Happy times are here for the Indian consumer. His every wish is coming true, and that too at discounted prices! Inflation might be skinning his knees, but if he wants to hitch a ride to his destination, he can get a good motorcycle at half the price he could get it at earlier. Forget bikes, he can now dream of getting a brand new car for Rs 1 lakh.
Where once having a desktop computer in the house was a luxury and laptops were only for the suits sitting in the cabins, now he can get laptops for Rs 15,000. When he thinks of getting himself a new mobile, he might not have the money to buy a Blackberry, but he can certainly buy multiple Micromax models in the same price. And we’re not even talking of the wave of cheap Chinese manufactured mobile handsets that can be found on Indian streets priced at a lowly Rs1000.
It’s an exciting time when more and more products are being made available to more and more income brackets. It’s happening in electronics, it’s happening in automobiles, it’s even happening in consumer durables.
But what one misses in the whole scheme of things is some scintillating new development on the FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) scene. This is the one canvas where you can make a difference to maximum people across strata. But the last real revolution that one witnessed in this space was the sachet revolution by CavinKare.
That was quite a revolution when the same shampoo that was pitched as a luxury item by the biggies was now available at 50 paise per wash. No wonder the consumers at the middle of the pyramid lapped it up and category penetration shot up. It was one of the few times when the FMCG majors got a jolt that made them sit up and take notice. The other time was when Karsenbhai Patel introduced Nirma priced at a third of Surf. In a one brilliant stroke, he gobbled chunks out of Unilever’s market share and caused multiple revisions in their market strategy.
But since then, there has been a lull on the FMCG scene. No challenging of existing category codes, no trying to expand penetration, no new price revolution. The whole point of technology is that you can get better products at a lower price. Then why are we still paying Re 1 for.
