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It’s the ‘Who’ that Counts
Consumer Trends

It’s the ‘Who’ that Counts

Consumer demand is now no longer about undesirable habits of rich folk but about driving GDP growth. Being morally purified, it now attracts a great deal of discussion and analysis, especially as we run up to another budget, a key theme of which is about stimulating consumption. Yet most of the discussion and analyses are totally supply sided and product-centric and obsessed with WHAT is being spent on, rather than on WHO is spending and how they decide to. Consumer demand is about how much people choose to spend, on what their consumption ability, aspiration and priorities are, in turn determined by their world view and life stage and socio cultural group. It is therefore simplistic to think about stimulating consumption in terms of spread sheet projections of past sales trends, suggesting how much excise duty to cut on what product categories or about cutting income tax (given that most […]

February 15, 2008
Testing Times Ahead for the Consumer Goods Sector
Business Strategy

Testing Times Ahead for the Consumer Goods Sector

Consumer goods companies seem to have their work cut out for them in the near future. While consumer demand is on the rise, sustaining margins is becoming increasingly challenging. Having healthy margins to keep the stock market happy but missing out on the investment needed to grab the enormous opportunity offered by India’s economics and demographics is a pyrrhic victory – as is having a healthy and high margin market share today at the cost of investing in brands. We are regrettably seeing more and more high market share, but jaded and eroded brands are unable to stand up to strong or reckless competitive pressure. Per capita incomes will continue to rise across the board and all socio economic strata are well infected with the consumption bug. However, the fight for a share of the consumer’s wallet is more intense now than ever before. EMIs, pension plans, health insurance, entertainment, […]

February 6, 2008
Understanding Our Social Transition
Business Strategy

Understanding Our Social Transition

Over the past five years, ever since the India story started getting more credible, one has been asking annoyingly often by foreign business audiences about the caste system and whether rising inequality would cause severe social tension and breakdown of law and order and constitute a major country risk. One did not believe that this was the correct interpretation of events, and wrote earlier in this column that the anatomy of social tension in India was not street wars and bloody violence, but institutions at loggerheads with each other, through every institutional and constitutional means available. But after reading about the growth of the Maoist belt, one thought that maybe there were things one wasn’t seeing, and started to examine this issue from the other side of the table – the poor people themselves (the politically correct term nowadays, is not poor or have-not, but people at the bottom of […]

November 26, 2007
Winning in the Indian Market
Business Strategy

Winning in the Indian Market

If the ET awards has a category for the non-Indian multinational that built a businesses in India of the scale, scope and profitability of either ICICI, Bharti or Infosys, it is a reasonable guess that the jury would not have had the problem of plenty to choose from. While it could be argued that the same holds true for Indian companies too, the fact is that the golden greats from overseas have far larger war chests, far deeper competencies and all the benefits of an already global business. Why then has Indian market not been over run by MNCs from outside? Why are there not many, many more Nokias, LGs, Samsungs? At a pinch, we can count Honda in that list, although it is the Hero Honda JV that has changed the landscape of personal transportation in urban and rural India. Maybe Hindustan Unilever can also be counted in this […]

October 19, 2007
Rama in Vietnam
C'est La Vie

Rama in Vietnam

Another one bites the dust, walking shamelessly down Mr Karat’s “pro – imperialist” path, and that is none other than Vietnam, run by his comrades. The latest emerging market that is being deluged with attention from America Inc is Vietnam. The Wall Street journal has frequent Vietnam stories; and in true American Inc. fashion, there is a rush to hold emerging market conferences and strategy sessions in Ho Chi Minh city, with well arranged tours of the hinterland, so that the American senior management team can understand what it takes to capture Vietnam, so to speak. And as a bright young man who works in the region was explaining to me on a flight back from Saigon, whenever there is an American business leader of Fortune 100 CEO rank visiting Vietnam, the visit carries all the courtesies extended to highly placed political figures, which includes the top brass from Hanoi […]

September 15, 2007
Music of the Hemispheres
India My Land

Music of the Hemispheres

What sets Corporate India apart from its western counterparts is to do with their differing responses to chance. We will experience such differences more intensely as India gets further globalised. It isn’t fashionable to say so in these days of globalisation, but my last few encounters with global corporate America have been tough. The difference in cultural wiring is becoming obvious by the day and cope strategies that enable me to be myself, and not a poor imitation of them, must be devised. Of course, there is no difference on all the big stuff like how to calculate ROCE and what the best practices of corporate governance are. But it’s the small stuff that tends to stress one out. Like, for instance, the repeated requests to rehearse a presentation from the podium at the venue of the big meeting, even after we have agreed on the content, the format, the […]

June 27, 2007
Sarinomics
India My Land

Sarinomics

Why every working woman should give pleated power dressing a shot The other day, I was reading an article in the British press, where the author said she was very surprised that some young women in Britain said that they actually wanted to wear the hijab. It occurred to me that people must be equally surprised when young women in India say that they want to wear a sari. Who in their right mind would want to be bundled into 18ft of fabric(Yes, that is the standard sari length). Surely, it is one more form of cultural gender oppression? I can understand women of my age, cohort and background wearing saris, because when I started working, there was no question of wearing anything else. It was just NOT DONE. But what about those who are now in a global India, free of such unwritten rules? Yes, I can see more […]

June 2, 2007
But what do the ‘have-nots’ want?
India My Land

But what do the ‘have-nots’ want?

The poor do not have the mind space to be concerned with how much the ‘haves’ have, or how they spend it; they are totally occupied with whether their own quality of life and amenities are improving or not, says Rama Bijapurkar. The newspapers have commented sharply on the prime minister’s CII speech urging a ceiling on exorbitant corporate salaries and curbing of conspicuous consumption. He says that the ‘haves’ showing that they have too much will upset the have-nots and sow the seeds of resentment in them, and ignite social tension. While his motives for saying so are beyond question, because he is an honorable man and an intellectual worthy of the utmost respect, he does seem to be totally out of sync with how the very constituency that he seeks to speak on behalf of, is thinking.  Over the past five years, ever since the India story started […]

May 28, 2007
The Traffic Jam Market
Consumer Trends

The Traffic Jam Market

There is a whole new market opportunity that threatens to grow for the next five years, and become a big money spinner – the commuting market. More and more people in more and more cities, are stuck in ever increasing traffic and commuting longer and longer hours each day. The fact that there are a lot of unfulfilled consumer needs is glaring at us, and the suppliers haven’t even got there yet! This market is up for grabs for anyone who has the competence to translate these needs into crafting imaginatively designed and distributed products that can make the customer’s life better. Many of these are people who are money rich, time poor and travel by car. A wonderfully well focused target group that cuts across gender, age and occupation, this is a marketer’s dream come true! What’s more, it is a ‘guaranteed to grow’ need segment! With such a […]

April 30, 2007
The New Indian Women
India My Land

The New Indian Women

I recently heard a point of view from a society watcher on Indian women that had me scrambling for my research boots. Had I got it wrong? Had the women’s liberation and empowerment revolution happened in the few moments when I was not paying attention? The point of view was that the mainstream urban Indian women never had it so good before. She has truly become the all powerful ghar ki rani, a long way from her naukrani status of not so long ago, and has a career to boot. Apparently, thanks to burgeoning economic independence, she is now ‘confident’ and ‘discerning’ and ‘demanding’, and her backward sisters who aren’t quite there yet find her very ‘aspirational’ and want to emulate her. All of these words, of course, are the marketing folk’s mumbo jumbo for justifying the kind of women that look great in advertising. Who wants a beleaguered wife […]

March 19, 2007
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