It was 2015, I was at Chandigarh sitting in a plush office of Mr Juneja. Mr Juneja was the promoter of a hair oil brand Kesh King. The brand was launched somewhere in 2008 and within a short span of 6-7 years attained a turnover of Rs 250-275cr. Mr Juneja believed that it was beyond his means to scale it up further and therefore had put the brand up for sale commanding a valuation of Rs 1800- 2000 cr. It was amazing that a brand worth 250-275 cr could demand such high valuation. But such was the brand strength that all the major FMCG companies were ready to pay that price. (Finally Emami bought it for close to 1600 cr).
So, I was sitting in the conference room which overlooked the cabin of Mr Juneja. Mr Juneja was busy meeting with some people and we were told that they were large distributors who had come seeking distribution of Kesh King and guess what, they all had hefty advarice payments ready with them. I was quite stunned to see the brand power. Typically for a strong company like Dabur, finding a decent distributor was never easy. Here I was sitting witnessing something magical, distributors lining up to take up distributorship. On further inquiry I was told that there are a lot of areas where distribution is indirect through wholesale and for those areas Mr Juneja is finalizing distributors.
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