Vistaprint India: Creating A Professional Identity
Bharath Sastry
CEO
Kindly peruse the following excerpts of an exclusive conversation between Bharath Sastry and CEO Insights to know more about Vistaprint and his leadership journey.
Highlight something interesting about Vistaprint.
If you’re planning to get visiting cards for your venture or desiring to have a pen with your name on it or looking for something to give your mom on her birthday – we are all you need. We offer a gamut of superior-quality products with customization for single or few units at affordable prices. Our products aim to evoke emotions like pride, thoughtfulness, and joy among our customers. Vistaprint is the market leader in the online customization space in India. We have a truly diverse customer base. From businesses of all sizes to individuals, anyone looking to customize or personalize their products is our customer. Moreover, this customer base has grown manifold over the last four years.
Brief us on your role at the company. How are your education and professional background assisting the organization?
My responsibilities as CEO include overseeing marketing, products, finance, HR, manufacturing, and the overall growth and P&L of the business.
Talking about my background, I hold a bachelor’s degree in engineering from IIT Madras. After pursuing my MBA from IIM Calcutta, I went on to work with some of the leading FMCG brands in the areas of marketing and business leadership. After working with a couple of startups, I joined Vistaprint in 2016. The biggest learnings from my educational and professional backgrounds have been in the areas of Strategic focus, Brand building,
Teamwork, and Finding joy in what you do. These learnings have been invaluable in achieving significant growths in Vistaprint India while having great fun in the process.
Enumerate on major facts about your professional journey
I have been fortunate to have diverse experiences in my career, from handling iconic brands, leading large teams to having a startup of my own and leading startups. In Cadbury, I have been responsible for relaunches of brands like 5 Star, Eclairs, Gems, Halls in India and have had the unique opportunity of launching Cadbury Dairy Milk in Indonesia apart from growing brands like Oreo and Tuc. I’m now thoroughly enjoying being in the startup ecosystem, which provides a different scale of challenges and a lot of empowerment. The major areas of satisfaction for me have been to understand consumers and arrive at solutions to delight them, instil a performance-oriented culture, while contributing to the growth and profit of the businesses I have worked with.
Illustrate your company’s journey and various challenges you have encountered so far.
The Vistaprint brand has grown significantly and profitably while building a strong customer franchise over the years. This has been on the back of a strong brand proposition, consistent brand communication, a significant expansion of our products and offerings, having an easy-to-design user interface, and a consistent focus on quality improvement.
The opportunities or challenges have been around arriving at the areas of focus and aligning the whole organization towards those focus areas, finding the key functional and emotional benefits of the brand and consistently building the brand, identifying opportunities for product expansion, and finding innovative solutions to launch them. In a nutshell, it has been a journey of 3 things for us – Focus, Expansion, and Fun.
Tell us about the major categories of online printing products that you offer.
We have a range of categories that work well, but the top-performing onesinclude Visiting Cards, Apparel like T-shirts and Shirts, Stationery, Signs and Posters, Pens, Mugs, Photo albums, and now Masks, etc. Our flagship offering would be the personalization that we offer at the click of a button. It differentiates us from the rest.
What is your company’s unique selling proposition?
I believe there is no single bullet that defines our USP but a combination of things that work together uniquely to offer the customer or consumer delight. We provide our customers with a wide selection of
Enumerate on major facts about your professional journey
I have been fortunate to have diverse experiences in my career, from handling iconic brands, leading large teams to having a startup of my own and leading startups. In Cadbury, I have been responsible for relaunches of brands like 5 Star, Eclairs, Gems, Halls in India and have had the unique opportunity of launching Cadbury Dairy Milk in Indonesia apart from growing brands like Oreo and Tuc. I’m now thoroughly enjoying being in the startup ecosystem, which provides a different scale of challenges and a lot of empowerment. The major areas of satisfaction for me have been to understand consumers and arrive at solutions to delight them, instil a performance-oriented culture, while contributing to the growth and profit of the businesses I have worked with.
Illustrate your company’s journey and various challenges you have encountered so far.
The Vistaprint brand has grown significantly and profitably while building a strong customer franchise over the years. This has been on the back of a strong brand proposition, consistent brand communication, a significant expansion of our products and offerings, having an easy-to-design user interface, and a consistent focus on quality improvement.
The opportunities or challenges have been around arriving at the areas of focus and aligning the whole organization towards those focus areas, finding the key functional and emotional benefits of the brand and consistently building the brand, identifying opportunities for product expansion, and finding innovative solutions to launch them. In a nutshell, it has been a journey of 3 things for us – Focus, Expansion, and Fun.
Tell us about the major categories of online printing products that you offer.
We have a range of categories that work well, but the top-performing onesinclude Visiting Cards, Apparel like T-shirts and Shirts, Stationery, Signs and Posters, Pens, Mugs, Photo albums, and now Masks, etc. Our flagship offering would be the personalization that we offer at the click of a button. It differentiates us from the rest.
What is your company’s unique selling proposition?
I believe there is no single bullet that defines our USP but a combination of things that work together uniquely to offer the customer or consumer delight. We provide our customers with a wide selection of
high-quality products with single/ low unit customization at affordable prices, ordered from the convenience of their homes or offices.
How advanced is your printing facility? What are the processes involved in delivering excellent-quality products?
We have a world-class manufacturing plant which caters to all the geographies in the country. Availability of cutting-edge analytical tools, knowledge of world-class manufacturing, and other best practices are some of the advantages of being in a global company. We have a ‘qualitymindset,'aswe perform checks at every stage of the production processtoensure the quality of our products. Moreover, we regularly take feedback from our customers to understand and improve the quality of our products and services.
What is the technology that you deploy while printing your products?
Vistaprint has developed patented technology that delivers professional-quality printing in small quantities, affordably. This process was traditionally only available offline but Vistaprint has made it possible for both business owners and individuals to conveniently create and order their custom materials online.
Are there any innovations/upgrades currently happening in your portfolio?
In the last couple of years we have significantly expanded our products ranging from new categories like Stamps, Pens, Canvas prints to increasing depth in existing categories like Visiting cards, Premium apparel, Branded Pens, Photoproducts, etc. Even during the pandemic, Vistaprint India stormed the market by introducing 30 new products on its online portal. The launches reinstate the brand’s position as a pioneer in driving growth through innovation, introducing need-specific products at critical times.
Roadmap
The company would focus on building the Vistaprint brand, launching relevant new products & categories on the platform, improving customer experience on the site, maintaining focus on quality improvement, and evolving into a high-performing organization.
Brand building
“We have invested significantly on brand building on our digital platforms, namely YouTube, Facebook, and on news channels on TV. Currently we are airing a clutter breaking video of a tailor impressing his prospective father-in-law by showing his professionalism,” says Bharath Sastry, CEO
How advanced is your printing facility? What are the processes involved in delivering excellent-quality products?
We have a world-class manufacturing plant which caters to all the geographies in the country. Availability of cutting-edge analytical tools, knowledge of world-class manufacturing, and other best practices are some of the advantages of being in a global company. We have a ‘qualitymindset,'aswe perform checks at every stage of the production processtoensure the quality of our products. Moreover, we regularly take feedback from our customers to understand and improve the quality of our products and services.
What is the technology that you deploy while printing your products?
Vistaprint has developed patented technology that delivers professional-quality printing in small quantities, affordably. This process was traditionally only available offline but Vistaprint has made it possible for both business owners and individuals to conveniently create and order their custom materials online.
Are there any innovations/upgrades currently happening in your portfolio?
In the last couple of years we have significantly expanded our products ranging from new categories like Stamps, Pens, Canvas prints to increasing depth in existing categories like Visiting cards, Premium apparel, Branded Pens, Photoproducts, etc. Even during the pandemic, Vistaprint India stormed the market by introducing 30 new products on its online portal. The launches reinstate the brand’s position as a pioneer in driving growth through innovation, introducing need-specific products at critical times.
Roadmap
The company would focus on building the Vistaprint brand, launching relevant new products & categories on the platform, improving customer experience on the site, maintaining focus on quality improvement, and evolving into a high-performing organization.
Brand building
“We have invested significantly on brand building on our digital platforms, namely YouTube, Facebook, and on news channels on TV. Currently we are airing a clutter breaking video of a tailor impressing his prospective father-in-law by showing his professionalism,” says Bharath Sastry, CEO