India Marketing

Born in a middle-class trading family, Kishore Biyani started his career selling stonewashed fabric to small shops in Mumbai. Years later, with the launch of Pantaloons, Big Bazaar, Food Bazaar, Central and many more retail formats, he redefined the retailing business in India. Incidentally, Kishore Biyani's objective is to capture every rupee in the wallet of every Indian consumer, wherever they are - an investment banker living in a south Mumbai locality or a farmer in Sangli.

This is as much the story of Indian advertising as it is about India. Ad veteran Ambi Parameswaran looks at how advertising has evolved, reflecting the country's culture, politics and economy in the last 50 years. From sartorial taste and food habits to marriage and old age, music and language to celebrities and censorship, Ambi examines more than a hundred ads to study how the Indian consumer has changed in the past five decades and how advertising and society have shaped each other.

One of the largest consumer markets of the world, India is made up of lots and lots of small consumers―each earning and spending just a little bit that adds up to a lot. It is served by millions of small suppliers oozing innovation and customer intimacy, and is powered by digital infrastructure that does billions of unique and small transactions every day. In her new book, Rama Bijapurkar dismisses the easy and simplistic view of the Indian demographic and embraces all the complexities and opportunities that new India has to offer.

You've heard of the burgeoning consumer markets in China and India that are driving the world economy. But do you know enough about these new consumers to convert them into customers? In The $10 Trillion Prize, bestselling author Michael J. Silverstein and The Boston Consulting Group colleagues in China and India provide the first comprehensive profile of the emerging middle class, primed to transform the global marketplace.

In Open House, Piyush Pandey takes listeners on a journey into his mind—his work, thoughts and experiences. He answers questions posed to him by people over the decades. Serious questions, incisive questions and frivolous questions. Is advertising a good career option? Should ad agencies work for political parties? Why does Ogilvy work for the BJP? Should citizens take the law into their own hands if they don't like the advertising? Is Ogilvy a lala company? What is the future of advertising? Is Piyush Pandey too old to be in this business?

India is a vast country with a rapidly expanding middle class that is eager to acquire Western conveniences in a culture that has never known such luxuries before. But with great opportunity comes great challenge: significant cultural differences and a number of other hurdles combine to create a unique and demanding business landscape for Western companies and individuals to overcome.