Consumer India: Inside the Indian Mind and Wallet
By Dheeraj Sinha

Today’s India is seeing things it has never seen before - medals in Olympics, cheerleaders in cricket, ready-to-cook pastas, kissing scenes on national television, institutes for airhostesses, fairness creams for men, agricultural tips on sms and marriages arranged on the internet. In Consumer India, Dheeraj Sinha weaves the narrative of a changing India through examples of Bollywood, our cultural conditioning, today’s role models, our behavior as consumers, and the role of brands and marketing amidst all this.
How does a culture that has been taught to be wary about money now respond to its abundance—what implications does this have for finance brands? Does Kakaji Namkeen qualify as a brand? It sells the same wafers (well, almost the same) as Lay’s does, gives more value for the money, and spends nothing in advertising. Can a mass brand have a premium offering in India? What is it about caller ringtones that makes them such a success? India is about its large middle-class consumers, but isn’t there a profitable premium segment emerging? In a country where everyone is feeling young, what happens to the real youth?
Like everything else in India, marketing too is part logic, part gut. Drawing upon facts, fiction and personal experience, Sinha unravels the interconnections between the mind and the wallet of today’s Indian consumer. A practitioner’s account of what Indian consumer wants—from the playing field, not the sidelines.
About Dheeraj SinhaAuthor, award winning strategist and consumer expert. Dheeraj Sinha is currently chief strategy officer at Bates141 India (a WPP Group company). Previously, he worked with McCann Erickson and Euro RSCG in India. Sinha has twice been chosen for the Atticus, the WPP award for best published thinking, and has won several effectiveness awards, including Effies, the Jay Chiat Planning Award, and the Asian Marketing Effectiveness Award. He has spoken on topics related to the Indian consumer at the Esomar Asia Pacific Conference, the Global Youth Marketing Forum, and the Asian Marketing Effectiveness Festival. Sinha has worked on the brand strategy for several multinational and Indian brands, including Fiat, Virgin Mobile, MasterCard, LG, Reckitt Benckiser, TVS Motorcycles, Max Bupa, Marico, Dabur, and Cavin Kare. He is a postgraduate in communications and a graduate in economics. He lives in Mumbai with his wife and five-year-old son.
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