Understanding logic of consumer India

Considered one of the leading consultants on market strategy and consumer behaviour, Bijapurkar has tried to make sense of the complex Indian market — the diverse consumer behaviour and the ways to make a company’s fortune in this billion-plus market — in the book.

And incisively analytical, We are Like That Only…, Bijapurkar’s second book after Winning in the Indian Market, does manage to make “understanding the logic of consumer India” a delightful task.

Chidambaram said he enjoyed reading the book.

Praising the book, Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-Chief of The Express Group, said We are Like That Only… contains different takes and snapshots of consumer India.

The book launch was preceded by a panel discussion in which author and mythologist Devdutt Patnaik, writer of Chak De Jaideep Sahni, MD of Oxus Investments Surjit Bhalla and architect of ITC e-Choupal S Shivkumar took part.

Citing examples from mythology, Patnaik said Indians have always valued wealth. Bhalla was of the opinion that Indians are like everybody else. Like any society, it’s the Indian middle-class — now 36 per cent of the population — that “has got the world galvanised”.

“The major revolution has, however, come with more women becoming part of the workforce,” Bhalla said. But the poverty line, which was fixed in the ‘60s, needed to be redrawn keeping the changing economy in mind, he suggested.

Focussing on rural India, Shivkumar said this segment too had become more sophisticated, keeping pace with the changes though certain areas of concern remain.

According to Sahni, what is happening in the entertainment industry is not very different from other sectors. “The film industry has become young and middle-class driven. Access to information has made them dream bigger,” he said, citing instances from his films.

Several prominent personalities, including ICICI Bank CEO & MD KV Kamath, HDFC Chairman Deepak Parekh, Vodafone Essar MD Asim Ghosh and Alyque Padamsee, attended the event.

We are Like That Only: Understanding the Logic of Consumer India has been published by Penguin Books.