Challenging the status quo ….

This past weekend, TiE Bangalore hosted a very lively discussion and networking meeting with two very dynamic and well know women – Rama Bijapurkar, author and consultant, & Vanita Bali of Britannia Ltd. The discussion was about Rama’s new book about the consumers in India, aptly titled ‘We are like that only’. I am yet to finish my copy and since I had heard Rama before, I decided to spend my sat’day morning constructively to gain more insight. Many of the questions surrounded how the MNCs try to implement their best practices from abroad instead of looking at India with a fresh set of eyes and creating something new and fundamentally different which would not only help them do well in India but take on new markets elsewhere. There were many interesting questions and examples – like the new innovation in saree pins, the inventor of Nirma and how that changed the distribution play for HLL. Since the upcoming bangalore airport is on the top of mind for everyone in that room considering many are probably frequent travelers, a lot of time was spent on discussing that there were no solutions, the govt was not doing anything, etc. But the discussion that was completely missing especially coming from someone like Rama, was around the lack of collective consciousness about Indian consumers. But this comes fromnm not just in their inability to act as ‘alert’ consumers, but also because we lack civic citizenship. Period! Since we never gather together to raise our voices against the corrupt corporators in our own wards for lack of proper garbage disposal, no pavements, incomplete road projects, etc. Why in world will we come together to file case against a builder, shoe retailer, a soap company etc. In general, those who make business seem to get away with providing much lesser quality and make more money from Indians in India then they would ever have been able to, had it been some other country. Recently, I bought a pair of shoes on my visit to singapore. The brand was a local singapore brand and the quality was amazing. I paid $50 singapore dollars equivalent to Rs. 1500, where as I would pay double at woodlands for the same or lesser quality of sandals. Because of a peculiar problem with my heel (thanks to all the hiking I did in my younger days!), I am very restricted to the kind of chappals I can wear and often I just find it hard to buy anything comfortable in India, that is wide enough to give heel/arch support and yet have the elegant look. Singapore is way smaller than India in terms of the it’s population and # of urban consumers, yet it has achieved much higher levels of quality in manufacturing.

In the recent years,  competition definitely has improved the quality of manufactured goods compared to what it was 15 years ago when I grew up as well as the expectation of quality and willingness to pay more has gone up. But the quality of manufactured goods is not any where close to other asian nations like singapore, china etc. Until manufacturing was under the babu’s in the governement, and there was no competition. Now that both have gone through much change, we are seeing our manufacturing industry go through rapid change.  It’s time that the consumers also took some action to drive that change to happen faster by demanding better quality from shoes to apartments/homes.

In countries like the US, the judicial systems allows for more regulation to start happening as people sue the manufacturers. Here, with our current judicial system it’s unlikely to happen.  So, its important to build a strong consumer awareness and consumer action system so that we keep the manufacturers, builders, retailers in check through alternative means.