Why India needs its own definition of what it means to be a ‘millennial’
Consumer Trends

Why India needs its own definition of what it means to be a ‘millennial’

Millennials are 30% of the population and have fuelled India’s consumption growth more than any other generation (Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint) In India, Gen Z should be called Digizens. None of them know the India that was before Y2K Topics Indian Millennial Millennials are an age cohort conceived in America as those born between 1981 and 1996. In an article Defining Generations: Where Millennials end and Generation Z Begins, Pew Research says that “cut-offs of ages aren’t an exact science, but tools for allowing analysis, yet not arbitrary, and based on political, economic, social factors”. This means that before we adopt the American construct of “millennials” as a relevant tool for analysis, we need to test whether, by this definition, it makes sense to do so. And if not, what do we use then? The markers for American millennials include being “old enough to grasp the historical significance of 9/11”, growing up […]

December 31, 2019 0 Comments
Opinion | Diary of an airport anthropologist
Consumer Trends

Opinion | Diary of an airport anthropologist

There’s no place like large city airports to get a sharp yet nuanced sense of what India today is all about. In cities with two terminals, this is especially true of “low cost” terminals rather than the newer “global” ones, which are great to experience, but lack an Indian soul—just like those very upmarket shopping malls. Some would argue that this is exactly what these airports are, only with an airstrip or two attached. On a bus ride to the aircraft at Ahmedabad airport was a group of four loud and excited Gujarati-speaking men with a 10-year-old boy in tow, clearly from small-town Gujarat. Remember the bygone days when people wore suits and ties to get on a plane? They wore traditional weave kurtas and shawls with narrow pants, embroidered mojris and ear studs with great confidence, not self-consciously trying to become invisible in a sea of Western attired men. […]

March 15, 2019 0 Comments
Dear Gen Now
Consumer Trends

Dear Gen Now

Setting up #MeToo as an all-or-nothing issue will make us ignore the considerable gains already made. My reply is that setting this up as an “all or nothing” issue will make us not notice the considerable gains that have already been made or the never-before foundation we now have that we can build on. Here is the sad truth. If you randomly pick any Indian woman who has stepped out of her home into the wider world of work, be it four or 40 years ago, there is a good chance that she will have a story of experiencing gender-based harassment in the workplace. Of being at the receiving end of behaviour from men in positions of power or co-workers, which made her life miserable. It breaks my heart (though it doesn’t shock my mind) that even so many decades after my generation entered the workplace, the situation remains pretty […]

October 16, 2018 0 Comments
Indians are pragmatic value seekers
Consumer Trends

Indians are pragmatic value seekers

Are Indians nowadays saying “proud to be Indian, buy Indian”? And have they made a U-turn on their earlier craze for “phoren” and “imported”? No one can accuse Indians of being that simple and unequivocal! Of course, Indians are far prouder today of being Indian than they have been in the past 50 years. The world is now much more respectful of India. All Indians, especially the consuming class (the richer half), have experienced improved living conditions and progress on many fronts. Consumer India has ample evidence of “Made in India” products changing from a limited range, cheap and shoddy, to a wide array, as good as what you can buy outside and often cheaper. But does this mean that saying “not from an MNC” or adding a dollop of Indianness to the marketing mix is today’s magic mantra of ensuring consumer preference? Of course not. We are now proud […]

September 4, 2016 0 Comments
The Context and Contours of Consumer Behaviour in New India
Consumer Trends

The Context and Contours of Consumer Behaviour in New India

When the prime minister announced the ambitious push to ‘Make in India’ and companies were thinking of setting up manufacturing hubs in India for the world, a la China, the irony was not lost on many. Here we are in one of the world’s most attractive consumer markets, and we are searching for opportunities to manufacture for the rest of the worlds’ consumption. A couplet by Sant Kabir came to mind, where he describes the musk deer which smells the intoxicating musk emanating from its own belly, and spends the rest of its life searching all around for the source of the scent! The Indian consumer market has high gain and high pain. It is very heterogeneous, very modest in income, very high in aspiration and scattered over a very large number of villages and towns. Multinationals entering this market have struggled with their strategy, expectations and had its hopes […]

August 2, 2016 0 Comments
The renaissance
Consumer Trends

The renaissance

How marketing dominated, declined and then resurrected through the decades. The 1980s were glory days for marketing in India. The skills were world class though the products they sold were not! The finest talent joined marketing companies, ad agencies and research agencies. Testimony to this is how successful this cohort has later been on the global stage. India’s marketer of the 1980s innovated, adapted, brought science and art and slog to the marketing function. The first socio-economic classification of consumers was done in the 1980s; media planning models were state-of-the-art, though run on lumbering mainframes; advertising had a good mix of left brain brand planning and right brain creativity; and market research pioneered methodology to interview illiterate villagers, built algorithms to forecast market share and election seats and develop the discipline of qualitative research. Brands were built, nurtured and renewed over decades with caring and consumer insight. Distribution systems, with […]

July 18, 2016 0 Comments
Gold monetisation: Make your metal work for you and the economy
Consumer Trends

Gold monetisation: Make your metal work for you and the economy

By: Bijapurkar and Rajesh Shukla Explaining Indians’ love of gold to foreigners is hard. We are the world’s biggest gold consumer, pipping China to the post, and consuming 842 tonnes of gold in 2014, 75 per cent of which was in the form of jewellery. It is very hard to explain to puzzled foreigners the psychological and emotional feelings of well-being and security that comes from owning or wearing gold. Whenever I buy gold jewellery, my friends from the cold analytical world of finance give me an estimate of the likely rate of return I would get over a period of time and demonstrate how it is a foolish investment more so after the jeweller applies his weight discount for the solder and wastage. But such rationality cannot overcome millennia of the positive symbolism for gold. While my domestic help scrimps and saves to buy gold for her own social […]

March 16, 2015 0 Comments
The consumer is ready; are companies?
Consumer Trends

The consumer is ready; are companies?

The Indian consumer is feeling very good right now. Across the rich and poor, and those who live in both urban and rural India, there is a strong belief that the good times are around the corner (echoing the Achhe din aane wale hain slogan on which the Bharatiya Janata Party rode to power last year). Since October 2014, when this survey was done, inflation has eased further, and there has been a decrease, albeit one that could be temporary, in fuel prices, while food prices have cooled. In short, there is no reason for the optimism evident late last year to have dissipated by now. This sentiment has translated into confidence that incomes will improve or, at worse, stay the same. Sure, there are those who remain uncertain, but across the board, the indicators do suggest that the Indian consumer is ready and waiting. In the context of some […]

February 25, 2015 0 Comments
Consumer India Opportunity India
Consumer Trends

Consumer India Opportunity India

SETTING NEW CONSUMER PARADIGMS Consumer India evolves and sophisticates into a segment that marketers the world over find worth serving. India is a large economy. In terms of world ranking, India’s GDP is in the top 10, but its GDP per capita is below 150. As much as 50-60 per cent of its GDP is accounted for by household consumption. However a less appreciated fact is that this consumption is made up of a lot of people, each earning and consuming a little bit, that adds up to a lot – unlike many other markets whose structure of consumption is a few people earning and consuming a lot that adds up to a lot. This is the lens through which the Indian consumer market opportunity needs to be evaluated and businesses designed. An even less appreciated fact is that a modest-income consumer in India is relatively less well-to-do but not […]

January 1, 2014 0 Comments
Despite boom, Indian consumers are totally under-served. Here’s why
Consumer Trends

Despite boom, Indian consumers are totally under-served. Here’s why

Rama Bijapurkar in an exclusive article says, “We eat 1 trillion chapattis each year but still don’t have a ‘just heat and eat’ brand of acceptable tasting wheat chapattis that doesn’t burn a hole in our pocket.”  We have been gloating over our consumption numbers and how they stack up compared to the other markets; and how dizzily they have grown in the past two decades. But at the end of researching my new book, A Never-Before World, I came to the conclusion that Consumer India is totally under served and that India has a long way to go in becoming a real consumption driven economy. This is notwithstanding the percentage of GDP contributed to household consumption or the rate at which Consumer India has been shaping up TV sets, mobile phones, musical ring tones, automobiles, shampoo, bottled water, eating out, and lots of other things. The hallmark of a […]

January 3, 2014 0 Comments
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