By Arijit Paladhi:
The stranglehold of business, in it’s most prolific and general form and the outstretched hands of the Indian economy are suavely, not subtly correlated. Two words- classes and masses can overwhelm the nation of more than a billion with it’s diverse subterfuge. An unending struggle for survival and an undeniable tenacity to survive is the classical plot of this nation’s business ventures.
The rural population doesn’t need options, it needs affordability. However, even within affordability there has to be a trust factor that can engender attachment with a brand. The schematics of designing the product doesn’t matter when catering to the rural population. For them, affordability is a maxim, survival relates to that. A business venture or a product can never survive the onslaught of another brand without deliverance. That’s like breaking it down to the basics but when it does happen, there are crores that go into figuring out where the venture lost out. It’s simple: DELIVER!!
The middle class is a more haranguer lot, for they expect the lot. They expect affordability up to an extent, their kids banter about product packaging which influences their bit, options are needed and they expect the product to live up to what they have paid for. The middle-class is the most pre-emotive of the lot and if a mental decision, a banal imagery is conceived about a company, it’s inconceivably difficult to repair the image without actually hitting on the emotional quotient of the middle class.
“Bajaj” was in doldrums with the arrival of “Kinetic” in the early 90’s and their shares and company profits had hit an all-time low without much chance of a revival. A sensible ad-man gave them a fresh lease of life by hitting the masses (majorly middle class) with the age-old doctrine of ownership. The ad “Hamara Bajaj” was a sappy piece but it did the job brilliantly. The visuals conveyed that Bajaj was for the masses, and hence “Hamara Bajaj”. The life this ad injected into the company was via a sales figure that shot northwards and bought Bajaj precious time to come back into the market. It did, and how!!
The upper class, like the name suggests doesn’t care much about the affordability but more about the stuff delivering. Otherwise, there’s not really any dearth of products in the market that could not suffice. The upper class is the elite lot. A section of India that’s happy to live in a bubble, a bubble devoid of active conscience. They suffer from passive conscience, they do their bit for the underdeveloped by arranging wine-drinking sessions. Here, I’m generalizing so no offence to all you lovely rich people.
What I described maybe brutally layman”ish” but true nonetheless. Killer business. Cut-throat. And in such clangour, a company’s ventures are supposed to grow and propel the stocks on which there’s a separate division of people who tremble and cry out in joy at every rise and fall of the market. The Indian economy is a multi-layered, cross-cultured phenomenon, an egaliatarian society within the totalitarian one.
Now, with the official birth and christening of the “Rupee” sign, will it have an answer to Indian economy’s outstretched hands? Wait and see.
P.S:- 63 years after independence, a normal monsoon in our country is expected to curb inflation for us. God bless us!! We really need it.
Image Courtesy: http://www.businessworld.in/index.php/Automobiles/On-The-Wrong-Track.html