STL enters Access Solutions market

STL was founded in the 1990s and had achieved the positioning of a cost-effective manufacturer of Optical Fibre Cables. As the global Networks market was a much higher Total Addressable Market (TAM), STL wanted to expand globally beyond the telecom market

Back then, it was known as Sterlite Technologies Limited and was manufacturing Optical Fibre Cables (OFC). Although the market was growing really well at around 10-12% annually, and there were a lot of opportunities to grow beyond optical fibre, the impression was that Sterlite Tech was low cost cable manufacturer from India with no differentiated technology capability.

STL was also manufacturing the highly advanced semiconductor grade raw material for optical fibres known as the optical glass preform. However,  the world did not know about this and did not believe that a company in India can actually make preform. It had also acquired a telecom billing solutions software product company but that transition was less than suboptimal in its growth potential.

The positioning limited its progress

The brand impression restricted its expansion plans even though the market was on an upswing with many positive global and India based opportunities.

The first issue as a brand in the global marketplace that STL was facing was because of its unwanted positioning – a low-cost manufacturer of OFC. Needless to say, low cost was perceived to be low quality also, both in terms of the product and the service standards, time to deliver, complaint handling, returns and repair policy etc.

Cables can be made with very simple technology – buy optical fibres and extrude them with plastic to make a cable. The real tough thing is to make the super pure semiconductor grade silica glass that is transparent for hundreds of kilometres, and then make the optical fibre by extruding that glass – Sterlite was able to do that, in a semiconductor grade clean room in Aurangabad. The only others who did that were in USA, China, Japan and one European country – so Sterlite was way more high-tech than it was perceived to be.

Secondly, it had the image of an old company with traditional manufacturing processes and thus lagging behind in the contemporary industry 4.0 standards.

Thirdly, some media reports were negatively portraying a company held by the same promoter with a similar name as irresponsible towards the environment and the society. That negativity was associated with Sterlite Technologies also even though it was a different company and operated responsibly.

The employee self-image was also misplaced and lacking a sense of respect for the commendable work they were doing. They thought of themselves as hard working manufacturers and not as intelligent, ambitious or global technologists.

We quickly picked up all this in our conversations with the people at the company and research and determined to turn it around. With the team, we did a lot of customer and people interviews – talked with over 50 stakeholders, including media houses, suppliers and employees beyond customers. In this way, we got to know what they wanted and then designed a current-state document.

The Chinese Whisper that rung loud across the globe

While we had just begun with some thoughtful ideas backed by data, and a solid plan taking into consideration the resources and the budget we had at our disposal, an unexpected event happened that gave a severe blow to our team and also the company at large.

The Chinese were significant consumers in the global marketplace, constituting 55% of global optical fibre purchase, with one company making up 20% of the sales. All of a sudden, this one company stopped buying.

With this sharp reduction in demand, the supply side companies began dumping. Low-cost options began to sell at even lower costs. Sterlite that was already struggling with quality perception in the market, now had to fight on prices also.

We were determined to create a turnaround for the company. This unfortunate situation only strengthened our resolve to work with greater passion and hard work on a war footing.

Our objective was clear – Position STL as a Global Technology Leader in Digital and Optical Solutions with End-to-End capabilities​

Rising up to the challenge

Our approach – Redesign a modern global brand, Change tone of voice and language, Drive Analyst and trade media respect, Create Customer Brainstorming session, improve reach via Social​

We began to change the identity of Sterlite Technologies at the fundamental level.

The one paragraph on the company, the three pagers on the company, and the whole package of how to introduce the company were crafted and put together to be available on an easy reference webtool called SlideKick that everyone had to go in. This was a set of 16 charts of the company that everyone had to know and use. You could not tamper with these charts. It was available on a platform and people had to download and use it as-is.

Brand compliance was a very direct KPI for the marketing team. So, the marketing team took it upon themselves to see that everyone was complying. Employees were not forced to comply, but influenced to like it. As you will see later, people were just choosing the new brand guidelines because they were inherently elegant and easy to follow.

By now, we had a clear direction in our mind where the brand building needed to go. The company needed to look technologically advanced with very high quality standards, youthful and  stand out from the crowd.

There were five key messages that were put together as a mnemonic -IKWAR -for the team to remember

 I stood for innovative

K stood for knowledgeable.

W stood for world class.

A stood for available, and

R stood for responsible

The keyword there was A that is available. We wanted everyone to be able to approach us with the easiest way. And that’s the reason what drove the whole social media strategy for being so easily out there. That made a lot of people in the company to become social media active.

A new theme for the brand

We needed a futuristic positive theme that demonstrates ambition.

We chose the space theme, after careful considerations. Mankind has always tried to reach out for the stars and space technology has been advancing with innovations for years. Secondly, the core product of our company is OFC which creates an impenetrable space within itself, where light can travel freely over long distances. Lastly, while everyone else was talking about connections within humans on the earth, this theme signified the much bigger ambitions of this company and helped it stand out in the crowd.

We chose shiny piano Black to inform the key components in all visual designs everywhere. There was a practicality in the choice. We wanted something that was easily replicable and therefore consistency would happen. And secondly, we wanted something that was fundamentally different from what our current competitors were doing, and look more modern than them. Space and shiny piano black were more modern than what the technology companies in the telecom sector were doing.

The products began to be named in the same theme. Some examples include Stellar OFC, Celeste, etc.

The name was shortened to STL to create  a new image and fresh way of thinking about the company and its future, also make it look modern, techy, geeky and young, and to distance from the ailing brand of the other company. The letters S, T L and R were retained to be used everywhere though, since the idea was not to cut off from the roots entirely. STL was casually expanded to – Simplify Transform Lead – as a way to re imagine what it stood for.

The next thought process was to call out a subtle brand imagery where the terms beyond tomorrow were used to tell that we wanted to look beyond the current problems and come up with a better tomorrow. It also went very beautifully with the space theme, because all of the people there had grown up on Star Trek.

All the collaterals were designed with realistic photographs.

• An evening and stylist, picturesque mode was chosen.
• Water and reflection were key elements to be used for the notion of reflection.  
• Images and aesthetic designs were carefully selected to convey youthfulness, contemporariness and high standards.
• Rainbow colours in a flowy mode were used for indicating traveling on light, which is what signals do inside optical fibres.

We brought the best minds to collaborate with when it came to setting up experience centres. Soon these centres began to have a fan-following of their own. People who were otherwise uninterested in STL products also flocked to these spaces in anticipation of astonishing visual designs. And they were never disappointed.

To showcase their innovations, STL more than doubled its patents portfolio from 400 to 900.

The team was well aware that like the rest of the world, our industry was also influenced by social media branding. We began with data- backed research of the leading players, both Indian and International. For example, one study including analysis of about 3000 tweets from 2 celebrity business leaders and we could clearly see some patterns that were working for them.

“Content is the king” had become an axiom. A “content-factory” was setup at STL where the objective was to produce good content in high volumes at a consistent pace. Some old employees were initially sceptical of this approach but with the data from our meticulous researches, Manish was able to convince them. With time, that team became ardent believers in this approach and as of 2024, it still works tirelessly for producing the content pieces in the same methodical ways.

Mainstream media was not being ignored the too. We had forged effective connections in the leading media houses like Hindustan Times, Business World, Business Today, etc. and articles after articles regularly came up that told the real picture of STL, highlighting its adherence to the highest quality standards, its innovations that made it as good as, if not better than, the leading players in the industry .

The team also began to establish STL as a thought leader and made appearances in industry events, big discussion forums and gave frequent interviews to the media. All of these efforts established STL as the modern, advanced manufacturer that it actually was.

The employee part of the branding was deftly handled. The employees began to be called STLers (pronounced stellars – which resonated with the space theme while keeping the letters S, T and L). This boosted their self-esteem and transformed their communications, including the informal ones, with the outside world. While this may look like a low return exercise at the individual level, the cumulative impact on the brand building was significant.

Outcomes

These efforts paid off and soon, STL had transformed itself from a low cost, poor quality ageing manufacturer to a trusted, innovative brand leading in the modern age.

It began to be recognized globally across USA (15% market share), Europe (Optical and connectivity). The company began to be invited to newer geographies.

It also saw high brand recall and win rates​.

Sales were happening in newer areas, beyond just Optical Fibres Cables, like Optical Fibre networks (including design and deployment), Access Network design and Deployment,  

Traffic went up 400% and the Patents portfolio was up 300%​

Social Engagement went up 10X and Global Media coverage increased to 250%​

With the expanded market base, market capitalisation also increased which led to positive impact on stock performance. STLTECH picked up from a low of ₹95.40 in 2017 to ₹ 415 in 2018

This is the story of STL when Manish Sinha was the group CMO there.