Why are all Indian boxers from Bhiwani?

When Economist Alfred Marshall talked about why certain occupations and industries tend to cluster in a particular town it helped us understand how certain places over a period of time turn into 'competency belts' for certain sorts of work. This applies to sports too. Now we know that almost everyone in Bhiwani is into boxing (yeah, that's close to an exaggeration). After all, didn't Akhil Kumar, Vijender Kumar and Jitendra Kumar all come from Bhiwani?

Extend that to the Olympics. HT Mint reports that if we were to 'look at how the top teams collected their Olympic medals, one would have thought that sporting superpowers such as the US, China and Russia would have had their medals evenly spread around all types of sports. That is not so. The US picked up a total of 110 medals in Beijing. Sixty of them came from athletics and swimming (the latter no doubt helped by a man called Michael Phelps). Thirty-five of Russia’s 72 medals came from athletics, weightlifting and wrestling. Great Britain won 33 medals in cycling, sailing, rowing and kayaking; its grand total was 47. Australia won 20 of its 46 medals in swimming while it bagged five more in canoeing and kayaking. Thirteen of Japan’s 25 medals came from judo and wrestling.'

What applies to Industry and Sport applies to Marketing too. Marketers can't create brands across product categories to the extent they pitch varied brands as solutions to varied consumers needs. They have to limit themselves to catering to certain needs that they can respond to best. In doing so they limit their brand stable and ensure top notch value delivery to their segment of consumers, when there is a purchase. To many brands catering to too many segments and categories is disaster road the firm puts itself on.