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Jamshedpur, a city that developed due to the largesse and vision of JRD Tata and
the Tata Company is a melting pot of cultures and demographics. It is a city that
is a hodge podge of Blue collar workers, executives and managers of the Tata
behemoth, teachers, businessman and lastly the floating population of students
who travel to this city for quality education. Jamshedpur, fondly called Jampot,
proudly called The Steel City, was Indias first planned industrial city, laid out
by Julian Kennedy of Pittsburgh, with parallel streets, unimaginatively named
from A to Z, East and West. The city is a veritable oasis in the middle of a steel
plant. Green shady roads lined with houses, the Subarnarekha quietly winding its
way through the city, Wide expanses of tree lined parks where children played,
The Dalma hills resolutely looking down on the city as industries churn out their
white billowy smoke into the sky, Jamshedpur is a city that anyone would love to
grow up in .It is in this sleepy city , tucked away in a small grove stands a small
tea shop. But to simply call it a tea shop would be an insult to the place. It was
akin to calling Disney land a childrens park. This was a place that had a history
attached to it, a rich past. In Jamshedpur this name sparked off an instant twinge
of nostalgia and remembrance. It was no run of the mill tea shop and rightly so
no one called it that. It was known by a name that today stands synonymous to
quality and zealous customer focus. Here everybody loved to come to BAUWAJI.
In a world that is constantly on the go, in a world that is ephemeral and dynamic.
Where people change, where things change in the blink of an eye, the mind
craves for stability. It craves for an escape. Escape from the mundane world of
work and family, Escape from change. Like Peter Pan and his ageless character,
people crave for something that reminds of them of their past. A place where
they feel the threads of history forever bind them, where they experience that
while outside nothing is the same, here nothing has changed. It is this innate
desire to hold on to the past and indulge in an experience that stands the
ravages of time, is what endears Bauwaji to his customers.
To the uninitiated the shop was never called Bauwaji in the first place. Even
before Independence, when World War 2 was nowhere near its completion, a
man called RB Sahoo set up a small tea stall under a banyan tree. He had three
sons, and as they grew up they lent a hand in his tea shop. In Bhojpuri, the
young sons are fondly referred to as Bauwa and the shop came to be known as
Bauwaji after his youngest son .Today no trip no trip to Jamshedpur is complete
without a ritual visit to the banyan tree sit-out for a glass of chai, infused with
fresh-pounded cardamom and strained with a deft twist of a red gamccha
Tea is the great leveller. It brings calm, quiet, contentment and warmth. In the
hot city of Jamshedpur rife with people all working hard to earn a honest days
living, they required something that would be an abandonment of the senses.
Tea demands that you move into it slowly and savour the moment. And it
rewards you with warmth and delicacy of taste and refreshment. And yet Bauwaji
realised very early on that tea was just a plebeian commodity. The customers
kept coming for the experience. Just like any big brand never changed its brand
logo and colors to prevent customer fallout, Bauwajis ensured that the ambiance
of his shop remained just like it was in the yesteryears. Just like the 40s people
came and waited near the shop and relaxed on the small stones and wooden
logs. There was no whiff of modern creature comforts around. His customers love
it and gladly wait on the logs and indulge in animated discussions. In the words
of the great marketing Guru David Ogilvy, market success was due to three
factors- location, location and location. And while one can say that Bauwaji was
lucky to be in the near vicinity of XLRI , Loyola School and the Tata Steel plant
the fact that customers from as far away as Adityapur and places even farther
still drop by is an affirment of the fact that Bauwajis appeal has more to do with
luck and location.
It is interesting to note that Bauwaji charges premium rates from his customers
and yet people dont mind paying it, even if tea is hardly a luxury good Marketing
experts like to theorise what The attitudinal definition of loyalty implies that
loyalty is a state of mind. By this definition, a customer is "loyal" to a brand, a
company
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