Aiming for five-fold growth in business

She recently joined the India leadership team and heads consumer and customer marketing across the entire Bacardi India’s portfolio of brands. Bringing over a decade of leadership experience in strategy and consulting to her role, Zeenah Vilcassim, Marketing Director – Bacardi India, will be key in driving synergies across marketing, commercial and finance teams to ensure Bacardi India’s campaigns are effective, impactful and deliver on business goals. She reveals Bacardi India’s post- Covid-19 action plan
in a free-wheeling chat with Shalini Kumar.

Q: You are an economist with a background in data analysis. How much do these competencies help you in dealing with the complex regulatory and tax related issues of alcoholic beverages in India?

A: I am an economist and data analyst by training. Immediately after my training, I moved into a management consultancy role at Ernst & Young, for investment banks. Things kept getting interesting as I gained experience across different industries.

When we talk about marketing, we often talk about two key principles, namely, mental availability and physical availability. A few things we witnessed during the lockdown in India were the importance of excise duties and how each state decided to implement different policies.

Some increased the excise, some put a Covid cess tax - that is a tax on tax that was passed on to the consumers, and some did both. All these things impacted the consumers slightly differently. Uttar Pradesh put a Covid cess on each bottle, West Bengal increased the excise, and Rajasthan did both since they increased the excise as well as put in place a cess. This played a really important role in marketing.

Q: You assumed the role of the new Marketing Director of Bacardi India, at a critical time when the entire world was badly hit by the Covid-19 induced pandemic. Did this change your objectives and strategies to some extent ?

A: The challenge made it all the more interesting because there are definitely elements of business strategy which have changed because of Covid-19. At Bacardi, we call our best 10 plan a comprehensive strategy to make the next ten years the best 10 years the company has ever had.

We are working towards a long- term goal of which India is going to be a huge contributor to by 2030, and we hope that our business grows five-fold from where it is right now. The one strategy which shifted the most for me during this time was the human strategy side of our organisation.

I think the most important learning for me personally and we as a business. have had is how your leadership style adapts to the business’s needs, your team’s needs, the community’s needs. We all need to be more humane and have more empathy than ever before.

Q: From handling one brand Dewar’s Scotch Whisky as Global Brand Director to a new role of handling the entire Bacardi India’s portfolio must be posing a challenge for you, especially in a highly competitive and heavily regulated market of India. Can you please share your experience in this regard?

A: As the Global Brand Director for Dewar’s, which is one of our six core brands within our 200 strong portfolio, my responsibility has now been to create a brand strategy that started rolling out in 90 markets.

What is different about the roles is the first one is a lot more strategic in terms of creating a brand strategy. Basically, being the north star of Dewar’s and then working to understand the cultural context and how to localise it.