We live in an ‘attention’ economy. Brands are the lighthouses in an attention economy. I have written many times about India building global brands, but our progress is slow.
I hope there are no doubts as to why we must build brands. A recent global brand value study by market-research company Kantar showed that the Top 10 brands’ value went up by 441% in the past 19 years. The S&P 500 company aggregate brands grew value at 312 % in the same period.
A socialist mindset does not encourage brand building since it clashes with the government’s ability to decide what’s right for consumers. Even in socialist India, we sought consistency in government brands like the Janata Bazaar, ISI symbol as a quality guarantee.
1 August 2025
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More Local Than Global
Why has been India slow to build global brands?
I am not sure Indian leaders have the ambition to build a global brand; it requires commitment and long-term focus. Indian owners need to think beyond family legacy if they want to be global. Indian leaders tend to think of government-support-led business creation versus consumer-loyalty-led business brands.
We value information over insight. This is input management, not output thinking. Our thinking must apply creativity to the information we have, that’s a shift from school syllabus upwards.
We are comfortable with trading, since it is price led, supply-side led, not demand-side led. Trading is in our blood thanks to history.
A lot of our innovations has been import substitution led, so it has a cost focus to it. This was the right approach in the 1960s to 1990s, but now we need to shift gears.
Our ecosystem development is not partnership led, so every company tried to do its own thing. Industry needs to partner with academic research institutions.
Our manufacturing practices must meet global standards across the board. We have sporadic globality in parts of the ecosystem, not in the whole system.
The IPL is the first big Indian brand. It is truly global because it has global representation across the full ecosystem.
ISB in management education is a globally well-ranked brand. However, they are not truly global with student intake. They are global with the best professors, with global internships and projects but that’s not enough. After 74 years of management education in India, the B school with the highest foreign nationals is IIM Bodh Gaya which has 12 international students.
UPI and Aadhar have gone global but not in the brand-name sense; they are more platforms that are used.
Going Global
What has happened to global efforts so far?
We have a big generic drugs industry but sans branding. We have IT services branding without product branding. The Top 10 valuable brand list has nine technology brands; we need to master product creation in technology, just being a provider of IT services will not take us far on the brand charts.
Indian brands like Amul, Himalaya, Dabur, Tanishq, Kalyan, Malabar, Joyalukkas and Kama among others have typically focused on the Indian diaspora, so our imagination stretches to West Asia, Southeast Asia, parts of Canada, the US and UK. Global brands cross national identities.
Indian brand owners must think beyond narrow identity if they want to grow big. To their credit Titan tried a lot 20 years ago, they failed and withdrew from the global stage since their design language and brand identity didn’t cut it globally. Well tried.
We produce 70% of the cricket bats in the world. We don’t have a single big cricket bat brand. In every industry, we seem to want the government to help or subsidise. I feel this is possibly another reason why we haven’t built global brands since we see government as the benefactor and not the consumer.
Removing the Blinkers
Design is crucial especially in a digital world. India is seeing a mushrooming of design schools and colleges. Design focus is good and the right thing. But only design without the other fundamentals in place will be seen as puffery.
Forest Essentials seem to be on the right track. It has all the ingredients I have covered: strong innovation, good packaging, exciting concepts, solid innovation and outstanding sensory appeal. It has ayurveda appeal which the world knows is quintessentially Indian, and Forest Essentials doesn’t claim Indianness.
Indian brands need to move from participating in a market to building scale in a market. Indian brands have consistently missed the woods for the trees, maybe Forest Essentials can teach us otherwise. Will Indian brand owners pay attention?
(The writer is ex-chairman, ASCI and an India Inc veteran with stints in PepsiCo and Aditya Birla group)
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