A STUDY ON
PLUM GOODNESS & ITS SUSTAINABLE MANUFACTURING
A PROJECT REPORT SUBMITED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF DEGREE OF
‘B.B.A LLB’
SUBMITTED BY:
ADITI KEDIA
REG. NO: 121933201001
UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF
Dr.PALISETTI GIRIBABU
GITAM SCHOOL OF LAW
(GITAM DEEMED TO BE UNIVERSITY)
CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that the project report titled PLUM GOODNESS & ITS
SUSTAINABLE MANUFACTURING submitted by ADITI KEDIA to GITAM
DEEMED TO BE UNIVERSITY as a part fulfilment for the internal assessment is
the outcome of her research work carried out under my guidance.
Place: Visakhapatnam
Date:
GUIDE SIGNATURE
DECLARATION
I do hereby declare that this piece of Internal Assessment project work on Plum
Goodness & its Sustainable Manufacturing submitted by Aditi Kedia to GITAM
DEEMED TO BE UNIVERSITY as a part fulfilment of my course B.B.A LLB has
not been submitted previously to any other institution including this university or
published anywhere.
NAME: ADITI KEDIA
REG. NO: 121933201001
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
One of the pleasant aspects of preparing a project report is the opportunity to thank
those who have contributed to make this project possible.
I’m immensely grateful to our marketing professor, Dr. Palisetti Giribabu for
guiding me throughout the completion of this project and also my sister who
helped me with the little details about the topic and all those who have directly and
indirectly helped me in completing this assignment.
THANK YOU
NAME: ADITI KEDIA
INTRODUCTION
What is Marketing?
Marketing refers to activities a company undertakes to promote the buying or
selling of a product or service. Marketing includes advertising, selling, and
delivering products to consumers or other businesses. Some marketing is done
by affiliates on behalf of a company.
Professionals who work in a corporation's marketing and promotion departments
seek to get the attention of key potential audiences through advertising. Promotions
are targeted to certain audiences and may involve celebrity endorsements, catchy
phrases or slogans, memorable packaging or graphic designs and overall media
exposure.
Understanding Marketing
Marketing as a discipline involves all the actions a company undertakes to draw in
customers and maintain relationships with them. Networking with potential or past
clients is part of the work too, and may include writing thank you emails, playing
golf with prospective clients, returning calls and emails quickly, and meeting with
clients for coffee or a meal.
At its most basic level, marketing seeks to match a company's products and
services to customers who want access to those products. Matching products to
customers ultimately ensures profitability.
Product, price, place, and promotion are the Four Ps of marketing. The Four Ps
collectively makes up the essential mix a company needs to market a product or
service. Neil Borden popularized the idea of the marketing mix and the concept of
the Four Ps in the 1950s.
Product
Product refers to an item or items the business plans to offer to customers. The
product should seek to fulfill an absence in the market, or fulfill consumer demand
for a greater amount of a product already available. Before they can prepare an
appropriate campaign, marketers need to understand what product is being sold,
how it stands out from its competitors, whether the product can also be paired with
a secondary product or product line, and whether there are substitute products in
the market.
Price
Price refers to how much the company will sell the product for. When establishing
a price, companies must consider the unit cost price, marketing costs, and
distribution expenses. Companies must also consider the price of competing
products in the marketplace and whether their proposed price point is sufficient to
represent a reasonable alternative for consumers.
Place
Place refers to the distribution of the product. Key considerations include whether
the company will sell the product through a physical storefront, online, or through
both distribution channels. When it's sold in a storefront, what kind of physical
product placement does it get? When it's sold online, what kind of digital product
placement does it get?
Promotion
Promotion, the fourth P, is the integrated marketing communications campaign.
Promotion includes a variety of activities such as advertising, selling, sales
promotions, public relations, direct marketing, sponsorship, and guerrilla
marketing.
Promotions vary depending on what stage of the product life cycle the product is
in. Marketers understand that consumers associate a product’s price and
distribution with its quality, and they take this into account when devising the
overall marketing strategy.
What Does Marketing Do for a Business?
Marketing can help a business in countless ways. Below are a few of the most
impactful ones.
1. Raising Brand Awareness
This is important because it gets people acquainted with the brand and the products
or services provided. It also makes business owners memorable to customers who
can begin to trust their brand, become loyal clients, and tell their network about
them.
2. Generating Traffic
Growing the number of visitors to your site means getting more qualified leads and
ultimately increasing your sales. An effective marketing strategy will help
businessmen through this process.
3. Increasing Revenue
Every business wants to increase their sales and marketing can help achieve this
goal through a variety of strategies like optimizing your website and SEO, creating
email campaigns, performing A/B tests to pinpoint the best strategy for you, and
much more.
4. Building Trust in Your Brand
Creating a high level of trust in your brand leads to customer loyalty and repeat
purchases. This not only increases revenue but also leads to great reviews both
online and by word of mouth, which is still one of the most effective types of
promotion.
5. Tracking Your Metrics
Metric are incredibly helpful when it comes to creating your marketing strategy.
They not only drive the strategy and help track its progress, but also inform what
can be adapted or adjusted to continually optimize your campaigns.
Why Skin Care is so Important?
Your skin is your body’s first line of defence against every possible threat present
in the environment. Healthy skin provides a barrier that prevents millions, maybe
even billions, of pathogens from entering your body where they can cause
infection, disease and discomfort.
As the outer “wrapping” that protects your body from the elements, your skin is
also the wrapper that helps people recognize that you are you and no one else.
Your skin tone, texture and how it wraps around your features creates the
appearance that makes you distinctly you.
So, a healthy integumentary system (your skin) promotes overall health and has the
potential to boost (or bust) your confidence as you move about and socialize in the
world.
Like any other part of your body, what you feed it and how you treat it will
determine how healthy your skin is. Proper skin care ensures that your skin has the
nutrition it needs to repair itself, maintain optimal function and retain a youthful
resilience and glow.
Skin care that can keep skin healthy involves:
1. Cleansing
2. Moisturising
3. Supplementation
COMPANY PROFILE: PLUM GOODNESS
Plum is a producer, marketer and online retailer of skin, hair and body care
products to women. It was founded in 2013. Plum's headquarters is located in
Mumbai, Maharashtra, IN 400610. It has raised 14.9M in 2 rounds. The latest
round was in Nov 2020. Some of Plum's investors include Faering Capital,
Unilever Ventures and Trifecta Capital. Plum's Founder & CEO, Shankar Prasad,
currently has an approval rating of 86%.
Plum is a fresh line of 100% vegan beauty products that’s all about “being good” -
to your skin, to your senses, to others and to the environment. Plum believes
people look the prettiest in the skin they were born in. Plums are formulated with
love to protect, repair, nourish - and delight, using some of the richest sources of
natural nutrients, in sync with “good science”. They're always free from Parabens,
Phthalates and are CRUELTY FREE and Vegan and are also ‘1% for the Planet’
member. However, one thing they claim they aren't and will never be, are
manufacturers of fairness creams. Why? Because respecting diversity and
protecting natural skin... that's what goodness is about!
"Skin care should be a joyful, nice treat for your skin to restore and maintain your
skin at its natural best. Not a 'treatment' with a 'mission' to make you 3x perfect in
2 weeks, shade card included - did God refer shade cards while making us?"
- SP, Founder & director of goodness at Plum
Here are the four core values that shape Plum:
1. Customer delight: “their joy is our joy”
2. Respect for human capability, diversity and hard work.
3. Transparency: “nothing to hide”
4. Sustainability: “preserve the goodness we’ve been blessed with
Here are 10 other things that make Plum special:
1. They are a PETA certified 100% vegan & cruelty-free brand, i.e. they never
use animal derived ingredients & they do not test their products on animals.
2. Their products are TOTALLY free of Parabens, Phthalates, Propylene Glycol,
SLS, DEA & PABA.
3. They do not make fairness or skin whitening creams. They encourage diversity
and endorse healthy, natural skin as the prettiest.
4. They follow international norms on labelling products as "Natural" or
"Organic".
5. You’ll find a product for every skin type, including sensitive skin.
6. And, they’re thoughtfully formulated using the best of natural actives combined
with safe, life-friendly ingredients.
7. They avoid the use of non-recyclable plastics such as PVC, ABS and SAN in
packaging.
8. They give away 1% of their sales to environmental non-profits, as a global
member of One Percent For The Planet.
9. You’ll get easy returns for all products purchased on plumgoodness.com.
10.Also they have same-day/next-day shipping & express delivery to almost all
major towns in India; and cash on delivery available in most locations.
Also, the company has expanded its retail distribution to over 70 cities in India.
About a third of their sales come from retail distribution and this will go up to 60
percent in another three to four years.
They are expected to touch the Rs. 100 Crore turnover mark very soon!
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
ABOUT THE FOUNDER
Chennai-based Shankar
Prasad, 43, a chemical
engineer from IIT
Bombay, worked for
eight years at HUL in
manufacturing and
product development.
After completing his
MBA from ISB, Hyderabad, with a gold medal, Shankar was a management
consultant for two years with FMCG and financial services clients. During this
time, he was also a part of the founding team for FACES Cosmetics in India.
During his travels abroad, Shankar used to be amazed by the variety and quality of
consumer brands available. In 2013, he worked out the concept of Plum, which
combines science and sustainability. For, Shankar felt, the country’s beauty market
was missing transparency.
“Entrepreneurship was not my career plan; I talked myself into it over time. I
enjoyed doing something creative, being part of something positive. Plum
maintains transparency of source and ingredients for the customer, as well as
thoughtfulness for resources,” Shankar says.
Plum is a much-liked fruit - juicy, wholesome, and delights on the first bite.
“That’s exactly the brand personality that I’d imagined,” Shankar says. For him,
the venture was an amalgamation of his values, his knowledge as an engineer, and
his experience from working in the personal care space for a long time.
The brand was created in a London design studio with most products designed in
the EU. As India’s first 100 percent vegan beauty brand, Plum claims to have safe
ingredients, with natural extracts to suit various skin types and concerns.
GROWING MARKET
For beauty, India is a large and growing market, expanding in every dimension -
the categories that people are beginning to use, the diversity of choice variables,
the price points that are operational, and so on. Plum targets customers of all age
and income groups.
Plum offers a no-questions-asked free replacement policy on plumgoodness.com.
Apart from their own website, Plum sells on Amazon, Nykaa, Flipkart, Myntra,
Purplle, and Snapdeal, and is increasing outreach through retail outlets, including
Health&Glow stores in metro cities.
According to Red Seer consultants, the beauty market in India is around $7 billion
in size, and growing in healthy double digits. Plum expects the offline business to
pick up pace in FY2019.
Although there are umpteen brands in the beauty space, Shankar believes that
Plum’s differentiation stems from its cruelty and nasties-free philosophy, and in
the honesty and transparency of doing things.
PROFIT WITHOUT FUNDING
Despite not having raised external funding so far, Plum became profitable in 2016.
“I’m not averse to external funding. Funding depends on three things: what’s our
growth aspiration, how much capital is required to meet that growth aspiration, and
whether the funding partner is aligned on the aspiration and trajectory. We shall
not hesitate to raise funding when the answers to these questions align well,”
Shankar says.
Plum’s products are in the skin care and kajal categories with around 40 SKUs.
They are priced between Rs 350 and Rs 1,175, with an average ticket size of Rs
450.
Shankar says word of mouth, social media, product innovation, and quality have
helped them gain traction.
The products are manufactured in Maharashtra and abroad. They own the supply
chain and take care of material management and manufacturing; delivery is
outsourced.
Plum now serves around 60,000 customers per month and hopes to double this
number in the coming year. Shankar reveals the secret of their success. “We obsess
over product reviews (qualitative more than quantitative), being financially
sustainable, channel partner satisfaction and feedback, success of new product
launches, repeat customer rate, and productivity of retail stores.”
CARING FOR THE PLANET
Plum is conscious about the ecological footprint of their business. The start-up uses
only recyclable packaging, avoiding the use of PVC (Polyvinyl chloride), ABS
(Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene), and SAN (Styrene-Acrylonitrile resin). Shankar
claims that they avoid over-packaging and constantly look for ways to reduce the
use of packaging.
“We do not use any plastic that cannot be recycled. Our tubes and bottles are made
of the least damaging plastic. But we are not sacrificing on the aesthetic quality,”
he says. But, are consumers conscious of such aspects? According to Shankar,
Indian customers may not actively seek such a lifestyle, but they understand and
are willing to be part of it. Even with social media, he says, it is hard to get the
message out loud and clear. “The customer discovers these aspects of the brand on
his or her own,” he says.
Shankar says Plum is careful about the claims they make, and do not do anything
they cannot substantiate. “We give away 1 percent of our sales towards
environmental causes, as a member of the global non-profit ‘One Percent for The
Planet’,” he adds.
NOT WITHOUT CHALLENGES
For Shankar, Plum’s biggest achievement so far is being able to stay in the
business while sticking to its values. But the journey has not been without
challenges.
“Managing smaller production volumes is a struggle until we reach a much larger
scale. Also, balancing the creative side and the business side of business is hard. I
enjoy the creative side the most, but I realise that unless I manage the business side
well, the creative side won’t exist,” he says.
Although he did not reveal the current GMV, Shankar says Plum will continue to
expand along all dimensions – product, consumer reach, and distribution.
“We are now about 50-strong, with our headquarters in Mumbai and sales teams
spread over all four regions. We do not sell outside India but are seeing clear
interest and a few discussions are on,” Shankar ends.
ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION
A few years ago, Environmental Sustainability was once the concern only to some
niche groups within society. But now the tables have turned.
Consumers started investing their time, money and attention in brands that showed
genuine commitment towards important principle which they personally identify
with.
Sustainability suddenly emerged as something that was compatible with profits and
something that could enhance value.
It became imperative for every organization to live with a duty towards society and
its consumers.
In this era of radical transparency, consumers can quickly spot if companies are
really delivering on their promises or not.
Hence, organizations were now more convinced than ever that companies can do
themselves good through doing the right for society at large and the environment.
THE WAY OF PLUM
Have you ever thought what happens to your face wash or moisturiser tube, once
you discard it?
What if we say that this tube is left for 500 years to get decomposed and
potentially leak pollutants into soil and water?
As per the Zero Waste report, more than 120 billion units of packaging are
produced in the global cosmetics industry annually.
Getting into a new beauty product is itself a task. First, you've got to tackle the
layers of cardboard, cello-tape, tissue paper and boxes until you reach the end goal:
A plastic container housing the product you've been waiting for.
Undoubtedly, packaging plays a huge part in the allure of a beauty product.
However, there's a darker side to all this packaging. We simply can't ignore the
impact it's having on our environment.
Inspired by the goodness of nature, and driven by the desire to be good & do good;
Plum is all about bringing goodness to the world of beauty.
The PETA-certified brand is constantly striving to spread their goodness not only
to the consumers and animals but to the environment too.
The concept of the brand Plum
combines science with sustainability.
It is conscious of the ecological
footprint of their business. Plum uses
only recyclable packaging avoiding
the use of PVC, ABS AND SAN.
Over packaging is not encouraged and
constantly looks for ways to reduce the
use of packaging.
Plum is careful about the claims they
make and do not do anything they
cannot substantiate.
With bearing the title of India's first 100% vegan beauty brand, follows the
responsibility of sustainable beauty.
When 70% of the waste from the beauty industry is from packaging, the skincare
should not be restricted to an individual's needs.
A mindful and conscious skincare will not be good to your skin but to our
environment too, and this is what Plum truly believes in.
The goodness of Plum products does not end with the consumer's use but is
ongoing even after it’s discarded.
Key contributions to sustainability:
When it comes to giving back to society, they contribute a part of their sales to
an international non-governmental organisation - World Wide Fund (WWF) to
reduce the human impact on the environment.
Under the #Empties4Good campaign, they arrange to pick up empty Plum
containers from the consumers and for every Plum plastic container, they
reward them with INR 50 which they can redeem from the Plum website.
Certified by PETA, the products are vegan & cruelty-free.
It is made minus the harmful chemicals like Sulphates and Parabens, making
the products skin-friendly.
It donates a percentage of its annual profits to 1% for the Planet initiative.
Transparency in terms of 'No false bottom' is another aspect which resonates
with the brand's philosophy. They do not believe in unnecessary packaging to
make the product look more visually appealing than useful.
FINDINGS
Below are some of the industry figures for your quick reference:
Serving 100,000 customers per month across channels.
SKU range has doubled in the last 4 years.
The business was bootstrapped and recently backed by Unilever Ventures.
Products available on Nykaa, PlumGoodness.com and across all the major
cosmetic stores.
Bagged both Nykaa-Femina Award and Cosmopolitan Beauty Award in
2019 for its products.
CONCLUSION
Everyone wishes to look good to feel good about themselves and the best way to
do it is by starting to take care of one’s skin and body both from the outside and
inside. While there are other ways of taking care of your skin from the inside, Plum
Goodness provides all sorts of products ranging from Cleanser to masks and
moisturizers to night gel and shampoo and other cosmetic products to take care of
your skin from the outside.
As harmful and chemically as it sounds, Plum is actually the exact opposite of it.
While its competitors such as Nykaa, Mamaearth, Mcaffeine, Purplle and more
have only focused on the product and their customers, Plum Goodness seems to
care about the environment too. Which is what makes Plum products both healthy
for your skin and for the nature. Its sustainable packaging and skin friendly, a
100% vegan and cruelty free products is what makes it the NUMBER 1 Indian
beauty brand in today’s era!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
www.iedunote.com
www.plumgoodness.com
www.investopedia.com
www.owler.com
www.yourstory.com
www.halecosmeceuticals.com
www.zoominfo.com
www.indulgexpress.com
www.youtube.com
