My Bharat

Let's start with some facts and figures.

India has 42 cities with a population of a million plus, 46 cities having population of half a million to 1 million and 88 cities with a population between half a million and quarter million. At the turn of the century these numbers were less than half of now.

The urban population is going to expand to 38% up from 31% in 2010.

The six states of Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Goa and two union territories of Delhi and Chandigarh will have 55% urban population by 2025.

The non metro cities of Amravati, Dehradun, Kota, Jullundher, Thiruvanthapuram, Jamshedpur, all have population between half a million to 1 million and by 2025 all of these will be plus 1 million population towns.

While industrial activity is declining in big cities, smaller cities and towns are picking up the slack.

Historically tier 2 cities have shown robust growth despite receiving little funding support.

Self employment which till now was a domain of smaller cities is showing a decline in the smaller towns

50% of Amazon.com sales come from non metro towns

57% OF Honda 4 wheeler sales comes from non metro town

Amazon gets orders for food products for birds, turtles from towns like Guntur, Vizag, Nadiad and orders for flowering tea from Bhatinda, Hoshiarpur and Khelmati

The above clearly illustrate that India is going through rapid urbanisation, While that by itself is not surprising, the fact is that the urbanisation story is now being played out in the non metros.

Once the economic liberalisation was unleashed in mid nineties, the last twenty years or so has seen metros gaining the most from it. But the trickle down effect on non metro cities is now becoming a deluge.

Non metro towns are on the cusp of the second liberalisation boom.

The point is, are brands and its communication ready for the same?

For the last twenty years, it was easy for marketeers to understand and market to metro consumers. A handful of cities, its aspiring population were the low hanging fruit for marketeers. And its trickle down effect on smaller towns was good enough to feed the frenzy.

And when the hype started to diminish the same marketeers started talking about the other end of the spectrum; rural India. In between the great "Non metro India" was left to fend off on the crumbs of the metros.

But this cannot continue for long. There is a distinct non metro market which exists today. It is not the same as metro and neither a rural upgrade. It has it's own distinct identity. It has its own thinking and it has it's own agenda.

And I am not talking about the Meeruts and the Dombivilis and the Howrahs. These are extensions of metro towns. As I drive the 60 kms from Delhi to Meerut I never get a feeling that I have left Delhi. The whole journey seems to be an extension of Delhi.

What matters are towns like Raipur, Dehradun, Jullundher, Vadodra, Kochi, Nagpur.... the non satellite half a million to one million population towns.

In my mind this is the Bharat where marketeers and brands have to focus. Crack this Bharat and you crack the next growth wave.

I am not claiming to be an expert on Bharat but living in a non metro has given me a fair idea of how life is different yet same from a metro city like Delhi and how life is same yet aspirational from rural India.

And the best pulse of this is the youth in these towns. These are tomorrows spenders. They are the decision makers of yore and their calling is what the brands are aspiring for. Having spent some of of my time teaching these youngsters at management institutes in Dehradun, interacting with them at gyms and cafes and watching them come alive at cultural events, I do claim to have a better pulse on Bharat, than what I had from Mumbai or Gurgaon.

So in the subsequent blogs I am going to touch upon the youth of Bharat. How they have changed? What have they retained? How they are different from their metro counterparts and what is their outlook towards brands?

Stay tuned in.

 

Idea Generation: The Bharat Way

As I was reading a blog on the importance of "idea"in cracking a communication problem, my mind went back to the days when I used to face the same issue while at work in agencies.

We would all, including the client agree that the most important thing was to crack an idea and not just an ad. We would all want to use the idea across communication platforms be it press, TV, PR or even digital. We would all agree to approve an idea only if it worked 360 degrees across media.

But in reality that hardly happened. Most of the times we ended up having a TV script which would be approved first and then work backwards trying to crack an idea out of the same which could be then used 360 degrees. In fact I think 360 degrees became quite an abused term in industry parlance with everyone paying eloquent respect to its meaning but doing nothing to bring it alive.

In hindsight the problem was simple. It was the way a whole generation of communication professionals in India, across creative, servicing, planning and clients were trained and brought up on the staple diet of TV commercials. Right from the time "Lalitaji" entered into our consciousness to even now with "Aur dikhao" a good TV commercial was the solution to all communication issues.

We tried to embrace new mediums like PR or CRM or internet by trying to hide behind the "idea". But the idea never came. The TVC as an execution always defeated the idea.

So I tried a different tack this week.

In one of the institutes where I take guest lectures, I asked the students to give me communication solution to a case study with digital ideas. I clearly told them I did not want TVC's or press ideas.

Mind you these are students who belong to Bharat. They do not live in a metro, they do not have unlimited use of 3G or broadband connections. They do not earn so and are neither from affluent households. They have limited shoe string budgets and many have either taken education loans or have worked earlier and are using the savings to get a PG degree in management. They are net savvy and almost all have their own smart phones.

And what they do not have is allegiance to a media or a habit.

So when they came up with their presentations, it was not surprising that without realising they were giving ideas. They had ideas on how to use Facebook or Instagram or event and PR.  They had ideas which were based on consumers habits and preferences. They had thoughts which were simplistic and had freshness and some of the suggestions could have been used in real life too. For me the icing on the cake was when one group suggested how to make a TVC based on the feedback received on FB and Twitter. They had unknowingly suggested an idea where the TVC existed as part of a full 360 communication plan and not as a standalone hero.

Maybe, that's what agencies need to do today as well. Get youngsters comfortable with the digital media and force them to give digital solutions.

Maybe, asking for an idea is not a solution. But asking for a digital breakthrough is the solution.

Maybe, sometimes we get caught up in our jargons and terminologies so much that we forget about simple approaches.

And maybe, we tend to ignore the talent in Bharat too.