There are a million Indian households that are young, educated and have money to spend. Half of them live in metros and the top 20 population cities, and over two-thirds live in nuclear or single-person households. These numbers have been a matter of guesswork or conjecture up until now for marketers of anything from motorbikes, cars, gizmos and colas to restaurants, who swear by the purchasing power of this set.
No longer. For the first time, the FE-Indicus series connects the socio-economic classification (SEC) profile with household income to get a clearer picture of the Indian consumer.
There are around a million SEC A households in urban India with the chief wage earner (CWE) around 30 years old–and an equal number of homes in SEC B, too. The four metros and Bangalore together account for around a fourth of these two million-odd SEC A & B households. The next 20 top-population cities account for another 20%, with the rest spread across the rest of India?s 5,400 cities and towns.
Just a third of these households are joint-families. With just two people a household on average, these homes??often the double-income-no-kids variety?make for a big market of over 4 million individuals, with relatively low levels of dependency compared to households led by a CWE in middle and mature years.
The million-odd SEC A households in the younger life-stage have a median income of Rs 18,000, which goes up to Rs 25,000 in case of metros. The SEC B young life-stage households in comparison earn Rs 10,000 a month, with metro ones earning a marginally higher Rs 11,000.
The over two-decade-old socio-economic classification matrix boxes urban households on the basis of the primary breadwinner?s occupation and education??from the topmost SEC A1 to the lowest SEC E2. Marketers use SEC as a proxy for consumer income and demand, though of late many have started complaining about a disconnect between SEC and income.
The FE-Indicus Analytics series on Deconstructing the SEC Matrix of India??based on the information from ongoing large-scale primary surveys by Indicus, National Sample Survey Organisation surveys, the National Data Survey of savings patterns of Indians, district-level household surveys, et al???attempts to bridge part of that disconnect by overlaying the SEC data with income to obtain a more clearer picture of Indian consumers.
One in seven urban households has a young, around 30-year-old as the CWE, with a majority of these 11-million younger life-stage households in the low socio-economic classifications SEC C, D & E.
Even though the pattern of CWEs is shifting to reflect the country?s young demographics, six out of ten urban households are still led by a 50-something married person with kids over 12 years of age. The number of SEC A & B households with a CWE in the mature life-stage (median age 54 years) is a big market of around 15-million households, with a median income of Rs 25,600 per month.
Moreover, with the upward mobility of millions of SEC C & D middle-year households and the natural progression of SEC A & B ones, the mature life-stage segment will witness a robust over 15% growth in numbers.
