Simit Bhagat, founder of an award-winning creative agency, and Bhumika Marwaha, a marketing professional and volunteer, chat about running a successful marketing campaign for nonprofits.
Bhumika worked as a volunteer for the National Association of Disabled People’s Enterprises (NADE) and led their campaign to sell umbrellas made by blind people. The campaign went viral and generated sales of over 30,000 umbrellas in a month. She speaks about the backstory of the campaign and what went into making it successful.
Transcript of the Episode:
Simit: Okay, great. So thank you so much, Bhumika, for agreeing to be on this call. We have been talking about this for quite some time in terms of your engagement with Nade, the work that you did as a volunteer, and basically how the campaign with the Netra Umbrella kind of went viral. So I think it would be wonderful to understand the back-end side of things as to what it was that actually kind of went right and what the learnings that came out of it were.
Bhumika: Thank you so much. Simit, I remember, you had put in a LinkedIn post, which is whether paid media or unpaid media works better for nonprofits. We connected over this call. Thanks a lot for the opportunity. And I mean, just to put it across, I did visit Nade once or twice. I was referred to by a friend, and the pandemic had already started. It was the second wave, which was on, and I visited them to generally understand what they do and all.
And that’s when I came to know that they make umbrellas, and if they’re 70% or above, the assembly of the umbrella is being done by blind people. And when I had a conversation with the founder, Mr. Nair, I realised that they’re sitting on a huge inventory because they’ve not been able to sell these umbrellas. And I’m an ardent believer in the fact that while NGOs do need donations, if there are those enterprising NGOs that have been able to skill people and give them employment opportunities, then they are on their own.
Such NGOs definitely need to be applauded, and they need to be given extra support because they are actually using the lever of support to rise up on their own. They just need foundational help. They’re not going to need our help forever. It’s not a grant or a subsidy that is dependent on
And when they say that, should you give fish or should you teach fishing? So this is one classic case. I thought that they were actually working with people with disabilities and coming from underprivileged backgrounds. Some of them are below the poverty line, born into a poor family, and have disabilities. It just adds to so much struggle. And, when you’re raising a child and the child is poor and disabled, you know that it’s not even an investment. We don’t know whether that child will be able to economically contribute to the family’s needs in the future.
So there’s been so much struggle for that child. And these are the kinds of people that NADE is supporting. And when I did see that umbrella-making exercise, they were just doing it like a perfect factory setup, one after the other. And it was a perfect example of teamwork. Also, with the visually impaired, who are doing the assembly, And then it was getting picked up by people who are orthopedically challenged who were stitching it.
“It is like a perfect factory setup.”
And then the quality checks were being done by deaf and dumb people. And they have so much energy, which they want to use. They were packing it all, boxing the whole thing. And the boxes were getting piled up, and that’s the sight I saw, but the end result was that we were just occupying these people for now, and we don’t know whether we will be able to send them. And then, I just looked at the quality of the umbrella.
It is just something much better than what we buy in our normal lives. I couldn’t be personally sitting with that information and doing nothing about it. I thought even if people have stocked it up, they may not mind because it’s coming for a cause.
And let’s just try. So that’s how we started that thought process of selling umbrellas, and the first thing that came to mind is this. Okay, so he has named it Netra Umbrellas, and these are umbrellas made by a bunch of people who are disabled, but the majority of them are actually contributed by people who are blind.
So there’s a lot of fine print that can go into the campaign. But let’s just highlight the fact that these are Netra umbrellas, and they were made by blind people. So to say it another way, that’s how the engagement and the whole process actually started.
Simit: Could you talk a bit about NADE as well as about the organisation itself?
Bhumika: NADE is a not-for-profit organisation that is almost 37 years old. The founder, Mr. Nair, Radhakrishnan Nair, has been working for the cause of disability for 40+ years. It’s just that he formalised the setup 37 years ago. From the inception, his philosophy has been very clear: these are a set of consumers.
“Working for the cause of disability for over 40 years”
They are consumers of resources, people with disabilities who are talking about their consumers of energy, or other people. There’s so much to be done. to leave such a human being behind. They are just consuming; they’re not able to produce anything; they are just consuming. And how much can the parents give? How much can the peer group give? Can they not produce something on their own? Can they not have a livelihood of their own?
So, it’s from inception that he is very clear that he needs to get them to work. Since the organisation’s inception, they have been doing a lot of skilling work; the majority of their work is in the area of skilling. The organisation has not only created its own cooperative unit, which is an offshoot of Madden, but they have also had a cooperative movement for people with disabilities across other NGOs and other states.
“The majority of NADE’s work is in the area of skill development.”
So, in a way, they have supported about 5000 people with disabilities, both directly and indirectly. They have supported about 10,000 such people. And in terms of getting them employment, referring them to places that they can be gainfully employed to and creating some kind of employment within the cooperative has largely been the work that they have been doing.
Now that 150 people are currently supported by NADE, who work at the cooperative, and their two meals are also supported by them when they are there, Overall, economic freedom is what they’re working on, but they also take care of the medical needs, transportation needs, and food needs of the community.
Simit: Right. Yeah, I think that’s what I mean—a lot of work that they do. And also, in terms of the number of people that they are supporting, I think it’s a very good number. I just wanted to know. So which are the areas and which are the geographies in which NADE is located?
Bhumika: So, one unit is here in Vikhroli; they had one unit in the Rabale here in Mumbai itself. So, the geography is in and around Mumbai. Just about two centres and the one in Rabale had to close down because of the pandemic because they could not continue to pay the rent. Some machinery was there, and people were making bags out there, which they had to close down.
Now, it’s only in Vikhroli that they are in existence, and there are also multiple, two- to three-centres in Vikhroli from where people operate. So that’s what. I forgot to mention that they’re located inside a BMC school, here in Vikhroli, and on the ground floor. So there is a room that is also dedicated to educating some of the kids with disabilities.
Simit: So, could you tell me how successful the campaign was and how many people responded to it? And also, maybe, if you could, just explain what the campaign was all about.
Bhumika: So, to look at the ROI of any campaign, one would think, What is the investment that we made in that campaign? So, I can just tell you that we did not sell anything on that campaign. We just created one WhatsApp message, and that is all that we did. And the campaign was successful. Primarily, I would attribute this to the brevity of the message.
“Brevity of messaging is the key.”
It was very clear, and there were only two actions that we wanted people to take: to buy or to refer to others. It was basically to invite people to look at the creation of an umbrella by people who are blind. I think that really caught the fancy of people because they, even people with disabilities, people who would not have vision, are extremely neglected, and they are the ones who are seen as incapable of doing much.
So, to have these people pretty use umbrellas was something that I think surprised people, and what clicked was the name and the fact that it is coming from people, so it’s like an oxymoron, right? Netra, and then people were blind. So that’s what worked. Then we had people putting in their orders, and we also had more and more forwards happening, because just in one day the message came back to us and was forwarded many times, so that is when we felt that we figured out what we believed with this message.
And the good news is that we did not have to create any other communication after we created this one. And WhatsApp was the only communication we used. We were not prepared, actually, when we started. We thought that we would try, and we were not too sure whether we would be able to hit any success.
“Whatsapp was our only medium of communication.”
But we did get a very overwhelming response, and we did not feel the need to create anything other than this message. But, to our surprise, we had to go to Facebook to put some content out there purely because, one, we were not able to answer those many calls, and we had given only our WhatsApp number. It’s either the message or the WhatsApp call that was coming, and people were finding it extremely annoying. We are not there; we are not able to answer their calls, and we were feeling very helpless that there is no way to call so many people. Even today, we had about 5,000 unread messages, and we felt very bad that we just could not do justice.
It is that people went on to the website, which was also given in the creative, and then they located the landline number. And then the calls started coming on the line also, but at the same time, we realised that whatever we are answering on the call is only the variety that we have, so we might as well just send that catalogue as an auto-message on WhatsApp itself. So we were just trying to do those kinds of things.
Simit: So when you started the campaign, what were the goals that you had in mind? And when you mentioned that you had a lot of inventory, what were the numbers that you sort of had in mind?
Bhumika: In terms of numbers, we had about 30 to 35,000 umbrellas with us when we started. We were not sure when we would be able to sell a few hundred more. So, it’s not that we decided that we would want to liquidate our entire inventory; we did not even count it properly. And there is no inventory management system at the NGO either.
Luckily, we had a catalogue that was ready. So in terms of numbers, we were not gunning for liquidation of the whole stock, but we were just gunning for some movement of the stock, and we had that kind of stock, and, now proudly, a happy moment arrived when, in just one month, we could actually get orders, which covered almost 50–60% of the stock.
“Sold 50–60% of our stock.”
Simit: Well, that’s a huge number. And I suppose that the only collaterals that you used were like a basically designed PowerPoint right and a WhatsApp message. Were there any sort of other collateral that you designed?
Bhumika: Nothing. I think really, what you saw—what came to you as a forward—that’s the only piece of collateral that we had designed, and people who are doubting the intentions of that could also read that, so in terms of collateral, that’s all that you create.
Simit: Yeah, I mean, I kind of come to the point about, while they were, you were flooded with messages and you were getting so many responses and so many calls, could you talk about there was some controversy that happened? Do you know what the source was? Can you elaborate on that part?
Bhumika: So, I was so happy that they had this opportunity to share what we had been wanting to share for such a long time. We, I cannot name people, but clearly they were WhatsApp employees at Nade, with some people saying that too; actually, we could identify too. One was based out of the proper way, and one was based out of Ahmedabad. This organisation has not actually made these umbrellas, and these umbrellas were bought, and they are just putting on a scam. I mean, our assumption is that we rubbed off somebody on the wrong side, and this was an opportunity for that person to take it on us.
And there was no evidence, with her also, that this was not made by blind people. But that’s how it appeared and that’s when all those people who wanted to support us took a step back, and we were overwhelmed with orders despite this negative publicity.
“We were overwhelmed with orders.”
But I would think that if this had not happened, we would have been stopped out in one month, which we realised only after a month because of this negative publicity. But I think it was an image we built.
Simit: So how did you, when the crisis kind of happened, sort of manage that? I’m sure you would have gotten a lot of media attention. A lot of people would have messaged you about this, because I remember even when I forwarded that message, the PDF that I had received.
I got a message back saying that this was not made by the blind. And that’s when I remembered that I had sent you that message that something of this sort was also circulating. So why, on one hand, is the message going viral that there is a place where you can buy umbrellas that were made by blind people? But on the other hand, there was also another kind of message that was spreading: that this is actually not done by blind people. So how did you sort of manage that whole crisis?
Bhumika: So, Simit, as you rightly said, we only managed it; we just filmed it. People who had issues, we were just speaking to them and answering, and as any other organisation, which is maybe for profit commercially done, they would have issued a press statement and that would have equally been read by people. It would have been discussed in some forum.
We did not have all those privileges, and we just managed it in the sense that when people reached out, we explained it to them. People who didn’t reach out—we don’t even know whether they were there or where they are. That’s how we managed it. In this whole madness of shipping umbrellas, we just had to manage those conversations as well.
And it’s not that the NGO is very high on staff or something, and they do not even have the typical answering skills. That’s what it is, so we just managed. We just managed that; we could have done better. But I think it’s something that does not come very naturally to us.
Simit: In fact, that was going to be my next question: was there anything that you could have done differently, and what would that be?
Bhumika: As to, I mean, you and I have been talking about one more thing: the presence of social media and how, not for profit, we can leverage that. A lot of times, we don’t need social media. No funds come from social media, and where should we be? You and I have both said that the value of social media comes a little later.
You have to be there; you have to build credibility. People have to listen to what you’re saying. I feel that, in the case of this organisation, NADE also Personally, I feel that if we had it on social media, following any order, we could have probably posted a lot of messages on our own social media. We did post one or two, which helped the time because people who were having objections were being diverted to go and see what had been written by the organisation.
“Social media helped us big time.”
But there was a minimal following. Right. So it wasn’t going viral; it was not spreading. So I feel that one time I felt, when so much good work is happening, how come there is no formal following? How come there’s no formal channel of communication?
And so it was that I felt that we could have done that better if we had any strategy around having a social media presence, which is what we are building right now, as we see,but at that point in time we just had some random presence,which held as much as it could. It helped more, in fact, compared to what it could have done otherwise. But still, it was not optimal.
Simit: So, if I had to kind of ask you in terms of what were the biggest lessons that you learned from this case and the overall campaign, what would those be? And also, how many of the 335 thousand umbrellas that you started with, by the end of the campaign, were you able to sell?
Bhumika: In terms of numbers,we get some orders and still umbrellas are being made, and we don’t have a very clear ERP system. So, I think we did liquidate about 30,000 umbrellas, which we were also making as we were selling. And therefore, that whole situation was more of a dynamic one. And even now, in Chennai, in November, it rained. We got orders.
“We sold about 30,000 Nethra umbrellas.”
So we still get orders. When there are showers in any state, that’s a good thing. It did go into the corporate houses as well, and we received some bulk orders as well. So in terms of numbers, that was the biggest learning experience. We must create good content, and people like good content, and it must be respected. So, that was good reinforcement, I would say.
And then another learning that I had was that we got to have technology back up. We just cannot do things manually. People are used to convenient shopping options, and to a certain extent, they would give them to us because we are an NGO and we are people with disabilities. But beyond that, they are not going to sit and wait for calls to ring and nobody to answer.
They’re going to get irritated, and they are going to be writing on Google. And we had good reviews about the product, and we will have bad reviews about the customer handling. So we faced both of them. So I think, I would say that, compassion is what started the whole thing, but we lost out because of negative publicity.
We also need to improve the way we handle our customers. This is not just for our date; I think it is for all of us, not just for profit. Compassion is an impulsive feeling. You can cash it at that moment. But the whole journey has to be respected equally, and we must give it to the customers if we are mentioning how to sell.
People used very professional ways of doing things. These, I would say, things learned the hard way also.
Simit: So today, a lot of nonprofits have these sales about other products, whether they are handicraft-related or something else, but they may not necessarily have the kind of professional mindset that is required to run a business or treat the whole product. from a business point of view. So the challenges that you mentioned in terms of not having the right sort of technology and doing things manually, and also the fact that in terms of the media crisis, not having a proper PR person or a communications person to come out with a proper press release and so on, just to tackle the sort of crisis?
Bhumika: So, I mean, I would just answer this in two parts: what it is that we will do for Nethra a little later, but in general, not for profits. I think they’re looking at another partner, which is more enterprising. It’s all a mindset issue, Simit, and some of the NGOs that I am used to speaking to are very professional. So one thing that I feel is that it’s a mindset issue and that there are some really good practices in the for-profit world.
Now profit is the only word that should be removed. NGOs cannot be making a profit, or they cannot be profiteering, but they can always have a conquest. But every practice of a not-for-profit business is not taboo and should not be. Having the right mindset, getting good talent, and then investing in technology pieces—everything needs to be distributed to the beneficiary. We must make sure that there is some capacity building that should happen for the organisation.
“The capacity building of organisations is crucial.”
So just run it like a business, run it like a sustainable business, or whether you do it yourself, create an offshoot, like a cooperative, or hand over your products to another person who can mark them up from a design and a price perspective, what are the possibilities? But the first thing is to respect some of the practices that are done in the for-profit world; all of them are not to be negated, and we must adapt some of them.
Simit: So in terms of, how is Nethra sort of doing it, and then what is your vision for the brand going forward?
Bhumika: Okay. So, one is that I still remember that Mr. Nair himself was just overwhelmed with the response. With the media coming in here, he was a media shy person, but I think he had a latent or dormant dream that he should be able to create a movement of sorts for people with disabilities, and silently somewhere that has surfaced.
And he feels that it’s possible, and incidentally, it was only reinforced by a lot of people, calling him people with disabilities. The vision is now to make 3 lakh umbrellas a year. We are looking for infrastructure—a land piece where we can construct a proper setup where people can be seated. And people with disabilities definitely need a lot of different amenities for them to do things easily.
So that arrangement is being considered. We have a proposal, we have programmes, and we are talking to a lot of people. Nothing has come through yet. But people are calling and saying, I want to also learn; I also want to be a part of the movement. I think that’s where the movement is right now.
And 3 lakh umbrellas here is something that we want to go to in terms of vision number. I think this can become a product of which the country will be proud and of which people with disabilities will be proud. This is their answer to the world: we can do it.
“India can be proud of Nethra umbrellas.”
Simit: So great. Thank you so much, Bhumika. It was wonderful to speak to you and understand the work that you did for Nade and the fact that the campaign really went viral. So good luck to you in the future. And yeah, it would be wonderful to explore any possibilities of collaboration and explore synergies in our going forward.
Bhumika: Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Simit.
