Dheeraj Sinha's Blog

Trust is a complex subject. Yet for brands and businesses, it’s one of the most desired and discussed constructs. There are two specific notions about trust that we need to reconsider. The first is the time view of trust: that it takes ages to build. In fact, it’s the frequency and quality of experiences that builds trust, not the time elapsed.

The second notion that needs busting is the absoluteness ascribed to trust – that either you have it or you don’t. Trust is not a binary construct, it’s a continuum. The amount of trust needed for a relationship to click is a function of one’s potential liability or the degree of risk involved. I may trust you enough to buy a mobile accessory but not enough to buy a car from you. Just as I may trust you enough to discuss work problems but not enough to discuss personal ones.

In the last decade, there are many examples of brands and even public icons who have managed to quickly scale up the public-trust ladder. Patanjali, one of the biggest brands of FMCG today is not more than a decade old. It must command some degree of trust to clock a revenue of over `10,000 crores in just a few years. Similarly, Narendra Modi, who hadn’t been on the national stage for more than half a decade, garnered enough trust amongst the people of the country to be sent to parliament with 282 seats in the 2014 elections. Many brands such as Ola, Amazon and Sensodyne that have become a part of our everyday lives are less than five years old in India.

This means we can hack our path to trust. Since it doesn’t necessarily have to be all or nothing, we can build it in small measures and catalyse our speed to get there. There are three strategies to do this.

High visibility around a brand is a quick way to build trust: You meet someone every day and your mind tricks you into believing that you have known the person for a long time. If the sum total of those interactions is positive, you believe it’s a relationship of trust. That’s how perhaps quick dates lead to relationships. Positive familiarity lulls you into trust. Brands wanting to build trust must interact with people as often as they can.

Using other’s positive experiences to build trust amongst the fence-sitters: Trust is a pattern of experiences; it could be yours or the expressed experiences of others. A part of this strategy includes pretending the momentum. Brands in markets such as India must pretend that they are already a successful phenomenon. The consumer, for whom the cost of going wrong is higher than the reward of being an early adopter, waits for the signals that the brand has crossed the chasm. Many others adopting a behaviour makes one feel that one is in a safe boat. Popularity is a good surrogate for trust. Brands must build an aura of success.

Effectively dealing with a breach of trust: What happens when there’s a breach of trust? Would you be there to listen and sort things out? In relationships, how we respond to differences, goes a long way in building trust. Similarly, for brands, how we address grievances and complaints plays a big role in building trust. Do you have a number that I can reach you at, do you have a service centre which will fix my product, do you say sorry when things go wrong, is there a precedence of you having treated others well? A breach of trust can build trust, if handled constructively.

Unfortunately, trust is seen as an outcome of several decades of good karma. The truth is that trust is something that can be actively worked upon. Brands can quickly scale up their trust quotient by building positive familiarity, posturing momentum and turning the moment of breach into a moment of renewed trust.

Thoughts on Building the New Behavior of Digital Payments in India

 

Calibrating our ambition

The issue with selling new ideas and technology to India is that the supply side is more eager and breathless than the consumer usually is. Predictions such as ‘Indian digital payments market will reach $500 bn by 2020’ lead to this breathlessness because these are numerical extrapolations without accounting the role of cultural variables. What gets frustrating then is the pace of adoption by people, which is notoriously slower and unpredictable than the numerically extrapolated charts. The first big caveat is to pace our expectations about the speed of change and not get caught up in the hyperbole of numbers. Numbers such as 1 billion mobile phone subscribers and 300 million internet users can at best be misleading if not run through the cultural test of how India adopts technology. Ultimately, all useful ideas will get adopted in India (with due adaptation), but in good time.

A look at the penetration of some other ideas and technologies will help calibrate our ambitions. A category such as DTH (Direct to Home) has not more than 50 million Households as paid subscribers, the number of Households in India with ownership of four-wheelers stands at 51 million according to the census of 2011, while brands such as Paytm claim almost 100 million subscribers (those with money in the account or card information). It seems that there’s a first flush of ‘eager adopters’ across categories and that’s perhaps not so difficult to get. The chasm sets in after this first flush when you’ve got the ‘eager adopters’ and now need to get in the ‘hesitants’. Across categories, the inertia that holds these ‘hesitants’ back hasn’t been so easy to break.

Its not about convenience

Unfortunately, what we think should be an easy stimulus to bring everybody on board – the proposition of convenience – that technology brings in the case of a mobile wallet or ecommerce, doesn’t cut much ice with the Indian consumer. Infact, effort is such a eulogized value in our culture that convenience as a benefit is not much of a motivator. A case in point are the results of the recently held elections in UP, where people actually saw the efforts of standing in the long queues of demonetization as a legitimate cost of purging the evils of black money from the society.

The cultural axiom that ‘effort is good’ is a big hindrance in selling ‘convenience’ based solutions to this country. Reason why, most convenience categories in India have indeed been sold on other allied benefits. For instance, the big benefit of sambar masalas is that they help a north Indian make sambar of the same taste as a south Indian household. No wonder, ready masalas are sold first for the authenticity of taste and then convenience. Similarly, instant noodles in India take 20 not 2 minutes to prepare, with all the added vegetables and the tadka. Instant noodles in India have turned out to be more about taste than instantaneousness. A much-celebrated example of technology adoption in India is IRCTC – the online railway reservation system. The real reason for the success of IRCTC is not just that it cut out the long queues but that it shifted power from the touts to the passengers. Fair-play and not just convenience turned out to be the bigger benefit here.

Shift the power

So, if it’s not about convenience alone, what could potentially unleash the usage of categories such as digital payments in India? Any technology becomes meaningful in India if it catalyzes one or more of the following themes – 1) Progress – as in the case of mobile phones which became synonymous with upward mobility and opportunity. 2) Relationships – as in the case of Whatsapp, which through its groups is now connecting families, residents of a society, mothers of a class and friends from an old class, alike. 3) Power – as in the case of internet, which has put the whole world at the fingertips of every Indian.

How does digital money shift power to the side of people? What’s the power of this currency which is greater than cash? Do I get privileged access to things that cash doesn’t get me? Do I stand in a faster line, do I get advantages of preferential tie-ups? Does my money have greater currency with digital payments? Does it help in my progress – can it furnish an overdraft? Will it help me get loans cheaper or easier? Can I earn interest on my balance? To be able to unleash its true power, digital payment solutions have to find ways to do things that cash can’t.

As I said earlier, sooner than later, India will adapt the new behaviors that we are selling. The question is not about the change but the pace of change. The right stimulus can help us cross the chasm faster. The flip side is that technology doesn’t sell in India for itself, it doesn’t sell for its obvious advantages such as convenience. The opportunity is that often, technology in India is able to build greater meaning than its functional delivery. It can change the social balance of power, become the fuel for progress and the grease of relationships. In this case, the question is – what meaning can digital money bring to people’s lives? Can digital money buy what money can’t buy?

This article first appeared in The Economic Times

As marketing and advertising trade punches, the answer to their woes lies elsewhere.

 

Advertising as an industry has come to be everyone’s favorite punching bag. The criticism may have hit a crescendo in the last few weeks, but the advertising model has been getting flak for a while now. A lot of the hatred unfortunately is coming from its primary partner – marketing folk. And of course, insiders eager to disparage the business, many of whom, ironically enough, built their reputations and their fortune in this very business.

I am not here to say that all is well with advertising. But I do think that by trying to find a scapegoat, we are merely avoiding the key issue. The truth is, it’s not advertising which is responsible for marketing’s loss of knuckles. The marketing cheese indeed has been moved but by an uprising called innovation. There was a time when the biggest ideas in the world of business were from marketing. Nike, Dove, Levis, Chivas Regal and many others were built through classical advertising-led marketing initiatives. Not anymore. In the last few decades, the biggest ideas aren’t a product of the marketing-advertising nexus; they’ve come from disruptive innovation. Google, WhatsApp, Uber and Amazon haven’t been built in the marketing department. They’ve been built in the innovation department.

Unfortunately, the issue that plagues advertising is the same if not a more acute version of that which affects marketing. They have both been robbed off their role and mojo by the silent spring of innovation. The best talent on leaving college, aren’t going to advertising but they aren’t going to marketing either: they are going to the world of innovation – to the world of technology and start-ups. To that extent, advertising and marketing are on the same side of the fight. There are many companies where marketing has been reduced to an internal service provider with internal stakeholders as clients. This is where the gap is. Unless marketing negotiates its influential seat at the innovation table, unless marketing is embedded in product innovation, we will see a diminishing role for the function and further devaluation of its partners (or vendors) such as advertising.

And as its true partner, advertising needs to gear up to be the innovation-wind beneath the marketing wings. We of course have to be more digital, more integrated and more diverse, but that isn’t the solution. The real solution lies in reinventing the fundamental marketing-advertising model. From one which starts with a marketing objective, mates it with a consumer insight and churns out advertising campaigns, we need to shift to a model which is problem-solution based, not campaign based.

This model starts with identifying the big problem or opportunity that a brand could solve or leverage, mates it with a cultural inflexion point and outputs a solution that could be a product idea, a digital platform, a new distribution model or an allied service. And why are advertising and marketing best suited to play this upstream innovation game? That’s because within these disciplines lie the amazing abilities to rivet the key problem and identify the big cultural shifts that can help solve it – abilities critical to any meaningful innovation.

Of course, this isn’t an epiphany that can be ascribed to this article. Clients and agencies have gotten together to build many such successes that are grounded in upstream innovation. For instance, Bajaj V (a two-wheeler that embodies national pride, made from the metal of heroic warship Vikrant), Saregama Carvaan (a digital radio that plays nostalgia – retro songs), Kaan Khajura Station (a missed-call based radio-on-mobile service). And there are examples from the global arena – Brewtroleum (bio-fuel which is a byproduct of the beer making process), The Swedish Number (a tourism advisory service that connects you to a local resident). There are two aspects critical to all the above examples – one, radical collaboration between the client and the agency and two, using newer materials to solve the problems.

How do we then build partnerships that help us do this more often? How do we upgrade our talent to foster this culture of innovation? These are the only questions we should be losing sleep over. Anything else is a deflection.

This article first appeared in Economic Times.

Yes, consumers in India want products and services that are affordable but not those that look and feel cheap

INDIA RELOADED

Inside India’s resurgent consumer market

Dheeraj Sinha

Westland Ltd

205 pages; Rs 599

Any book that starts with “You write your second book because others want you to” can be a put-off and make you feel that the author has nothing more to contribute other than self-promotion. That would be a mistake because Dheeraj Sinha’s India Reloaded questions many legacy assumptions about Indian consumers and their behaviour and gently leads you to the answers, not through heavy data but by juxtaposing numbers with rich anecdotes. The many years the author, a National Head of Planning at Grey (part of the WPP Group), has spent conducting consumer research and observing changes in the cultural and business environment of a new India come to life in the 200 pages of this book.

In the process, Mr Sinha has broken quite a few myths, the first of them being that India is a mass market and marketers should be focused on those at the bottom of the pyramid. The book makes a compelling case against this. For example, numbers such as 300 million middle-class consumers and 500 million under 25 years of age generated considerable euphoria among businesses across the globe which tried to leverage the India opportunity based on simplistic and widely-held assumptions. But the real numbers are sobering: only 56 million people own cars. And the irony is unmistakable: the country has over 900 million mobile phone connections, but there are over 600 million people who have no access to toilets or drinking water.

But this is the market in which consumers rejected the cheapest car Nano. As Mr Sinha writes, our idea of a car was conditioned by the old Ambassador – a roomy vehicle loaded with features that people had dreamt of from the 1950s to the early 1980s before the Maruti 800 changed expectations. The common man’s basic need for transportation was being fulfilled by two-wheelers anyway; what he needed was not cheap transport on four wheels but something that addressed his aspirational needs. The Nano does not do this; though affordability is always important in the mass market, a product that appears to be a stripped-down version does not fit the bill for an aspirational population. Yes, consumers in India want products and services that are affordable but not those that look and feel cheap.

There are other examples of companies trying to make a virtue of frugal innovation by giving less for less. Nokia is an example of a brand that lost the plot when it came to upgrading its products. The company spent a huge amount of time and money developing its Asha series of phones. Positioned at the mass end of the market, it was designed to bridge the gap between feature phones and smartphones. Nokia wanted to come out with a product that was smartphone-like; around the same time Samsung launched its Galaxy Y series, a real smartphone based on the Android platform, in a similar price-band. Predictably, Nokia now belongs to history in mobile phones in India.

Mr Sinha does well to harp on service as a differentiator and a business proposition (though the example of Kingfisher Airlines as an entity that redefined hospitality may be jarring) as opposed to the “kuch bhi chalega (anything goes) as long as it’s cheap” mindset. For example, for all their issues with logistics, and mistaken and delayed deliveries, the e-commerce industry in India deserves credit for the best service innovation of the decade. Their payment innovation, COD (cash on delivery), is single-handedly responsible for assuaging the fear of online transactions among Indian consumers.

India Reloaded says most consumers here are at the stage of their first or second experience of consumption. They are buying their first car, first flat screen and the thinking is that we would much rather go for things with which the world has experience. At the same time, adds the author, an innovative mindset can prise open new markets in an aspirational India. For example, Indian businesses and brands have typically targeted the lowest hanging fruit, consumers in the 25-45-year-old bracket. But don’t forget there are 350 million people in India above the age of 45. Of these, 27 million live in urban India and belong to the top three socio-economic classes and they are all part of the much-ignored senior segment in India. Having lived through the euphoria of liberalisation, this is the segment that displays maturing tastes and expectations. At the top end, this is the market for second homes or luxury cars. At the mass end, this is where the big demand for retirement homes can be found. Kesari Tours, a leading tour operator, has tapped into this market and discovered a goldmine. It runs a highly successful special tour for seniors, called “Second Innings”.

Some parts of the book are a bit tedious, especially when the author discusses political developments in great detail and describes Hindi films to show how popular culture reflects the changed thinking of consumers. But one thing is certain – if you want to understand the Indian mindset and how consumer psychology works, the book provides the on-ground realities and challenges for brands.

Business Standard : October 5, 2015

Dheeraj Sinha, Chief Strategy Officer, South & South East Asia with the Grey Group and author of the recently-released ‘India Reloaded: Inside India’s Resurgent Consumer Market’ tells Pradyuman Maheshwari that the very things we are proud of — India’s jugaad mentality, or the fact that the country is a great, big billion-plus market place – are likely to be their undoing if companies start believing only these things to be true. Innovation and adapting to rapidly-changing tastes and conditions might provide businesses with a better chance of success.

1. We’ve always had ‘Jugaad mindset’ being celebrated, but you don’t think it speaks too highly of India and call it a handicap in the book? But it’s this mindset that has got India to where she is, right?

When I see the potential of India and where we could be versus where India is, it isn’t an encouraging story. Jugaad has meant that in manufacturing, we either imported critical machinery or copied them; we never invested in R&D. In service, jugaad means that we have little regard for standard operating procedures. Jugaad will never let us achieve excellence, it promotes shortcuts and fixing by hook or crook. The potholes on our roads which keep coming back, the several fire accidents owing to electrical shot-circuits, the incident of ward boys stitching people’s wounds in the Bulandshahr hospital are a few examples of jugaad in our everyday lives.

Jugaad may have been our answer to desperate situations – your vehicle breaks down on the road because of some electrical failure and some mechanic puts it back in motion by bypassing the fuse. But long-term growth is not about getting out of tricky situations through another trick. Unfortunately the lines between jugaad and sab chalta hai (everything is fair as far as the job gets done in the interim) are blurry. And that’s the reason I hold jugaad responsible for where India is today!

2. You’ve kind-of pooh-poohed the craze for reaching out to a billion-plus Indians. And how many products are blinded by the mass-market thinking. Our Prime Minister paints a rosy picture of ‘Demand’ in his speeches. Do you see a rise in this mindless chase of the billions?

I think from a socio-political perspective, the Prime Minister indeed has to care for the 1.25 billion populations. This is imminent when you realize that almost 600 million (census 2011) of this population doesn’t even have access to clean drinking water and toilets. But the business and marketing community needs to realize that there isn’t a consuming class out there, which amounts to 1.25 billion. According to the census of 2011, not more than 56 million people own four wheelers while around 198 million claim ownership of two-wheelers. The projected size of the middle-class at 300 million is then a big question mark.

My sense is that businesses are beginning to realize this. Many businesses in sectors such as telecom, retail and auto that went on the mass-market chase are under huge debts and haven’t tasted profitability even now. Meanwhile, those who have played an upgrade game have fared much better. Brands such as Mahindra and Mahindra in utility vehicles, Zara in retail, Micromax in mobile phones are few examples of businesses doing well on the back of upgrade-market-thinking.

3. This is your second book and you have a day-job that possibly requires you to give 500% of your time. How do you manage the time to write a book… and your advise to all those who want to, but can’t get around to doing it?

It’s certainly not easy to write with all the work and family commitments. When I am on a book project, I am writing in any free time that I get – in the morning, after work, on flights, over weekends. My reason to write is that I really want to put out these debates at the center-stage. I think to be able to write 65000 words that make sense, the purpose must come from within, if you have that, you’ll definitely write your book.

 

India is today exposed to exaggerated stimulus when it comes to social and pop culture content. We want everything to be sexy and all senses to be fully driven; subtlety is being given a miss for some other time. This is mirrored in our choice of products and services. Brands and products that cater to this sensibility by enhancing their offerings, in both form and design have a lot to gain. There are obvious takeaways for creators of content, products, and services.

1.Shed social appropriateness — The first step is to recognise the emotions and motivations that were hitherto buried under social appropriateness. Bring out the taboo. In content, it’s about the issues that we have never talked about. In products, it’s about that orange colour that Ford Ecosport would never have launched if it wanted to be socially appropriate. But the colour went on to be a bestseller. The latest in this series are the health e-commerce sites, which promise to send medication and gadgets for better sexual health to your doorstep, in discreet packaging, saving you the embarrassment of asking for it in front of everyone in a store.

There’s opportunity for brands to tackle the taboos head-on. For brands targeting youth, it’s a rich territory. As discussed in the previous chapter, we live with several stereotypes about youth. Whether its drinking alcohol, living-in, choosing a career, having a point-of-view, young people are being judged on almost everything. Brands wanting to connect with youth have an opportunity to cut through the veneer of social appropriateness and call a spade a spade.

Take another example: almost all brands in the space of feminine hygiene are trapped in the image of a girl being able to jump in the air despite her periods. Brands are missing a big point here. While they are amplifying the physical benefits of a sanitary pad, they are skirting several socio-cultural issues around femininity. There’s a need for a larger conversation in this category, but only if we can shed the veil of appropriateness.

Categories such as chocolates have spent years assuaging the guilt of indulgence in India. Cadbury Dairy Milk did this by celebrating the child in every adult; Amul sold chocolates as a “Gift for someone you love.” The attempt was to make indulgence in chocolates socially appropriate for grown-up people. That was then. Now, Indians show little guilt in indulgence. No wonder that per capita chocolate consumption in India has trebled in the last decade, from 40 grams to 120 grams.

Marketers must embrace the notion of indulgence in India. Look at the example of biscuits. For a long time, the category was defined by the rather basic glucose biscuits, which were sold as nutrition for mind and body. Biscuits now have indulgence codes, and ITC’s Sunfeast Dark Fantasy and Britannia’s Pure Magic brands feast on this. In fact, the segment for premium and indulgent biscuits is growing faster than that for basic, functional ones. Consumption for pleasure and self, hitherto socially inappropriate notions, have gained legitimacy. Indulgence is not a sin anymore, its okay to sell indulgence to today’s India.

2.From mundane to thrilling—The staple homely food isn’t what excites today’s Indian consumer. This is what he has had, for ages now. He is looking for the thrill of the new. In cuisines, he wants to experiment from other regions in India and abroad. In movies, it’s Matrix-style action, and in music, it’s foot-tapping rap set to Punjabi-English lyrics. Similarly, in cars, it’s the accentuated designs and the joy of an SUV for the price of a basic sedan, and in bikes even the basic commuter segment is seeking sportier looks.

The Indian consumer is done with the expected stuff. He wants some shock value—a break away from the routine. He wants bang for his buck, he wants his money to show itself. The desire cuts across social strata. For the lower middle class it may be the thrill of visiting a mall or a water-themed park. Or the look-at-me designs in their denims. For the rich, it’s the Armani-designed apartment, or if you are Mukesh Ambani, it’s the 27-storey residence, touted as world’s most expensive residential property. Remember, none of these are about ordinariness.

We are seeking interestingness in everyday objects and experiences. The mobile phone accessory market is a testament to this. So is the market for home décor and interior design. The designs of basic utility items such as ceiling fans and kitchen utensils have undergone a makeover too. Even experiences such as discotheques are being democratized. During festivals such as Ganapati (worship of the elephant god Ganesha) in Mumbai, there are roadside discotheques that pop up for those who can’t afford entry to the expensive lounges. These are small tents with temporary flooring and a DJ who plays a mix of Bollywood and popular English music such as Avicii. Thrills are being sought and distributed across social strata and consumer categories, and we must make sure that our products and services live up to the thrill-quotient.

3.Bring to the surface—This culture of surface is not a big fan of depth, intensity, or slow discovery. Whether it’s talent, attitude, or a well-worked body it must be worn on your sleeve or, in the case of the last of these, without it. Everything today comes with an arrow sign—look here. It’s as if no one has the time and the patience to leave things to be discovered. So we have become our own curators, our profiles and posts on Facebook and Twitter capture our lives from multiple angles and bring out the star that we are.

What’s true of people should also be true of their brands. Brands today can’t be shy. There is no excuse for underselling and there are no punishments for overselling. As discussed earlier, visibility and pretence of success are critical in this market. If you are good, there’s no harm in blowing your trumpet. If some bit of controversy helps you do that, so be it. It’s a common practice now to seed controversies around a movie or a book launch. You can easily spot rumours of affairs between the protagonists of a romantic movie being seeded just before its launch.

Last year, a book by the long-time Congress loyalist, Natwar Singh, ‘One Life is Not Enough’, made startling revelations about the Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her role in the previous government. So did Sanjay Baru, ex-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s media advisor, in his book, ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’. The latest to join this bandwagon is Sachin Tendulkar’s ‘Playing It My Way’. Sachin made several controversial revelations about the erstwhile coach of the Indian cricket team, Greg Chappell. Many found Sachin’s stoking of such controversy unbecoming of his carefully cultivated, good-boy image. However, the way in which these stories were carefully planted in the media on the eve of his book launch made it apparent that seeding controversies was now a legitimate marketing tactic. Incidentally, all these books managed to hit the bestseller charts, riding their respective controversies. The lesson then is clear—it doesn’t matter what you are trying to sell, make it snacky and spicy. We live in times when over-the-top is a good thing. Everything is fair in love, war, and marketing, so it seems.

 

 

A lot of what marketers take for granted about India is just plain wrong according to Dheeraj Sinha, chief strategy officer, South and South East Asia, Grey. A large part of his soon to be launched second book, India Reloaded, is dedicated to busting these myths. Sinha discusses just four of these with Brand Equity.

The Myth Of Diversity

India is an impossibly complex country with tastes, preferences, languages and food changing every 100 kilometres which makes marketing extremely complex.

The Reality 

Diversity tends to complicate things leaving marketers with no clear idea of what to do with it, says Sinha. And yet, there’s ample evidence to suggest the country is moving towards a more unified culture. There’s a national pot pourri of favourites with masala dosa, Yo-Yo Honey Singh, Karwa Chauth and Rajinikanth all sitting at the same table. When asked just how this view of unity trumping diversity fits against the backdrop of an upsurge in local cultural pride in states like Maharashtra and Karnataka, Sinha argues, “For marketers, oneness is more useable, nice and interesting than the differentness theory.” For instance: clothing labels would do well to see if Lucknow embroidery has a place on their jeans. Interior decorators could make a case for the art from Bastar being part of their designs.

The Myth Of Jugaad 

As A Solution Jugaad often valourised with such subheads as frugal innovation, is considered a quintessential Indian way of gaming a frequently moribund and lethargic system. With books written about it and Harvard case studies, it’s supposedly a testament to desi creativity and ingenuity.

The Reality Jugaad 

is the reason Maruti struggled with sending its customers to authorised service centres given that they’d opt for a local mechanic who often created more problems than he solved. Sinha’s favourite and most horrifying example is ward boys conducting surgeries and administering injections in Bulandshahr, claiming to have learnt it “on the job” observing actual doctors. He believes the celebration of jugaad is why India doesn’t have a strong service culture and is given to skipping steps: “We have to find a way to eulogise excellence whether in marketing or service.”

The Myth Of Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs

It’s only the very wealthy who’ve had all creature comforts accounted for who bother with more rarefied needs like self actualisation and respect. The poor ought to be satisfied with the most basic offerings and appeals.

The Reality 

In India, the poor want both functionality and self actualisation. Or spirituality and consumption which is why, says Sinha, Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali is a Rs 200 crore FMCG brand with cornflakes as a flagship. And so he recommends manufacturers not just pile the functional benefits thick and fast when they sell to the poor: “The myth that poor want functionality and the elite self actualisation doesn’t’ exist in India.”

The Myth Of The Indian Middle Class & Fortune 

At The Bottom Of The Pyramid The Indian middle class is supposed to be 300 million strong and even its poorer citizens represent a never before consumption opportunity.

The Reality 

Sinha is quick to point out that these supposed emperors of the Indian consumption story are not wearing any clothes. What’s worse, they may not even be emperors after all. The success of Audi which has clocked an impressive 50% to 70% growth in an industry that’s had to settle for less than 10% and of niche films like Lunchbox leads him to believe that brands need not try to play the entire country to be successful. Segmentation opportunities exist, many of these at the higher end of the market. He says, “According to the census there are 600 million people without access to toilets and pure drinking water. The 300 million strong middle class is a hoax and a chase marketers were sent on. Going after all of India has led to cheap undifferentiated products, taking the eyes off the slightly more premium game and in the process losing both.”

 

By Ravi Balakrishnan, ET Bureau | 7 Oct, 2015, 05.07AM IST

Read more at: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/49243852.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

The Poor Want Purpose

Without it’s branding by Mahatma Gandhi, Khadi would have remained hand-woven cotton fabric, good for sweaty climates. Mahatma Gandhi elevated Khadi into a larger purpose for the masses – swadeshi and swaraj. What Mahatma Gandhi did with Khadi, Baba Ramdev did with yoga, may be not with same magnificence. Baba Ramdev preached spiritualism on the one hand and sold cornflakes and anti-dandruff shampoo on the other. What Kellogg’s couldn’t achieve with Iron Shakti in 20 years, Baba Ramdev did with Yoga Shakti in 5 years. Disclaimer – cornflakes is Patanjali’s top seller, though not the only product. So what’s going on here? The poor, mass consumers of India seem to be self-actualised. They want purpose. All this, while we believed Maslow and sold functionality to them.

Aspiration Before Affordability

‘Frugal Innovation’ may qualify as one the buzziest terms in emerging market lexicon, contested closely by Jugaad (more about that in a bit). However, taken out of context, frugal innovation has meant that we take a car or a refrigerator or mobile phone and strip it down to a level that it stops looking like a car or a refrigerator or a mobile phone. Inspired by frugal innovation, Nokia built the Asha series, which was a feature phone pretending to be a smartphone. Close on the heels of the Asha series, Samsung launched real smartphones in the same range, Samsung Galaxy Y. As it turned out, Samsung’s desirability was a bigger pull for the mass consumer than Nokia’s frugality. The poster child of frugal innovation, Nano attempted to solve the wrong need, it went after mobility while the mass consumer wanted status. Nokia’s Asha series or Nano aren’t failures of product design or marketing strategy. They are a failure of how we think about mass markets – through the lens of affordability, not aspiration.

Jugaad Is The Enemy Of Excellence

This second buzziest term in the emerging market vocabulary, essentially means fix by hook or by crook. A couple of years ago, a Bulandshahr district hospital was in news for ward-boys stitching up people’s wounds and giving injections. As it turned out, this was ajugaad for a lack of trained medical staff — an explanation that didn’t convince too many people. Jugaad means it’s okay to skip standard operating procedures. It means the roadside mechanic will fix the hole in your car’s silencer, so what if it turns the engine into junk? Jugaad subtracts value. There can be no patli gali to excellence.

Chase youth not stereotypes

The portrayal of youth in India is caught between stereotypes. On the one hand is the mean guy, mouthing expletives, as seen in MTV Roadies, on the other is the guy from SOBO (south of Bombay) who, when he misses his college friends, takes a trip to Spain as seen in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Between these two worlds lies the real youth of India in mug shots for ads by IIT JEE coaching institutes. Media and advertising have fed this amorous, mean and manipulative archetype of Indian youth. An Outlook survey asked 18–35 year olds how old they were when they had sex for the first time. Theaverage turned out to be 20, not 16, as we have been led to believe. Clearly, there’s more to being young in India than getting laid, attending raves, sporting tattoos, and watching expletive laden content.

Unity More Than Diversity

Indeed marketing has made a big deal about India’s diversity. So if languages change every 100 kilometres, how is that information actionable? Should we create different products? How do we reach micro audiences? Where is the targeted media? Doesn’t this defeat the promise of one big market? On the other hand, what’s more interesting than the diversity spiel is the rise of a national culture. Our regional influences that divided us are now powering up a rich, textured national culture. In this collage, Vada Pav, Momos,Salwar Kameez, YoYo Honey Singh and Rajinikant sit next to each other with pride. Our diversity then, is a source of inspiration, not a sign of complexity. Jeans pockets with Lucknow chikankari, anyone.

The veneer of pretence has gone, leaving the Indian consumer demanding products that make them feel aristocratic, says award-winning global marketing expert Dheeraj Sinha

 

Marketing expert and author Dheeraj Sinha discusses his new book India Reloaded with European CEO. In it, he discusses how a catchall strategy in appealing to India’s billion plus marketplace will take you nowhere.

Helping consumers build their own infrastructure is key to tapping into the billion plus marketplace, says award-winning global marketing expert Dheeraj Sinha

World Finance sits down with marketing expert and India Reloaded author Dheeraj Sinha, who highlights why a misunderstanding of demographic leads so many foreign companies to fail.