Chidambaram cautioned that the mindset will have to change. He held that regulations have for long suppressed innovation and enterprise. In industries like software and white goods and appliances where competition is intense, consumers have gained in terms of just-in-time delivery, after sales service, quality and price.

Chidamabram said that the Indian market--despite being indulgent--was also capable of punishing badjudgment and bad marketing even as it rewards those who are sensitive to customer needs and address specific needs of the targeted segments.

Citing the sobering experience of global automakers who earlier flocked to the India mart, Chidambaram said that marketers misjudged size, capacity and disposable income. ``Automakers thought they would sell 60,000 cars a year but now they would be happy if they sold 10,000 cars a year. Similarly, the size of middle class has been scaled down to 150 million from 250-300 million earlier.''

He said that in an exceedingly price-sensitive market like India pricing is going to be a challenging aspect--that's why the clamour to price mid-sized cars just below Rs 5 lakh. ``It is the excitement of marketing that makes the understanding of corporate and human behaviour so critical. As competition intensifies there will be more exits and new refreshing players entering, all focussed towards consumers,'' he added.

Later, delivering the keynote address on `How competition willshape Indian industry, structure and strategy,'' Jagdish Sheth, professor Emory University, Atlanta, said that it was important to understand why good companies failed. Citing a study on companies like IBM, Sears and Kodak, --which plunged into financial difficulties--he said that many companies became successful only because of the context in which they were organised.

``They remain successful as long as the context remains the same and they improve their operational performance, but when the context changes they can no longer survive unless they change.''

Thus there are four references to the context: regulation (the de-regulation of the US airline industry led to a shake-out); technological changes (most disruptive technologies come from outside the industry); competition; and globalisation. Sheth said that India must brace itself for these contextual realities.

Sheth said that India was poised to become the world's third largest economy --after China and the US--by the year 2020. He said that aseven-fold strategy was needed to compete in the emerging global village. This was: establish a reputation of being a quality-centric nation; productivity through infrastructure; leverage human capital; utilise public sector enterprises; focus on R&D; low cost of capital; and create brand equity.