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Connecting With The Future Consumer India
Consumer Trends

Connecting With The Future Consumer India

A staggering 45% of our population is below the age of 19. Born after 1984, this is our post liberalization generation. Even the oldest of them would have been a mere 7 years old in 1991, when liberalization happened. 6 out of 10 households have at least one member who is from the liberalization generation. This is the first non-socialist, market economy generation, growing up in the thick of the information revolution, the connectivity boom, coalition politics, IT enabled everything and the rise of the service economy. And as this age cohort wends its way through life, it will be shaping, or rather re shaping markets, and the fortunes of marketers. There are a 100 million 17 to 21 year olds (as of 2003) who, in the next four to eight years, will be hopefully in a position to earn their own money and who will be wielding greater decision […]

May 1, 2003
More Telecom Lessons
Business Strategy

More Telecom Lessons

The last time I wrote in this column about the telecom business, a senior person from within the business called saying he wanted to salute my courage – the ‘fools rush in where telecom experts fear to tread’ sort of courage. I probably have a death wish, so here I am again, venturing an opinion on the ‘hot topic’ of Reliance Infocom’s proposition to consumers, and what works and does not work with Indian consumers. In my line of work, there is a lot of agonizing about whether enough alternate ways of playing in any market have been explored. Yet there is a significant gap that exists between the aspiration of ‘changing the rules of the game’ and the actual development of a revolutionary business strategy to achieve it. The same old way of looking at consumers – same old segmenting variables, same old pricing paradigms, same old obsession with […]

April 21, 2003
“Mass or Class”?
Business Strategy

“Mass or Class”?

Before CK Prahalad described the ‘poor’, as an opportunity in the Harvard Business Review, and coined the elegant phrase ” the bottom of the pyramid” to describe the large mass of poor people in the world, companies and their consultants used to spend lots of time and effort trying to define the size of the Indian market – is it 400 million people? Or a mere150 million? Consulting firms used say that international experience shows that markets “take off’ when per capita income of about 2000 USD PPP is achieved. Today, the line seems to be “there is a lot of pent up demand in the lower income, and if you find the right strategy to tap the bottom of the pyramid, then the market in India could explode”.  Is this new untested wisdom? As far as I remember, back in the1980s, Nirma was the first to recognize it. They […]

March 24, 2003
Here’s to Co-Opetition
Business Strategy

Here’s to Co-Opetition

It is with surprise that I read a recent spate of articles in the business press about one of the jewels in our crown – the dairy co-operative sector, of which Amul is the most celebrated offspring of the illustrious parent NDDB. “NDDB: A dream gone sour for Dr Kurien”, says one headline. It contains an interview with Dr Kurien, the founding father of the dairy co-operative sector, criticising the National Dairy Development Board’s decision to float a subsidiary marketing company, which would partner with state level dairy co-operative federations in the form of joint ventures. According to NDDB, this is a move designed to strengthen the marketing capability of the co-operative sector. Dr Kurien agrees that “most federations, unlike Amul, were not professionally managed”, but feels that NDDB should not step beyond its role as a funding agency. I am a bit puzzled. If the marketing arms of the […]

December 14, 2002
Walking the Talk on Service
Business Strategy

Walking the Talk on Service

Services are in. I am told that the only part of our economy that is thriving is services. And that even if you are marketing ‘hard goods’ like consumer durables or office automation equipment, in this new world of product parity, the service package that comes along with it is a bigger driver of market share and margins. However in practice, it appears that the actual design of services is quite disconnected from what the consumer actually wants. A lot of service initiatives seem designed to address the frills but not deal with the fundamentals. And even the frills are not perfectly frilly, if the highly personalised letters I get from hotels and airlines and travel agents and banks are any indication. They press the flesh in print very well, with the almost hand written signature which I am sure costs a lot to print, but they don’t bother to […]

November 14, 2002
Understanding the Low Income Consumer
Consumer Trends

Understanding the Low Income Consumer

It is now well accepted that there are two answers to the question “what is the market size and the appropriate market strategy for the Indian market” One is the low pain – low gain answer and the other is the high pain – high gain answer. The low pain – low gain answer is to size and target the top of the iceberg (from ‘tip’ of the iceberg many companies have inched their way downwards to the ‘top’ of the ice berg!) comprising well off consumers (still far poorer than consumers in most other parts of the world). The game can then be played with comfortable cost and price structures, using obvious, familiar, proven business models and product designs. The good news is that unlike a decade ago, this game is reasonably sized and has the assurance of sustained growth. However, if you have the stomach for it, there […]

November 1, 2002
More on the IIMs
Corporate Governance

More on the IIMs

The articles on the Government ‘take over’ of the IIM directors’ appointment and on why alumni and corporate leaders are merely watching this retrograde step without comment, suggested that the reason for this apathy is that neither group believes that autonomy has done too much” for the IIMs -so why bother, if they are going down the tube any way. As someone who has been closely involved since with one of the IIMs as an alumna, a visiting professor and a member of the last Committee for Future Direction, I would like to discuss some of these issues further. But first, why on earth is the fate of the IIMs such an important topic? Because they are one of the flagships of Indian education, and at some time maybe education from/in India will be as big a business as software; because they have been nurtured with tax payers money; because […]

July 14, 2002
Taking Charge of Perception
India My Land

Taking Charge of Perception

Everyone I discussed this piece with was of the opinion that it was not the thing to write about. In addition to being politically incorrect, it was not really my business, and what good would it do to pontificate from an armchair? However fools rush in where angels fear to tread and I have taken courage from Arun Maira’s earlier piece on this page, asking “is the business of business only business”? I would like to write to all of us in business and say, can we figure out what we can do, individually and collectively, to improve the way we communicate about our country to the outside world and take charge of the way events relating to us get positioned in the outside world? I don’t think we deserve to be painted as the next Gaza strip, where no one in their right minds should want to locate a […]

June 17, 2002
Seeing The Road Ahead By Understanding Demand Segments
Consumer Trends

Seeing The Road Ahead By Understanding Demand Segments

It is the same question that everyone is asking – why are demand patterns so illogical, why do usual predictors of good or bad demand like monsoons or consumer confidence or low GDP growth not apply across the board to all categories? Ask some sectors about recovery and they say, “well its already beginning to happen” and ask others and they are seeing very slow change, if any at all. Why are car and two wheeler and telecom and air conditioner markets growing, but FMCG markets groaning, and that too in a year where GDP growth was quite low? And if the reason is rural market not having money because of poor performance of agriculture, then where did the money come from? The rural market has behaved in a very prima donna-ish manner – it boomed, then it busted, and now it favours some categories and not others. The urban […]

May 1, 2002
Waiting for Kalki – I
Business Strategy

Waiting for Kalki – I

But then India has always been about mixed verdicts. Talk to a lot of business people, and the cynical will tell you “this is the end, send your children out of the country there is no future here”. The more pragmatic will draw attention to examples of pockets of peace and prosperity defined either by business segments or geographic pockets or select companies. As always, everything you say of India, the opposite is also true. Economic and political diversity is increasing between states, and there is every combination of economic performance, political ideology, and business friendliness existing. Even within states there are oases and deserts. Ask any sales manager in any business to analyse the business and he will confirm it. So that’s the first clue to surviving the short term. Waiting for Kalki in the form of 8% or more high quality growth which will bring universal salvation is […]

April 22, 2002
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