Unprepared for Our Consumption

Danger: A Vulnerable Consumer Base

Why are car sales zooming? Here’s an explanation. Because it is only the rich who buy cars – car penetration is a bit over 20% in the topmost quintile of Consumer India (i.e. the richest 20% of India), and 5% or less in the remaining quintiles. Car sales also come out of corporate pockets as much as out of consumer pockets in this segment of income. and Rich India is actually back to feeling comfortable – the stock market is back up again, and everyone is feeling secure looking at their NAVs climbing back. Banks are lending for car purchases again, corporate profits have been very good and tax planning time is near The economic typhoon seems to have mildly hit and then gone away, adding to an increase in level of this consumer’s confidence. Pragmatic consumption is back again, and a new car with a bank loan is a […]

Tales From Modern Consumer India

An earlier set of columns discussed how India changes in insidious and tricky ways: it morphs, slowly changing from within, and keeps reshaping itself just like an amoeba. With each bit of outside matter it ingests, it changes shape a wee bit and, before you notice it, there is a whole new shape. The last column reflected on what modern Indian goods and services were looking like. This one is about consumer insights gleaned from a trip through Uttaranchal to Badrinath-Kedarnath, and one to Kolkata and Jamshedpur. The realisation from the Uttaranchal trip was that religiosity, cell phones and Maggi Noodles are three things that hold modern India together. Since the latter two are not part of our ancient heritage, we can heave a sigh of relief that we are evolving and not stuck in the past! The Kolkata-Jamshedpur trip had flight cancellations on account of an airline expanding too […]

Understanding Consumer India Better

While consultants and companies advise investing in India based on the current and projected size of the middle class, the bogey of the definition and sizing of the middle class hasn’t gone away, says Rama Bijapurkar B2C business in India continue to struggle with defining target markets based on the most logical measure – household income. Every meeting we go to, the target market definition, based on which market potential is calculated and business plans are drawn up, is either hotly debated or accepted with a sceptical shrug of the shoulders by some people in the audience. The definition is based on some income band per households per month or year, and this income band neither makes blindingly obvious sense nor is it standardised across data bases. People have their own definition and they qualify this with labels like high / rich / middle / lower middle or labels like […]

The Shatabdi – A Metaphor for the New Middle Class India

A recent trip from Delhi to Rishikesh on the Shatabdi was a “eureka” moment. The Shatabdi is definitely the perfect metaphor for the middle class. Santosh Desai of Future Brands wrote once that the autoricksha is a metaphor for India. It can weave its way in and out of utter confusion, is ugly, noisy and inconvenient, but it serves the purpose quite well, at an incredible low price. Unlike an amusing bumper sticker on a Volkswagen that said “when I grow up, i will become a Mercedes”. the autoricksha will not grow up to become a car. It will – and is – becoming a much better autoricksha. But after seeing the Shatabdi, the thought occurs that the autoricksha may be a metaphor for the lower SEC (Socio economic class) C and D Urban India (roughly the second and third income quartiles of urban India); but the Shatabdi is definitely […]