A rainbow of her own

She worked with several very well known organisations before she decided to do it all on her own, her own way. Rama Bijapurkar, class of '77, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, finally decided she'd do what she really wanted to do: "problem solving".

Ms Bijapurkar calls herself a strategic marketing consultant, has a casually but beautifully done-up little office at Nariman Point, the corporate downtown Manhattan of Mumbai, and is doing her version of problem solving with organisations in textiles, bulk chemicals and financial services.

"These are industries that are discovering customers for the first time, and my work with them is hugely exciting," she beams. Surprisingly, she is doing practically no consumer goods consulting -- "I have just one consumer goods client."

Surprising, since consumer goods was an area she was very much involved with while she worked with all those well-known organisations. She seems to have no regrets, though, since she's now doing what she wanted to really do for years and was not exactly getting to do it. Not that there's any bitterness about that either, since she feels she's learnt one hell of a lot along the way.

Ms Bijapurkar meandered into IIM-A, as she says, "by accident". She says, "Everybody was applying, so I applied too." Her first job was with advertising agency Lintas, where she was offered market research. She turned down that assignment because "I felt it was a backroom function. I asked for the glamour of advertising and got into client servicing." However, after a year, she got disenchanted. "I started feeling that an account executive was a mix of a peon and errand boy."

Pathfinders, Lintas's market research agency was just then being set up, so she shifted there. For six years, "I was quite happy looking for business, making presentations. Oh, the arrogance of youth!" Then, some friends started Mode, another market research agency, and Ms Bijapurkar joined them to set up Mode's Mumbai operations. "There was me, a peon, and penury."

Mode was a six-year stint again, "my original training ground, a phenomenal experience that shaped my philosophy of market research." But, fire in the belly notwithstanding, Ms Bijapurkar started feeling the need for more backing, better infrastructure, for seeing how much she could do, how far she could go. "Enough of small-time."

And so she moved to Hindustan Lever Ltd. as a full-time consultant, to work at competitive strategy and analysis. "Working with Lever's was like being in a candy store. Everything you could think of wanting was there."

And then came the Rajiv Gandhi period, when a lot started happening in the marketplace. Strategy become a must-word and Titoo Ahluwalia, head of MARG, met up with Ms Bijapurkar and offered her the chance to work his agency's marketing strategy division. Now that seemed more like what she wanted to do, "on the condition that I'll have nothing to do with your business". Market research, that is.

He agreed, she joined. But soon after, people at MARG started quitting in numbers. There were jobs needing to be done, and lesser people to do them. So Ms Bijapurkar pitched in, became deputy managing director. "Those were golden years. Titoo marketed me like no one ever could. He gave me visibility, exposure to people and places, allowed me to show my skills. He pushed me to new frontiers."

MARG started doing work with the paper and chemical businesses that required problem solving-oriented MR work. Five-and-a-half years it was at MARG, and then "the picnic was over". The merger with ORG was about to happen, and things started moving in directions that did not really suit Ms Bijapurkar.

"Titoo and I had fundamental differences in operating style; in our own ways both were right. But when equations stop balancing, you have to move. The parting was painful, there was a lot of emotion in it. MARG was a great organisation but I didn't think I could do very much under the changing system."

So it was a sabbatical for seven months and back to HLL during that time. And then came McKinsey & Company's offer, which she took up as a senior marketing consultant. "I learnt a lot. I'd never really been a great process person; I learnt to respect the value of process there."

However, Ms Bijapurkar feels that what started for her as problem-solving work went the same way at McKinsey as it had done at MARG. So that was it. After two-and-a-half years at McKinsey, the decision was taken: "I'll do it on my own from now on".

So just over a year ago, Ms Bijapurkar set up shop and began offering her services under her own name. The name on her office door reads: "Rama Bijapurkar". She's happy. The benchmark, when she started out, was to earn as much as she was earning at McKinsey. "It was important that I did not make less; my self-worth wouldn't let me accept it. Today, I'm earning more than I did in my employed life."

Ms Bijapurkar's pricing strategy: high-end popular by international standards. And her positioning: providing market connectivity for business strategy. What that means is being the bridge between business and consumer. Consumer perspective is what she's gained in all the years she's worked, so that's where she's coming from.

"It's all about taking a product-centric client to a consumer-centric focus. I'm not doing the marketing manager's job here. My work is more about how the future unfolds, what your business is all about, where do you want to compete, how do you want to compete, everything with the consumer in focus."

She's following her own rainbow, in search for her own pot of gold. Of course, there's that other love she's been pursuing for 10 years: conducting a course at IIM-A every year. But like the change in path in her own career and self-endeavour, she's changing course there too. She's discontinuing the MR course -- "I don't really know what the issues in MR are any more" -- to replace it with a strategic marketing course, which she will conduct later this year.

And so this 40-something problem-solver looks to the futurev with a lot of hope and enthusiasm. "It's been a gain. I've laid the foundation for the rest of my life.