India is the land of many truths, all true. It lives over four centuries. Like the proverbial curate’s egg, it is good in parts and like India’s favourite comfort food, the “khichdi”, it is an amalgam of many disparate grains. For the uninitiated to make sense of all this and for businesses to decide investment and business strategies, the mantra is “God is in the detail; for insight and explanation, look beyond aggregate data”

There are three drivers and shapers of the future of India’s consumption story – the economic-demographic structure of Consumer India, how Consumer India behaves and what it’s mind set is and what the supply side has to offer in terms of relevance and value addition to Consumer India’s life. All three facets need to be read together to provide meaningful insight. The hero of the story is consumer behaviour, the villain is the structure of the consumer base and the supply side lags the consumer and has to catch up

Consumer India’s structural characteristics are a mix of good and bad. Being the most populous nation on earth and hugely diverse, many Indias coexist.

Overwhelmingly young, but nowhere near as rich as we imagine the world’s fifth largest economy to be. Low on formal education, high on digital ability, mostly informally employed and low skilled.

Even a small fragment of India is larger than most countries of the world. Companies need to understand Consumer India’s structure story to decide which Indias to cobble together as ‘my target India’ and align their ambitions and strategy accordingly. There are plenty of choices available.

A lot has been written about this in media stories and books, and “the changing Indian consumer” is a favourite conference topic. However, given the structure story of the many Indias, all these anecdotes and observations of how different parts of the elephant behave need to be distilled into a holistic view of the nature of the beast.

This chapter looks at key shapers of behaviour—aspiration, dignity, Indian identity, brand orientation, the phenomenon of monster consumers; at how to understand navigate heterogeneity of the market for strategy development and how to read change in the confusing way in which Consumer India changes.

Mapping the supply landscape in relation to the demand environment Consumer India is still underserved and supply lags behind demand.

While there has been a tsunami of new supply in the past three decades, most of it is small-scale supply or opportunistic imports. The good news is that there are enough avenues for value addition, and the market is still wide open. The consumer is saying ‘ye dil maange more’ (my heart asks for more)—more real brands, more customer-centricity in addressing my needs.

However mass markets do not wait and are seeing new, improved action from small physical and e-commerce supply and new digital business models, though not at a large scale. It truly is the land of Lilliput where the small are collectively capturing and powering large parts of the market.

Making a serious dent in the Indian market requires MNCs to design ‘made for India’ businesses that may be quite different from what they have in the rest of the developed world, they have resisted doing this for many reasons, including mindset, governance, faulty dominant logic and perceived risk. As a result most MNCs have struggled in India. MNCs should leverage their global competencies and knowledge and design ‘made for India’ businesses – keep the religion, change the ritual.

India‘s mass markets have been very hard to unlock because of the challenge of satisfying customers and being profitable, and they have been ignored by most large companies. Over the years several constituencies in India have addressed this challenge, and a treasure trove of experience and market-tested pilot models abound. Add to this ‘frugal innovation’ capability the new digital capability and new-economy models now available to lead the way, and the mass market in India is on the verge of receiving the fruits of a huge supply revolution that will be a win-win for suppliers and customers.