© Rupa Shankar www.cxpdesign.com

Godrej Nature’s Basket: Differentiate, Differentiate, And Differentiate

What do you do if you find yourself sinking in the same “red ocean” business of pushing the proverbial

vegetable barrow? You create competitive differentiation.

That is what Godrej Nature’s Basket is doing to generate high growth and profits: Creating new demand

in an uncontested market space, or a “Blue Ocean”, rather than competing head-to-head with other

grocery chains for known customers in an existing industry. And they are doing this by differentiating on

three aspects: brand, service delivery, and the human side of business to create customer “wow”.

Brand

After floundering in the grocery business since 2006, Godrej took a bold new step to reinvent itself with

a focus on gourmet foods capitalizing on the global Indian’s growing taste for international foods and

flavors. It’s a niche that has given Nature’s Basket a new lease of life. It has helped position the brand as

a youthful, vibrant and trendy alternative to other big-box grocery chains in India. In 2009, nine months

after converting the floundering Nature’s Basket into a gourmet food store, its team was pleasantly

surprised that sales in seven of its Mumbai stores had grown at 70 percent – a quick validation of their

renewed brand and customer focus.

© Rupa Shankar www.cxpdesign.com

Service Delivery

Nature’s Basket combines a mix of low-margin vegetables with premium, higher margin exotic herbs and

ingredients such as basil and rosemary. Differentiation is also in understanding and mapping out a

customer’s daily food needs and providing premium, “hard pressed to find in other stores” brands and

products such as conserves, oils, sauces, pancake mixes drawing shoppers in. In-store service staff was

knowledgeable and extremely well-trained on their understanding of international cuisines. We were

wowed by the many occasions where the staff would offer ideas for recipes and actually help customers

with help putting together the complete ingredient list for a specific meal. For instance, one of the staff

members was able to put together the list of items required to prepare a gourmet Penne Arrabiatta with

ease. Customers will gladly pay more for such an experience that is not only functionally but emotionally

rewarding. Companies skilled at unlocking emotional issues and building products and services around

them can widen their profit margins.

Human Side of the Business

The store sizes are roughly 3,000 sq feet and maintain a warm, intimate, neighborhood store feel -

different from the atmosphere in a typical overstocked, overcrowded supermarket. But it’s these small

act of kindness that would not normally make headlines that differentiate Nature’s Basket experience

from the other grocery chains: when customers are shopping with a basket in hand filling it up with

items, a staff member approached with the offer to carry the basket for them as they shop. They offered

to carry shopping baskets of other customers in the store as well. In a world that is being reshaped by

the relentless advance of technology, there’s a hunger among customers, employees, and all of us to

engage with companies on more than just dollars-and-cents terms and what stands out are acts of

compassion and connection that remind us what it means to be human. If Godrej Nature’s Basket

continues along this path to identify areas for creating customer “wow”, it would earn a genuine sense

of affiliation and appreciation from customers around India.

© Rupa Shankar www.cxpdesign.com

About CXP Design

CXP Design (www.cxpdesign.com), founded by Rupa Shankar, is a platform for marketers, technologists, designers and leaders to discuss and gain a deeper understanding of cross-channel customer experience design, develop empathy for customer needs and learn how to create products and services that deliver "wow" experiences for customers.

When we check into a hotel. When we shop on-line. When we buy a pair of shoes. When we get on

a flight. These are experiences by which we measure brands every day. However, most companies

are without the tools to purposefully design those experiences for maximum value. That’s where

CXP Design comes in.

Day in, day out, we live, sleep, eat, breathe and unravel the riddle that is human experience, leading

to more loyal and committed customers for our clients.

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Rupa is an Associate Director at Happiest Minds Technologies (www.happiestminds.com), a next-

generation IT Services & Solutions company at the forefront of Providing Advisory, Implementation and

Managed Services on Social computing, Mobility, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Cloud computing,

Security and Unified Communications. At Happiest Minds, Rupa is responsible for uncovering and

activating innovative digital and social engagement strategies for its clients, spearheading the

development of frameworks and solutions for different industry verticals and enhancing the global go-to-

market strategy. She taps into her past work as both a design practitioner and marketer to help Happiest

Minds clients envision and define broad, end-to-end customer experiences.