| I don't know any of the India chiefs Coca Cola has had, but if they ran up losses of more than their equity investment of $268mn in a decade, and were foolish enough to pay a huge amount to buy the Parle brands only to kill them, surely I couldn't have done much worse? Indeed, while top MNCs have failed in the automobile market, former-bureaucrat Jagdish Khattar has done wonders at Maruti using a simple theory "" that no one theory works in the Indian market. So, Khattar has gone around wooing panchayat heads, for instance, a market segment no one has thought of as a distinct one so far. |
| In the same vein, Bijapurkar tells us, with help from economists Subir Gokarn and Omkar Goswami (in two different studies), that to equate rural India with agriculture is completely wrong, that more than half of rural income is non-agricultural, that there are at least 150 rural districts that have assets and amenities equivalent to that of urban India. She points out that it is foolish to believe the Indian market, or parts of it, will mimic those of other countries at different income levels "" so, just because people in the US behaved in a certain way doesn't mean Indian consumers will buy the same things as their incomes go up. By way of example, and there are many more, Bijapurkar points out that US-style malls located far away in the suburbs don't work in India and that Subhiksha-style 1,000 square foot chains are more successful. Similarly, while Indians want to cook less as incomes go up, and wives start working, they haven't embraced ready-to-eat western food but have opted for freshly made tiffin box lunches provided by housewives or large kitchens. And, while many lazy marketers are content to wait till the market develops, Bijapurkar points out, the opportunity simply gets taken by someone else "" so, while the IBMs and Dells waited for income levels to rise enough so that people could afford to buy decent PCs, low-cost assemblers simply walked away with the market. |
| At the end, however, you get the feeling Bijapurkar's trying too hard to show the Indian consumer is different. Sure, India's consumers differ from region to region, across income categories, even occupation categories within the same geographical area, but surely that's the case everywhere in the world and to be expected in a country the size of India? After all, Wal-Mart may have succeeded in the US, but it has been a failure in similarly developed markets like Germany and Japan "" indeed, even in the US, Wal-Mart has been struggling to reinvent itself and its every-day-low-cost pricing model. |
| And, just when the reader is getting convinced that no grand theory or categorisation of customers works, Bijapurkar starts explaining the market in terms of precisely these categorizations. So, "China 2005 = India 2015", she says to explain that India will soon be just as hot a consumer market as China was. The Socio-economic Classification (SEC) which classifies consumers according to their education and occupation, she says is a special favourite when it comes to explaining consumer behaviour, even though education levels of a 40-year-old may are typically frozen two decades ago and occupation categories like 'officers/executives' are too broad to give meaningful results. The Dharavi slum in Mumbai, the author admits, contains households all the way from SEC B to E, with a smattering of SEC A "" in which case, why not explain consumer behaviour the way NCAER does across not just income groups but even occupation groups across rural and urban areas and across regions? |
| That said, the book is great read and offers valuable inputs. Just make sure it isn't the only one you're reading though. |
| WE ARE LIKE THAT ONLY |
| Rama Bijapurkar Penguin Portfolio Rs 495, 281 pages |
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