Part -III- The Pokemon Phenomenon- In India

Part –III

for part I-The Pokemon Phenomenon- 90's Born can't resist and 80's Born can't figure out
for part II-PART -II The Pokemon Phenomenon- 90's Born can't resist and 80's Born can't figure out

So after getting into the American Market and penetrating deep into it, Indian market became lucrative and hot-spot for most brands.
Well, the fact was who doesn’t want to target the country among highest population and also with most youth.
The same thing happened with Pokemon. In India Cartoon Network on 12 May 2003 first showed Pokemon, which coincide with summer holidays. This gave them what we learned before the importance of "TIME FRAME".
Only after launching the TV Show they launched the toys.
Funskool became the authorized dealer for Pokemon toys and launched it in India.
Little did it knew that Pokemon Toys will become such a Huge success. During November Funskool had to launch 22 stock keeping units, sold seven lakh units in the cards category, 4-5 lakh figurines and around 30,000 games.
The price of the cards was Rs 30 and the figurines Rs 50 per piece.

Now Indian market challenges were mainly with the network.
Cartoon Network was available in English, so language was not that a big issue ( until they had to dub it in Hindi ).
Let’s look at reasons why it became huge success in India.

Indian Kids are so much used to Role playing that this game gave them an opportunity to relive it.
Most of the kids (male) have tried to shave with the father’s cream and kids ( female) have put on the lipstick and bangles of mom. The Pokemon belonged to RPG.(more already posted in Part I)

The introduction of the game was very well planned. All the Shanzhai's ( to read more on Shanzhai’s click hereThe Temptation and Shanzhai ) were given opportunity to make as many copies and toys as possible, and were never banned for it after a year launch from Funskool.
This led lots of toys to float in market thus increasing the product recall.

For Indian Market the Communication strategy was slightly different. Everything was built around the concept of Cuteness and they targeted first the English speaking belt of India the South India.

They roped in “Karthik” a singing sensation of south to sing the title track who himself enjoys a lot of credibility among youth.

These were the tactics to make Pokemon became a phenomenon in India too. Hope you all likedthe three part series.

Keep reading for more Insights and Truths.
Cheers