Polaris: snowmobiles to India
Indian businessmen are usually heard complaining about the country’s poor infrastructure. But for some industrialists, it’s opportunity.
Polaris Industries, the US-based off-road vehicle maker, has this month launched its all-terrain machines in India – and sold a snowmobile to the government for use in the mountain state of Jammu and Kashmir. Continue reading »
Indian protests 2.0
While India’s anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare casts himself as a traditional protestor in the Mahatma Gandhi tradition, his supporters are employing the latest telecommunication techniques to spread the message.
Facebook updates, tweets, Blackberry messages and bulk text messages are in the armoury of Hazare’s internet-savvy middle-class aides. So have money-saving tricks – popular in cost-conscious India – that allow the Hazare campaign to reach even the poorest mobile phone users. Continue reading »
India wage inflation: mo’ money please
When workers at one of India’s largest public sector companies demand a minimum pay hike of a 100 per cent, you know Asia’s third largest economy has a wage inflation problem on its hands.
Analysts predict that the 100 per cent-plus increase demanded by unions at Coal India could eventually lead to a more modest settlement of around 15-20 per cent, the Economic Times reports. But the episode underscores one of the major problems Indian employers are facing at the moment – how to hire and retain the best staff without taking a hit to their margins. Continue reading »
Indian protest: and the band played on
Anna Hazare is following a rich Indian tradition of peaceful public protest that goes back to Mahatma Gandhi. But his anti-corruption campaign comes with a thoroughly modern chorus of rock songs, branded merchandise and film star support.
Live bands are playing at Hazare’s demonstration in the Ram Lila grounds in central Delhi in front of young middle-class supporters wearing ‘I am Anna’ Nehru caps and T-shirts. Among the patriotic songs that have caught their imagination is the Jan Lokpal bill song (literally named after the controversial anti-corruption bill), which has been watched by tens of thousands on YouTube. Continue reading »
Slumdog Millionaire prize inflation
Many Indians have seen their incomes soar in the past decade but few have seen their pay keep pace with the ever-increasing value of the prizes in the local version of ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’.
The organisers of the game show – made famous in the film Slumdog Millionaire - have this week launched a fifth season with a top prize of 50m rupees ($1.1m), which is five times more than when the programme began. Continue reading »
India: a taste for foreign sweets
Looking for a statistical measure of the effects of globalisation on the Indian consumer? You could do worse than palm oil imports.
Rising palm oil imports – up around 10 per cent this year – reflect a switch in taste away from traditional sugary sweets to western-style fatty confectionery and snacks. While that may not do much for Indian waistlines, it highlights shoppers’ growing interest in what can be found in the global pantry just when they start stocking up for the country’s peak holiday season. Continue reading »
Indian hotels: the Wall St effect
The connection between Wall Street and the Taj Mahal may be not be obvious but it is real enough for India’s hoteliers.
The country’s lively tourist trade – used to coping with crises ranging from floods to terrorism – is now bracing itself for a slow down following the recent global markets shock. Continue reading »
India’s latest fad: the car café/studio/lounge
Not long ago, cars were leaving Indian salesrooms almost unaided. But higher interest rates have brought soaraway sales to an end and a price war is now underway.
As well as lower prices, distributors are offering extended warranties and even chauffeurs to accompany luxury cars. Now several big manufacturers have opened cafés, studios and airport lounges in a bid to reinforce their brands and pamper their customers. Continue reading »
Oxford Limited heads to India
Nobody wants to miss the emerging market consumer bandwagon. And that includes the increasingly cash-conscious University of Oxford.
The 800-year old British university is lining up University of Oxford branded products for sale in China, India and Brazil in the next two years. Selling apparel, home linen, educational toys and back to school items to increasingly affluent middle class consumers in the emerging markets, its commercial arm hopes to help soften the impact of looming cuts in UK government funding. Continue reading »
India’s media sector: getting hot
For media in India, the future is bright. With its mix of Bollywood, cricket and soap operas, television in India already attracts millions of viewers, and this viewership is only set to grow in the years to come. To take advantage of this growing pie, foreign media houses have started to flock to India.
Disney group tabled an offer to completely acquire the UTV group in India, one of India’s three big television channels, this week, while Sony announced a $600m take-over of ETV’s bouquet of India’s regional channels.
And there will be more. Continue reading »
Indian retail targets the working woman
Good product marketers never miss an opportunity to sell. In India, they have discovered their newest target: the increasingly prosperous Indian woman.
The average yearly income of an urban Indian woman has doubled over the past decade, according to IMRB, a Mumbai-based market research organisation. So now that urban women have both high aspirations and a bigger budget to match, it’s no wonder consumer goods manufacturers are making a beeline towards them.
Bragging rights 2: are we there yet?
How do you know when you’ve arrived at the global high table? One way, apparently, is to get a bunch of government economists to compile an Index of Government Economic Power.
That’s what India has done, anyway. And the results, showing how the country climbed the global pecking order during the past decade, are impressive. India, the economists discovered, has more economic clout than the UK or France, and will soon overtake Germany among the world’s big hitters. Continue reading »
India: fancy a pint? At that price, I’ll have vodka
Price-sensitive Indian customers are hard to win and harder to keep. Despite rising disposable incomes they respond quickly to rising prices, flitting between products at the slightest provocation.
Take the drinking habits of the new middle classes. Only quite recently won over to beer, they are now downing vodkas and tonics and cocktails instead as prices shift in their favour. Continue reading »
India: no price too high for gold?
Indians love buying gold, sustaining demand even during the traditionally slack summer months, as the FT reported on Monday. But with gold prices breaching the $1,600 an ounce barrier on concerns over the eurozone debt crisis, could the skyhigh prices finally put the brakes on India’s demand for the yellow metal?
Maybe.
Continue reading »
Motherson Sumi pays €72.2m for Peguform
Last week when Indian auto parts maker Motherson Sumi announced it had acquired an 80 per cent stake Peguform without disclosing the deal price, the market wasn’t sure how to react. But the company’s announcement on Monday that it would pay €72.2m for its stake in the German auto interiors manufacturer sent the Indian company’s stock climbing again, to close up 1.3 per cent.
Peguform is just the latest acquisition for Motherson Sumi as the company builds leverage to expand in a growing number of emerging markets. Continue reading »
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