We Are Like That Only: Understanding the Logic of Consumer India

‘The Indian Market is about a lot of people consuming a little bit each that adds up to a lot, … the Indian DNA is about continuity with change; it is about "This as well as That"; about cobbling together clever and low-cost solutions that are indigenous combinations and adaptations of products available in the market’. With a billion plus consumers India is one of the largest, most varied and stratified markets in the world today. It is young, with rising incomes and purchasing power, and has only just begun its consumption journey. Every marketer would want a piece of what may arguably be the largest untapped market in the world. From Kellogg’s to Coke, from Honda to Electrolux, from Dunhill to Revlon, they all came to India in the hope of a hungry, star-struck billion plus. Instead, what they encountered were consumers who were hungry yet astute–people who negotiate and bargain on anything from taxi fare to interest rates. It was a market that rebelled against conventional perceptions of emerging markets, and left every confident marketer asking–where is this billion plus Indian market? Why is the Indian market untenable? Will India really be the world’s next consumption powerhouse? Does the Indian middle class really exist? What is the exact purchasing power of this market? Is there really a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid? Why are demand patterns so capricious? Is rural India a sophisticated or a primitive market? Irreverent and insightful, this book answers all these questions as it casts an unblinking eye on twelve key facets of Consumer India. It successfully fathoms how much Indians earn, how they consume, what they consume and what dictates their consumption choices. Taking cues from economics, demography, history, culture, philosophy and good old common sense, Rama Bijapurkar makes sense of the complex and inscrutable Indian market–the many Consumer Indias, their diverse and schizophrenic consumer behaviour and the way to make your company’s fortune in this billion plus market. Incisively analytical, this book explains why the Indian consumer is ‘like that only’, why Consumer India will not change in a hurry and what it takes to build winning businesses in such a market. A powerful book, it is the definitive epitaph for formula strategy approaches to India’s consumer markets, especially of the ‘global’ transplant kind.