The Economic Times - October 2000
The FMCG sector slowdown that everyone is talking about needs to be viewed in perspective. Is it really a slowdown caused by a deteriorating economic condition, or is it merely the morning-after, after a particularly good night before? I think it is the latter – what we are seeing is the concluding chapter of phase 1 demand, dying gasp and all. The fundamentals of Consumer India seem fine. In fact, it seems like urban India, at least, is definitely headed for consumption ‘take off’ in the next five years. However there are corrections that are happening now which are tough. As one CEO said recently, there is no doubt that the long term looks good. The short term is the difficult bit. One thing is clear – the golden days of runaway growth are over and slower growth rates are a fact of life. We need to re adjust our […]
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The Economic Times - September 2000
Is the Future Happening? The Economic Times – September 2000 The marketing of India as an investment destination is moving into high gear again. ‘Indian market opportunity ‘ has been a traditional pillar of our sales pitch, and over the years, we have moved from hype to hope and now, with eight years of post liberalisation market understanding, it’s time for review and realism. When we first started selling India in the early nineties, statistics about the affluence of the consumer base and the current market size were embarrassing. The sales pitches were perforce about ‘what can happen”, rather than “what it is now”, a picture painted about a huge ‘middle class’ consumer base hungry for products and services that they had been deprived of. The “suppressed demand” theory was soon proved wrong, and the sales pitch moved on to saying that over the years, as incomes grow and consumers […]
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The Economic Times - September 2000
Is the Future Market Happening? The Economic Times – September 2000 The marketing of India as an investment destination is moving into high gear again. ‘Indian market opportunity ‘ has been a traditional pillar of our sales pitch, and over the years, we have moved from hype to hope and now, with eight years of post liberalisation market understanding, it’s time for review and realism. When we first started selling India in the early nineties, statistics about the affluence of the consumer base and the current market size were embarrassing. The sales pitches were perforce about ‘what can happen”, rather than “what it is now”, a picture painted about a huge ‘middle class’ consumer base hungry for products and services that they had been deprived of. The “suppressed demand” theory was soon proved wrong, and the sales pitch moved on to saying that over the years, as incomes grow and […]
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The Economic Times -15 May 2000
Consumer demand in India has been behaving in a fairly capricious manner – or so it seems when viewed at an aggregate level. Every few years, and of late every year, the composition of who is buying, and what they are buying changes quite significantly, a bit like a kaleidoscope where with every shake, the resultant picture has totally changed. The usual explanations of bad monsoon, stock market sluggishness, saturation of larger markets, low consumer confidence don’t seem to apply across the board to all products! In a period of economic slowdown and depressed consumer sentiment, television sets sales increase handsomely, and despite poor agricultural performance, motorcycle sales in rural areas have runaway growth. And nothing seems to last long enough to qualify for a trend that is explainable. Some years, there is sharp growth in demand for rural low priced products, except that in the next year, the urban […]
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The Economic Times - February 2000
Newspapers during the Republic Day week reminded me of the opening lines in A Tale of Two Cities. The spring of hope and the winter of despair, the best of times and the worst of times etc. etc.. They described an India in which live a few world respected dollar billionaires, many more who are speeding (or trudging) along the ‘three way fast lane’ towards prosperity, and a vast majority waiting on the side for a ‘safe pedestrian crossing’, with the mounting ‘fury of the patient and the long suffering’. They provided ample confirmation that the pain of liberalisation is being borne by one set of people and the pleasures by another. One newspaper article talked of how brainy youth from South India are much in demand in Silicon Valley, and special legislation was brought about in the US in 98-99 to enable more of them to work there. Another […]
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