A few years ago, a small ghee brand walked into our office in Kesar Ganj with a good product and a nervous question: “Will people here actually buy from a brand they've never heard of?”
That question is really what every new brand entering Punjab is asking, whether they say it directly or not. So let me answer it through what actually happened.
We didn't launch that ghee brand across all of Ludhiana at once. We picked a small set of counters in Sherpur and Kohara — areas where our sales officer already had strong relationships — and introduced it personally, shop by shop. Not through a catalog. Through a conversation: “This is new, I trust it, will you try it for a month?”
A distributor's existing relationships are the fastest way to skip months of cold introductions.
That ghee brand didn't see meaningful reorders until nearly ten weeks in. Many brands panic around week three or four and pull back. The ones that succeed hold steady through that early quiet period, because that's exactly when shopkeepers are quietly testing whether customers actually like it.
That same brand initially priced for a premium segment. Within the first month, our sales team told us honestly: customers were asking for a smaller, cheaper size. The brand adjusted, introduced a smaller pack, and that's the size that ended up driving most of their growth here.
Launching in Punjab isn't a single campaign — it's a sequence of small, trust-building decisions. Get those right, and the market opens up. Rush them, and even a great product struggles.
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