RIP: Lalit Sheth, the instinctive marketer

Lalit Sheth, the founder of Raj Travels, jumped to his death off the Bandra-Worli Sea Link yesterday. It is unclear why he did so, though the pink papers speculate that all was not well with his business. It wasn’t always so. Sheth, after failing in his first entrepreneurial business running a chemist’s shop, hit the mother lode when he got into the travel business with Raj Travels. Sheth was more than just a leader and an influencer in the organised travel business; he was intuitively a master marketer. With no formal education or training in marketing, and with no previous experience in the travel business, Sheth created Raj Travels, with a particular focus on package tours. [caption id=“attachment_401839” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Lalit Sheth built a considerable business out of the simplicity. Screen grab/ ibnlive[/caption] His was not the first company to get into this business, and he would not be the last. So why would he get into this area – and why would it succeed? To succeed, any business in a competitive segment needs to have a demonstrable differentiator – and Sheth had identified one. Food. As simple as that. Rather than fight on prices (which, as a corollary, mean low margins), which was the only edge that travel companies of the time could provide, Sheth noticed an available positioning that no one had found before him. It has always been obvious that a large segment of the Indian population is strictly vegetarian, avoiding even eggs. Many of these die-hard vegetarians are uncomfortable to be in the presence of someone eating non-vegetarian food. Now consider this. A package tour would see a consumer, over ten days, eating a minimum of 30 meals. It becomes impossible for vegetarians not to worry about whether they will get suitable and nutritious food – and Lalit Sheth focused on this concern. It wasn’t simple; it meant adding a component to the business that no one in the package tour business had done before – learning to cater. On every Raj Travels tour, a battery of cooking staff was a part of the support team. Not just the cooking staff – they travelled with key ingredients as well. Having hit upon this thought, he decided to focus on the people and the food he knew best: Gujaratis and Gujarati food. The fact that Gujaratis have a penchant for travelling was a bonus. To the adventurous Gujarati, Raj Travels was the only choice. One major worry when travelling to unkown places, food, was now no longer one. Wherever in India you went with Raj Travels, the Gujarati could sleep well, looking forward to three great meals on the morrow. Not just three meals – they were meals just like the ones your mother might have made. It was a small jump from here to include other vegetarian cuisines. Another small jump to create international packages for the upwardly mobile consumers. Raj Travels might have lost all the non-vegetarian travelers, but, for a long time, he had all the vegetarians to sell to –and he had a sales proposition that none of his competitors had. “Keep it simple, stupid,” goes a marketing adage. Sheth kept it simple and built a considerable business out of the simplicity. RIP, Lalit Sheth.