Editor’s note: This story is a part of a series on how three Indian companies are overcoming a traditional reluctance to enter the U.S. market. Read the overview here: Indian Influx: Investors Overcome Cautious Approach to U.S. Market
Pranesh Misra is a mind reader, but he uses data instead of supernatural powers.
At Brandscapes Worldwide, Mr. Misra leads a team of more than 80 employees on a shaded street in Mumbai, compiling information and keeping watch on social media trends to help companies stay abreast of consumer sentiments and manage their online reputations.
Need to know a new toothpaste will play out in the Indian market? How young people will respond to a beverage flavor? Where growth will come from for your next product?
Mr. Misra and his team can help, especially through their Atlanta office, which was set up to be near a major client known for localizing its market presence around the world: Coca-Cola Co.
Along with general data mining, Brandscapes is broadening its services to consulting, helping companies map customized strategies for entering the much-vaunted but often misunderstood Indian consumer market.
Few foreigners grasp the fact that 1 billion people doesn’t necessarily mean 1 billion customers, Mr. Misra said.
“In terms of the scale of the consumption of this middle class versus what (U.S. firms) are used to in a developed economy, there’s a quantum difference,” he told Global Atlanta. “So therefore, in the beginning when companies came in, they made very, very ambitious plans because they said, ‘If it’s happened in the U.S., why shouldn’t it happen here?'”
Many learned the hard way that they had to adapt their prices to local incomes, he said, especially considering that older Indians who had money grew up under the “license raj,” an era of bureaucracy that caused shortages and forced people to adopt a mentality of scarcity.
But all that is beginning to change two decades after the liberalization of the economy in the early 1990s, he said. A subset of luxury spenders is starting to emerge in a tier above the middle class, which in itself is estimated at a quarter-billion people.
And unlike China, India has a young population. Nearly half of its people are under 25. This generation has access to technology that informs them about products and ideas around the world, and they didn’t grow up pinching pennies, he said.
“Their decision-making process, their willingness to adapt to ideas is really changing quite rapidly, and that’s really what makes us optimistic about the future,” Mr. Misra said.
Visit www.brandscapesworldwide.com for more information.
Read the overview here: Indian Influx: Investors Overcome Cautious Approach to U.S. Market
