Lilliput Land: How Small is Driving India's Mega Consumption Story

by Rama Bijapurkar

One of the largest consumer markets of the world, India is made up of lots and lots of small consumers—each earning and spending just a little bit that adds up to a lot. It is served by millions of small suppliers oozing innovation and customer intimacy, and is powered by digital infrastructure that does billions of unique and small transactions every day.

In her new book, Rama Bijapurkar dismisses the easy and simplistic view of the Indian demographic and embraces all the complexities and opportunities that new India has to offer.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, India

292 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 29, 2024

About the author

Rama Bijapurkar is one of India's most respected thought leaders on market strategy and consumer related issues in India. She is also a keen commentator on social and cultural changes in the evolving liberalizing India. She has her own market strategy consulting practice and works with an impressive list of Indian and global companies, guiding the development of their business-market strategies. She describes her mission as bringing "market focus to business strategy".

Rama serves as an independent director on the boards of Infosys Technologies, CRISIL, Axis Bank, Godrej Consumer Products, Give Foundation (a not-for-profit company) and Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Ltd.

An alumna of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, Rama continues to be involved with her alma mater where she is a Visiting Faculty and also serves on the Board of Governors.

Rama's work experience has been in market research and strategy consulting and includes leadership positions with McKinsey & Company, MARG (now AC Nielsen India), and full time consulting with Hindustan Lever (now Hindustan Unilever India).

Reviews

[Kay · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve never been this happy to finish a book. No offence but this read to me like a research paper which was given to Chatgpt and asked to be made into a 300 page book that put people to sleep.

Lets start with the adjectives I’d use to describe- boring, repetitive, monotonous, just data, repetitive incase i forgot to mention

Most of this info feels old and nothing new or interesting if you’re indian and have basic economics, finance and business knowledge. I might have not realised how poor india is but other than that I learnt nothing 😑

This book was too specific and somehow too shallow at the same time which is why I want to ask the following

Who is this book written for? is it for employees of a MNCs in a high even position to make the changes that she is talking about, i would hope they have the aforementioned basic knowledge and about the Indian market income stats

Is it for students? then it would have been better off in the form of a textbook.

If its for general public, what am I suppose to do with this knowledge?

Is it for an indian reader? all the information about an Indian consumer behaviour is irrelevant to an indian consumers reading, it might be more insightful to a non-indian reader but its probably only going to confuse them.

And I don’t think we ever figured out a solution, how can a business( a for profit organisation) be expected to serve a segment of the society which had negative surplus income for spending on necessities?

In conclusion, while insightful(debatable), idk who these insights are for and what we are expected to do with them. Thank you for coming to my rant. If i hear someone say “the indian consumer is underserved” in 20 years, it’ll still be too soon.

[Avnish Anand · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing book for anyone involved with consumer businesses in India - founders, marketers , investors etc. I am the cofounder of one of India’s most successful consumer businesses and we built it from scratch over 17 years. So I should be knowing a lot about Indian consumers. But this book made me realise that there was so much that I didn’t know. It left me with lots of new ideas and lots of questions to think about. That’s how good this book is.

[Bhuvanesh Kandasamy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book to understand the consumer landscape of India. The book also touches upon the challenges of catering to the Indian consumer which is hugely diverse in terms of culture and earning potential. Kishore Biyani's India 1, 2 and 3 theory was validated with the data set in this book. While India 1 constitutes close to 10% of the population, it still is larger than many countries because of India's huge population. India's mass market close to 40-50% population presents an enormous opportunity which can be addressed by frugal innovation by entrepreneurs. The rapid influx of cheap products from China to cater to the mass market and rising trade deficit with China throws light on the opportunity. Frugal value based innovation is needed for companies and entrepreneurs to cater to this segment. The book shares examples of successes and failures of different MNC's who tried to tap into this market.

[Rahul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a Mixed bag.

Book is essentially divided into 3 sections, Consumer structure, Consumer Behavior and Supply structure in India.

While the 1st section has facts and numbers and is an eye opener with great insights for an average reader, the author seems to be trying to make up for the tables, charts and numbers in the 1st section, with an almost subjective story telling like tone in the next 2 chapters.

The next 2 sections have numerous examples of Indian companies which feels quite superficial. Would have been better to focus on a select few companies and provided better quality insight of Consumer India w.r.t their behavior and the Supply structure.

[Bhuwan Chand · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing clarity of thoughts and a truly in-depth understanding of consumers & markets, an expert on Indian consumer behavior, Rama Bijapurkar is one of the most repsected and my favorite authors on consumer insights.

This book should be a basic/ mandatory reading for all mid-senior level corporate executives in India, not for any earth shattering insights but for basic & fundamental truths about India, Indian consumers and the pit-falls that generally plague corporate decision making. We would be making a lot less mistakes if we know/ learn from other's experience.

Book is full of insighful nuggets on Indian consumers and markets. Read it if you are interested in understanding the future of India - which is strongly entangled with the future of humanity, as we are home to 20% of world's population...

[Anandarup Roy · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting insight into India consumers with several real life anecdotes of how organizations have succeeded, failed and innovated in the Indian market.

However, fair warning, please ensure that you do not listed to this book as an audiobook. It refers to an accompanying PDF several times (for tables and charts) and hence is not suitable as an audiobook.

[Akash Gupta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rama is truly an India market expert, with experience spanning decades. The key idea is majority of this country is poor but aspirational at the same time - they want to experience everything in their limited budgets. Consumers want high value delivered at low cost. Good to keep in your library to keep referencing in times to come.

[Nikhil Kamat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting Insights into the India that is numbers and the media doesn't cover, beyond superficial attempt. Also gives an insight to business men and entrepreneurs on the opportunity unutilised by the MNCs.

[Shubh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book to understand How indian consumer market behave.