When management guru CK Prahlad talks, everyone listens. Showing a pyramid where the elite
constitute the top few, the middle-class the middle and the poor the huge base holding up the top, he pointed out that the “invisible poor” were very much there. While a majority of businesses were focused on the top 1bn people in the world, there were several billions waiting to be serviced, and this, he said, was as good a business opportunity as any. The idea was to look at next practices. India could do it in several sectors, he feels — healthcare, automotive, FMCG, financial services and others.
Let me take retail as a case study, and InOrbit Mall in suburban Mumbai as the place where all the action would be. The mall is about two years old and caters to the upper end of the market, the high income group. My theory is that eventually these high income folks will move to better and more exotic locations because they can afford to do so. What happens at that point in time is that the vaccuum created is replaced by the next level of buyers. These are the SEC C in India, people who aspire to buy what they see the high income groups consuming. If you visit InOrbit mall today you will see a scatter of the SEC C families window shopping, be sure that within the next few months the ones who come to the mall to dream will collect enough to be able to buy the products on display. At that point the mall will have to consider whether they want to cater to the high end fickle minded customer or do they want to cater to the non english speaking consuming "save and spend" customer.
Eventually CK Prahlad's inverse pyramid theory works and the earlier innovations cater to the larger base of the population come into use the money money would be made.
The same applies to Mobile content, can we have at some point Hindi content available? Or Malayalam?
IS there someone out there who has a killer solution? If there is then the Threshold of migration of consumers will change drastically.
1 comment:
I guess the dilemma is also about how good does my brand make me feel about myself ! A restaurant brand that I recently worked with came to us with a issue of being perceived as 'middle class desi'. Though they have a unique, strong and virgin position I presume the marketing guys aspire to be seen as working with a 'MNC type' brand !! A footwear brand with a enviable reputation as value for money and good quality is investing crores in fashion shows to be perceived as terribly up market and haute ! The VP marketing wants the brand to be the Bally of Indian shoes !! Makes him feel very fine to say that, the business vision be damned !!
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