The small entrepreneurs under Khadi and village industries board face serious problem of establishing themselves in the consumer market. Due to the lack of exposure these small businesses have to struggle hard to confront direct competition from the big brands. These small businessmen don’t have enough funds to avail the service of advertising companies.
“We don’t get enough consumers. The main problem is of advertisement. Television ads cost is too high for us. If we want to beat the big brands we have to invest in the ads. But the big hurdle is lack of capital. We cannot afford to invest 4 lakhs for one advertisement,” said, Pawan Guliani Marketing Head of the Khadi Abeers a cosmetic brand.
In today’s competitive market these small business stand nowhere close to the mega brands. These products are mainly dependent upon the Khadi stores on consignment basis. In the private stores the products get a tough competition from other international brands. “It takes a long time to establish a profitable business. Mainly we manufacture the product and supply it to the Khadi store. We get the money on the basis of the sale of the product,” he mentioned
Explaining more about the marketing problem he added “We supply our products in the market but because of the lack of exposure through advertisements we fail to attract the consumers. They prefer some top brand names over our product.” The Government organised fairs and other Khadi outlets are the few platforms they get to expose their products to the consumers.
“Apart from these fairs we do not get exposure in front of the large number of people. Even in the fairs we don’t always get much crowd. We lack enough funds to promote ourselves from the television advertisements. On the regular basis we could make only small efforts like, we put up canopy stalls in the markets,” he said. Under Khadi Udyog Government provides loan and subsidies to start a business but there is virtually no help for them to market their products except the fact that these businesses get representation in the fairs organised by the Government.
“We provide finances to the small scale business. But it is not possible for us to fund them in advertisements. We don’t have any such funds. They are free to promote themselves out of their own money,” said Rajeev Malhotra Development officer of Khadi and Village Industries Commission.