Target the tuna to hit the shark

As a sequel to my column last week, I can't emphasise enough the importance of focusing on a smaller catch with an eye on a bigger target as an effective strategy for turning around a business.

While presenting a case study in an advance management programme that I attended at Harvard University, a professor discussed common mistakes by CEOs in managing a business in crisis. Based on his research, more than 80 percent of CEOs fail when they aim to compete mainly with the market leader.

He stressed it is easier to compete with your adjacent weaker market players than the market leader. Hence, when Robi was in the woods, my strategy was to attack BanglaLink, our nearest competitor, leaving Grameenphone for later.

Robi had been a strong number two player in the market until it lost its position to BL in 2008. During 2009-13, Robi experienced rapid growth, with its revenue multiplying 2.3 times, EBIDTA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) 2.6 times and a market share gain of 6.7 percentage points.

The growth pace was disrupted in 2014-16 when Robi opted to be a sensible player, among other strategies. As the chief operating officer at the time, I was completely against it as I believed Robi, being a smaller player, should be the challenger.

In a four-player telecom market, the nearest and relatively weakest market player was BL. Because of the merger with Airtel and having a higher spectrum, Robi had some advantages over BL. Most telecom operators are known to experience grave disruption during network mergers, losing out significantly on market shares in the process. Presumably, BL was banking on that, too, and hence did not invest enough in the network.

Another rationale behind targeting BL was its market strength was limited to only southern Bangladesh, Mymensingh and Dhaka, thereby making the fight selective so that even if Robi lost, the impact would be minimal on the whole business.

The mission to reshape Robi started with five key strategies. One of which was to first "Kill BL" and consequently "Attack GP" in its dominant Barishal and Sylhet markets.

Based on the above, the network equipment acquired from the Airtel redeployment plan in 2016 was reprioritised to focus on South and later Mymensingh and lunged in with an aggressive price and marketing campaign. Within three months, Robi's network was almost at par with BL in their dominant markets.

In Dhaka, Airtel had a strong presence that helped Robi put up a strong fight with a dual-brand strategy against BL and GP.

As a challenger in that market, when Robi played a price game over BL, the revenue crunch was far greater for BL than for Robi. Furthermore, unlike BL, Robi could offset the impact of price reduction with aggressive growth.

To match Robi's price, BL had to endure a big hit not only in that region but in its total revenue because of its overdependence on these regions. Robi took full advantage of BL's dilemma.

This strategy and its excellent execution by the team led to Robi gaining a 3.6 percentage points market share and BL losing around 5.1 percentage points between Q1 2017 and Q1 2020 (indicative). Additionally, Robi per-site revenue increased 2.8 times, and EBITDA margin shifted from a whopping 33.2 percent negative to a positive 23.1 percent.

Confident with initial success against BL, Robi thought, why not have a go at GP in their strongholds to test their strength? We identified two super-dominant GP markets: Sylhet and Barishal.

The result was great but different from the expectation: Robi gained a 6pp market share, at the cost of BL, approximately 5pp and GP 1pp. The per-site revenue increased by 4.1 times, with the EBITDA margin improving from a minus 75 percent to a plus 25 percent. While the target here was to attack GP, success came more from BL, which taught us that GP is the market leader for a reason!

A company needs more than good strategies and execution to win against a market leader in the short term. Similarly, GP and BL repeatedly attacked Robi in its strong markets like Chittagong, Noakhali and Cumilla with little success.

Pran may be cited as a great example. It is a local company with a distribution depth similar to that of Unilever. Pran never tried to challenge Unilever's products. It may have taken learning from the halal–haram soap fight between Aromatic and Unilever in 1996.

Aromatic failed to survive; it requires not a single victory but repeated wins to lead the market based on the right market insight. While Aromatic felt the victory was due to the campaign, Unilever's internal assessment was that extremely poor-quality soap was the reason.

Therefore, in strategising a business turnaround, factors to be considered include the importance of targeting weaker competitors rather than directly challenging market leaders, understanding the competitive landscape, executing strategies effectively, reviewing past industry mistakes to avoid futile battles, and recognising advantages held by market leaders.

The author is founder and managing director of BuildCon Consultancies Ltd