much loved by all the people regardless of different income levels and regions of targeting? Why are these two brands considered as disruptions not only in Industry but also in the economy as well? 

All these questions have only one answer, that is the 'Purpose of the business'. They both focused on 'Indian customers boundless patriotism' along with customer's need for lower-priced goods and services rather than inventing something that is not useful to people. Jio's main purpose is to promote high-speed internet network in India to develop Indian youth digital literacy in a rapid manner supporting the Narendra Modi's Digital Vision, while Patanjali's chief purpose is to promote Ayurvedic and Indian products thereby attaining prosperous and Healthy country. 

The Question now is, what these two well sought out brands have in common?

1. Disrupted the Indian Market

The introduction of Jio and Patanjali is perceived to be a nightmare to its competitors. Jio's unveiling ceremony on September 1st, 2016 led to a rapid crash in share prices of Industry leaders like Idea, Airtel, etc. and from that day, It is like a year of an ordeal for all telecommunication giants in India. On the other side, Patanjali distorted the entire FMCG industry with its ayurvedic and natural products and now, every company is launching its own ayurvedic range products to face the competition from Patanjali.

2. Penetration Pricing

Both Jio and Patanjali relied upon lower prices as their success mantra and it actually paid them off in a big manner. The Jio's tariffs are so cheaper and faster when compared to its competitors, and so is the case with Patanjali also. These two brands ended the long and arduous high pricing slavery of Indian customers.

3. Home country brands

There is no need for introduction for Reliance, which is actually one of the oldest and largest organizations in the world with many diversified businesses across the world. On the other side, there is no person who doesn't know 'Baba Ramdev', who owns the name Patanjali brand and there are many people who follow Baba Ramdev and his Yoga and preachings.

4. Nation Building

Jio wants to provide the fastest internet with the lowest possible cost for the people of India, which it believes to have a Nation building effect and it drives technology literacy among the citizens of India. Patanjali wants to promote the swadeshi products and it indirectly supporting many policies like 'Buy Indian, Be Indian'.

5. Less cost advertising

Jio's customers are its brand promoters and you won't see any big movie stars or sports stars promoting Jio's services because the company which is focused on benefiting the customers don't require any special and integrated marketing efforts. Same is the case with Patanjali, it doesn't use any well-known stars, instead of many of the products are promoted by Baba Ramdev himself, which makes the advertising less costly.

When Patanjali launched its first product, many MNC's took it lightly and ignored the potential of Patanjali's products. As opined by some business experts, Marketing is all about value creation, value communication and value delivery. The two rising brands Jio and Patanjali, are widely successful in these three aspects which helped them gain huge market shares, customers love, economies of scale and more importantly, it brought them competitors profanity.