Many India's

Many India’s, in one and all evolving differently

Much has been said and debated about the heterogeneity that characterizes the Indian consumers. For many years we have been trying to find the ‘holy grail’ of the Indian Market. Let us take a walk into the past where the life was simple and we had the four varnas that would define the makeup of society i.e the way individuals would live and interact with their outside world.

However over a period of times things have got complicated leading to schizophrenic India. Let us see what has lead to this firstly the biradiri, or community, is still an important part of Indian social interaction and does define certain ways of our living and social interaction. Then with India’s achieving Independence we saw emergence of two India’s one as rich and urban the other poor, agrarian and rural. We called them India and Bharat. This period was also marked by two broad age groups of Pre Independence and Post Independence India though both the generations still shared common value and there was not much of so called generation gap. Though with this things did get bit more complicated but were still simple in comparison to what we were about to witness something which will again turn the wheel of fortune for India…Liberalization of Indian Economy.

Liberalization, gave us two new-age cohorts, the first ever generation of liberalization children and the next generation who will grow up in an India that is confident about its new path and has found its moorings.

Though the varnas had defined only a certain set of occupations like the teachers, kings, warriors this got extended to occupations in government sector or worker in factory with very few in businesses and a large chunk continued to be in agriculture. However post liberalization we saw several new occupations coming up and the most prominent one being IT. Had we ever heard ‘VJ’ I guess our beloved Chitrahar had never got one. The call centers completely changed the concept of 9am-5pm jobs. These changes have made social-economic changes in the way India behaves.

While India’s economic structure changed, so did its family structure. Families are rapidly becoming smaller, and even in larger joint families, the nuclear component is becoming stronger. Rarely does a family patriarch take consumption decisions for all family members; individuals are becoming more important and the nuclear unit of a husband and wife is taking decisions related to consumption, savings and investment.

All this coupled with multi social-cultural regions, multiple languages is leading to a schizophrenic India.

It is high time to make better the existing Socio-Economic Classification used to define and understand Indian consumer. India is a multi-tiered, multi-layered market and needs a multi-pronged strategy, tools and techniques that helps us to decode and understand schizophrenic India.

“In religion, India is the only millionaire…the One land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined” – Mark Twain (American Author, 1835-1910)

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Relooking at ways of defining Audience

Many India's, in one and all evolving differently

Much has been said and debated about the heterogeneity that characterizes the Indian consumers. For many years we have been trying to find the 'holy grail' of the Indian Market. Let us take a walk into the past where the life was simple and we had the four varnas that would define the makeup of society i.e the way individuals would live and interact with their outside world.

However over a period of times things have got complicated leading to schizophrenic India. Let us see what has lead to this firstly the biradiri, or community, is still an important part of Indian social interaction and does define certain ways of our living and social interaction. Then with India's achieving Independence we saw emergence of two India's one as rich and urban the other poor, agrarian and rural. We called them India and Bharat. This period was also marked by two broad age groups of Pre Independence and Post Independence India though both the generations still shared common value and there was not much of so called generation gap. Though with this things did get bit more complicated but were still simple in comparison to what we were about to witness something which will again turn the wheel of fortune for India…Liberalization of Indian Economy.

Liberalization, gave us two new-age cohorts, the first ever generation of liberalization children and the next generation who will grow up in an India that is confident about its new path and has found its moorings.

Though the varnas had defined only a certain set of occupations like the teachers, kings, warriors this got extended to occupations in government sector or worker in factory with very few in businesses and a large chunk continued to be in agriculture. However post liberalization we saw several new occupations coming up and the most prominent one being IT. Had we ever heard 'VJ' I guess our beloved Chitrahar had never got one. The call centers completely changed the concept of 9am-5pm jobs. These changes have made social-economic changes in the way India behaves.

While India's economic structure changed, so did its family structure. Families are rapidly becoming smaller, and even in larger joint families, the nuclear component is becoming stronger. Rarely does a family patriarch take consumption decisions for all family members; individuals are becoming more important and the nuclear unit of a husband and wife is taking decisions related to consumption, savings and investment.

All this coupled with multi social-cultural regions, multiple languages is leading to a schizophrenic India.

It is high time to make better the existing Socio-Economic Classification used to define and understand Indian consumer. India is a multi-tiered, multi-layered market and needs a multi-pronged strategy, tools and techniques that helps us to decode and understand schizophrenic India.

"In religion, India is the only millionaire…the One land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined" – Mark Twain (American Author, 1835-1910)

Will Budget Bring Consumer Confidence Back?

India was never in recession most of the Economic Surveys predicted healthy GDP growth rate - however the Indian Consumer Sentiment were, as per some of the latest Consumer Confidence study - Consumer confidence in India has been dipping over last couple of months with signs of picking up in between. It was not the ability to spend but consumers desire to do so that got dampened. The country's recently found predilection to spend got tampered. We saw more & more Indians (even the ‘carefree’ Gen Y) exercising prudence.

Keeping these low sentiments into perspective it will be interesting to see what the latest Budget will offer.

However before we get into what to expect here is an interesting factoid about the origin of word ‘Budget’. One of the several stories that explain the word is that it borrows from Latin word ‘bulga’ meaning ‘a leather bag’. Within the bag one’s monetary resources were kept. In the 1880s the word began to be used as a verb to describe one’s expenditure and the attributive meaning of “inexpensive; suitable for someone of limited means” was as late as 1958.

Coming back to budget - Even though the consumer confidence has not been high lately but our economy seems to be gaining steam – GDP is set to expand more than 8% next fiscal year compared with 7.2% this year – the big question is will the government use this leeway to remove some accommodative steps it took to bolster business activity and consumer spending. Probably the answer is yes our Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is likely to re-embrace fiscal discipline. However as Mr C. Rangarajan, chairman of Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council said “Exit measures should be calibrated in a manner that stimulus in the economy should continue. At the same time, some adjustments will be made to bring down the fiscal deficit,”

In short run this may not go down well with few classes but controlling of fiscal deficit, inflation will bring a smile on wider set of audience; which brings us to the other big challenge of ‘Inclusiveness’

Our President’s speech has given clear signals that the government firmly believes that the benefits of welfare should reach the aam aadmi. She say “My Government will aim at a growth rate of above 8% in 2010-11…”, and goes on to add that “We’ll ensure that the growth process is equally sensitive to the concerns and the well-being of the weaker sections of society”.

In short we will have to find stability through growth and not choosing one over the other. So the coming budget will need to balance factors like growth-inflation or populism-macro economic factors or excessively rewarding the present over the future.

"There are three things not worth running for - a bus, a woman or a new economic panacea. If you wait a bit, another one will come along." Derick Heathcoat-Amory – British Conservative politician

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Jimmy Choo interesting insight! Tks Mr Vir Sanghvi

Vir Sanghvi

Vir Sanghvi

Vir Sanghvi