kiran raghuvanshi

Walk into any mall in India. You’ll find Apple. Zara. IKEA. Dyson. H&M. Levi’s.
The world found India quite aggressively and strategically with capital, real estate, and flagship stores in the best zip codes.

Now walk into a mall in London. Dubai. São Paulo or Tokyo.

Find me as many Indian consumer brands? Not an IT firm or a service export. A brand that a 24-year-old in Berlin picks off a shelf because she wants it. Because it means something to her. Because it is, simply, better.

I’ll wait.

India is the fifth-largest economy on earth. By 2030, its consumer market will touch $6 trillion. It has 1.4 billion people who have forced its brands to solve problems that brands in comfortable, homogeneous markets have never had to solve ; climate extremes, income diversity, cultural complexity, brutal competition at every price point.

That is not weakness. Instead an extraordinary product-building education that no business school offers. And yet, we export software, export services and talent .

Some of the finest minds running global corporations were built in India, then claimed by the world. But our brands stop at the border.

Is the ceiling real? Or did we just stop looking up? A thought to think about.

Reference Data Sources:
worldbank.org
mckinsey.com