Behaviour Is Branding, Part 2: The Chai Test
Every Indian founder starts the same way. There’s a vision, a brand name that took three weeks and two WhatsApp groups to finalise, a logo, and a LinkedIn post that says “Humbled to announce…”. The vision is always the same: “We will be a household name.”
But Customers see the brand. Everyone else builds it.
A lot of founders quietly decide that customers are the only stakeholders who matter. Everyone else becomes a “cost centre.”
The vendor? Squeeze him on rates, then pay him in 90 days. The employee? “We’re a family,” said at 11 PM on a Saturday, right before a Monday deadline.
But here’s the catch. Your customer meets you for 5 minutes. Your vendor, your employee, your partner meets you every single day. They know the real brand. And in India, where everything runs on word of mouth, they are your most powerful (and least controllable) marketing department. The trust you burn quietly will show up loudly.
Now, let’s see who got it right (and wrong)
The gold standard: Tata and the Taj, 26/11.
After the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the Taj group reportedly looked after not just the guests’ families but the families of employees who were affected. Ratan Tata was widely reported to have personally visited the families. And that became a brand story. That’s what happens when behaviour comes first and PR comes second (or never).
Zoho: boring in the best way.
Sridhar Vembu has talked openly about hiring from small towns, building campuses outside metros, and investing in people’s growth. Zoho doesn’t have the loudest marketing in SaaS. It has something better: employees who mostly say good things about it. Brand by consistency.
The cautionary tales.
Byju’s, once a symbol of Indian edtech, saw its image hammered by stories about employee layoffs, disputes and unhappy stakeholders. It had massive brand awareness but still it couldn’t outrun how the people around them talked about them.
The “Chai Test”
Here’s a simple checkup. Ask yourself:
- Would your vendor happily have chai with you if he met you at a wedding? Or would he suddenly remember a phone call?
- Would your last three employees recommend you to their best friend?
- Do you pay on time when you’re doing well? And, tougher, when you’re not?
If you flinched at any of those, you’ve found your real brand problem.
The bottom line
Customers buy from brands they like. But vendors prioritise brands they respect, employees stay with brands they trust, and partners bet on brands that keep their word. Get those right and the customer part is, frankly, the easy bit.
So go ahead, build the brand. Just remember it’s built one payment, one promise and one “thank you” at a time.
