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Blair Aqua Ventures
"A pity I couldn't have stayed for Diwali," thought Rahul Chatterjee. "But anyway, it was great to be back
home in Calcutta." The Diwali holiday and its festivities would begin in early November 2005, some two
weeks after Chatterjee had returned to the United States. Chatterjee worked as an international market
liaison for Blair Company, Inc. This was his eighth year with Blair Company and easily his favorite. "Your
challenge will be in moving us from just dabbling in less developed countries [LDCs] to our thriving in
them," his boss had said when Chatterjee was promoted to the job last January.
Chatterjee had agreed and was thrilled when he was asked to visit Bombay and New Delhi in April. His
purpose on that trip was to gather background data on the possibility of Blair Company entering the
Indian market for home water purification devices. The initial results had been encouraging and had
prompted the second trip. Chatterjee had used his second trip primarily to study Indian consumers in
Calcutta and Bangalore and to gather information on possible competitors. The two cities represented
quite different metropolitan areas in terms of location, size, language, and infrastructure, yet both cities
faced similar problems in terms of the water supplied to their residents. Those problems could be found in
many LDCs and were favorable to home water purification.
Information gathered on both visits would be used to make a recommendation on market entry and on the
elements of an entry strategy. Executives at Blair Company would compare Chatterjee's recommendation
to those from two other Blair Company liaisons who were focusing their efforts on Argentina, Brazil, and
Indonesia.
Indian Market for Home Water Filtration and Purification
Like many things in India, the market for home water filtration and purification took a good deal of effort to
understand. Yet despite expending this effort, Chatterjee realized that much remained...