-(2)-Financial/Investment Projects failure - Part II

This is part II of the article: Financial/Investment Projects failure - Part I, Please read the article from the beginning before continuing with this part.

Take the case of same bournvita ad. Even though the ad creates an impression that bournvita drink may create dumb kids, still it is continuously aired on TV channels, which is costing millions of Rs. The reason, after investing so much in the study/surveys and in production of ad film, the team still hopes to capitalize upon the effort and hence is still paying for every second the ad is aired.

Remember the following names: King 100, Safari, Nova, Kine, Zing, Stryker, Comet, Aquila. Chances are that you may have hardly heard these names. They are all two wheelers from Kinetic which were launched, but failed miserably. Occasionally, you may see one of them on the road, but you will wonder which bike is it. Is Luna still seen?

Ever remember that LML also launched a set of bike that included LML GF and few more?
How about Hero Puch? Once a hot favourite, it is now almost extinct.

Though TVS is a common name, remember how many versions of Scooty are available on the road today? Right from the start, there were continuous modifications to the model. Same goes with Victor, Fiero, Fiero F2, Fiero FX and now the story continues with Apache.

For Bajaj, there was a light weight scooterette called Sunny – which had Sachin Tendulakar advertising for it with the “teen machine” campaign. CT 100, Platina, Discover, and even Pulsar have gone continuous and complete modifications.

Nothing can be a fool proof project plan forever. Managers need to close down the projects that result in failure, but they end up doing it too late. They can also make changes to the project plan mid-way, like the constant upgradations that have happened in the vehicles of TVS or Bajaj, but still nothing is secure. The same MD, Rahul Bajaj, now says that by 2010, there will be no bike on the road which will be less than 150 CC. He is actually trying to make way for the coming projects that bajaj has invested in. Not necessarily what may be the future. Windows launched XP, and then there was a ad saying “Still with Windows 98?”. They were trying to create room for the new versions, so that people can buy or upgrade and company can earn profit. However, the fact is that in countries like India, Windows 98 is still working. Majority of the cyber cafes still run windows 98.

In the next article, I’ll talk about the mathematics that is involved when analyzing a project. Please come again tomorrow :- )

Please read the comments and post your views and queries in the comments section which helps in open discussion and avoids duplicity of questions.

You may be interested in reading my previous articles. Here is the link to Table of Contents in a chronological order.