Desi to Global: Nataraj's 1200 crore pencil brand empire
In the 1950s, the newly independent India had witnessed significant problems in every other sector. During that period, most of the country was dependent and had a complete lack of knowledge regarding creating businesses. During that time, a boy named BJ Sanghvi was good at academics, but due to poverty, he couldn't complete his education on a great scale. He was curious about the world, deeply thinking about education and problems. Eventually, he noticed issues with pencils which were expensive, foreign-branded and many couldn't afford them.
Most of the pencils were manufactured in Europe at that time, which had great quality pencils which were dominant in the Indian market. BJ Sanghvi, along with his childhood friends, spoke about the pencil problems in India and convinced them to bring a new pencil to the Indian market.
His friends supported his idea and eventually started a path towards creating a pencil.
The real journey began to create an Indian pencil along with his friends, who moved to Europe to understand how pencils are manufactured. After a few months, they understood the concept of world-class pencils from western nations, and they successfully learned it. During this process, they understood importing wood and graphite is an expensive and time-consuming task. They have used different materials compared to other brands using local wood and material and analyzed with researchers regarding graphite. Finally, after a lot of difficulties, they finally made a pencil by using all the locally made equipment.
The product was ready after years of hard work, dedication and perseverance. But the real struggle started hitting them hard due to lack of funds, pressure and high production costs.
The Business Model of Hindustan pencils.
During the critical time of crisis, they finally understood the plan to survive in this market. They have introduced the distribution plan by directly selling their products to local vendors and targeting school children as their consumers. The product they created was affordable and easily accessible to buy multiple times. The pencil was bold, strong and had a long-time survival capacity. They named Nataraj 621 HB as a brand which eventually gained massive attention in schools and colleges during those days. Every local vendor had high demand for nataraj pencils and students felt comfortable writing. The company gained significant profits and their business became successful across India in a few years. Slowly, as time passed, as they scaled the business to office projects, they launched a new brand called Apsara pencils for professional artists, which became very popular. From colour pencils to crayons, the pencil industry has got involved in entire stationary products in indian markets. Today, Hindustan pencils have a net worth of 1200 crore empire, every day they make about 1.8 million pencils a day. A story of self-reliance Bharat could compete with international brands in the 1950s.
