- What do you think Tier 2 companies often have that metro-based companies don’t, and what do they still lack when it comes to building visibility and reputation?
I don’t think the difference is necessarily in capability. In many cases, companies outside the metros have a strong operating advantage. What has often been missing is visibility, partly because there were fewer opportunities to access national platforms, and partly because there wasn’t always an in-depth understanding of what these businesses were actually building.
A company can spend decades building manufacturing and R&D capabilities, yet that story may never travel beyond its region. At Vega, we understand the importance of telling that story. That’s why we look for partners who take the time to understand our business, experience our ecosystem first-hand, and bring that depth of understanding into how they tell our story.
- As a business leader, what would you like national media, consumers and other businesses to understand about companies being built outside India’s traditional metros?
Look at what is being built, rather than where it is being built.
A large part of India’s manufacturing and product ecosystem has always been based in Tier 2 and smaller cities. Many of these companies have spent decades building capabilities where they are. What is changing now is that geographical constraints around visibility and access are reducing, and more legacy businesses are getting the opportunity to tell their stories nationally.
We’ve seen that journey at Vega. Belagavi has been our manufacturing base for decades, but we’ve also built seven plants across the country and taken our products to more than 45 countries. The MX Carbon is another example. It is not simply a product manufactured in Belagavi; much of the engineering and composite manufacturing capability behind it has been built here.
- With products like the MX Carbon, how important was it for Axor to put not just the product, but its Indian manufacturing story, on the national stage?
It was important because the MX Carbon is the outcome of a much longer journey. Vega has been working with carbon fibre since 1998, building the knowledge and manufacturing capabilities to work with the material.
The 1,050-gram weight is only one part of the story. Getting there meant examining every component and asking where we could remove a few grams without compromising protection. There was no single breakthrough; the final result came from hundreds of small engineering decisions.
We wanted to put that story on a national platform because it shows that advanced products can be conceived, engineered and manufactured in India.
- The MX Carbon launch went beyond a conventional product announcement. What made you look for a deeper storytelling and communications approach for the launch?
A conventional launch would focus on specifications, weight, certifications, materials and price. Those are important, but they don’t explain why the product exists.
The MX Carbon represents nearly three decades of work with carbon fibre, so we wanted the story to go beyond the product and into the capability, decisions and manufacturing journey behind it.
We also wanted journalists to experience the helmet first-hand, from seeing how it is made in Belagavi to experiencing it on the tracks here. What better way to tell that story than to bring them to the place where the capability has been built? It allowed them to see, understand and experience the product beyond a conventional launch.
- When you look at the next generation of Indian brands, do you think geography still plays a significant role in how brands are perceived and discovered?
Geography still has an influence, but I think its role is changing.
Historically, being in a metro gave a company easier access to media, talent, investors, partners and sometimes even consumer attention. That naturally created an advantage in how quickly a brand could become visible.
But the distribution of opportunity has changed. A product can be designed in one city, manufactured in another, sold across the country and reach a global customer through digital channels. The fact that one in five new GCC’s established in India in 2023 chose a Tier-2 city is one indication of this shift.
What matters increasingly is whether the company has something distinctive to say and, more importantly, whether it has the capability to back it up.
- What does an ideal agency partnership look like from a founder/business leader’s perspective? At what point does an agency move from being a service provider to becoming a strategic partner?
For me, the difference is in how well the agency understands the business.
A service provider executes a brief. A strategic partner understands what the company is trying to build and can challenge the brief when needed.
With the MX Carbon, the obvious story was the helmet, its weight, materials and certifications. The deeper story was Vega’s almost three decades of work in carbon fibre, our manufacturing capabilities and where we want to take the premium business.
That requires an agency to understand the company, not just the campaign.
I think Scratchpad understands the importance of that.
The relationship should work both ways; we should be able to challenge the agency, and the agency should be comfortable challenging us. And above all, there should be trust shared between the two. Trust in the vision and the outcome.
That’s when an agency becomes a partner in building the company’s reputation, not just executing its communication.
