Column : The three Ns of Made for India

: Sasta, Sundar, Tikau, the mantra for success in the Indian market, has just got a new benchmark, and a new poster child: The Nano. Nirma took the Indian market by storm, as did Nokia, and as, we hope, will Nano. What they all have in common is that (1) they are market creators unfettered by analyses of what the current market size is and what it is forecasted to grow to, (2) they recognise that current product markets are the size they are not because Indians are too unevolved to have desires, but because they don’t have enough money and (3) they start with a potential customer base (and not a current industry size), they define a price and a quality that customers will accept, and then challenge themselves to deliver it profitably. It is here that many companies, especially MNCs fail badly. They set a challenge price above which they must not go, but they refuse to accept the value processing algorithm that customers have inside their heads, and what features the new age customer will or will not sacrifice, for a lower price tag.

Market creators: I remember once making a presentation to Mr. SM Datta of Hindustan Lever, who called a halt after slide 4 and said “don’t tell me what is, and why it is so; I already know it. Please re-do this presentation and tell me what can be and how we can make it so”. That’s what these market creators do—Nirma saw the potential of a large base of laundry soap users unhappy with what it was doing to their clothes, Nokia saw a large base of people struggling to get to a public phone that works, Nano sees a large base of people who dream of owning a “gaadi and bungalaa”, and want their daughters to marry men who have them.

Market creators think of doing what no one else thinks, about that which everybody sees. It is known to all of us that everyone wants to own a car, travel in comfort, signal status. The worse public transport gets, the more it is stuck in a time warp compared to everything around improving, the more the desperation for personal transport. And everyone will prefer a car to a two-wheeler.

Money vs desire : The Indian consumer is ready and willing to buy anything that makes life better, provided it is affordable and acceptable. That...