The Hindu Business Line : Brand India gets a special boost

New York, Sept. 27 Brand India received a special boost on Wednesday at one of the panel discussions of the ‘Incredible India@60’ campaign, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry along with 8 Central Government Ministries in New York, when the Vodafone CEO, Mr Arun Sarin, said that his company wouldn’t have invested $11.5 billion, “the largest single investment in India (in Hutch) if we didn’t believe India was a terrific market to invest in.”

“I haven’t met a single CEO from Fortune 100 companies who doesn’t have operations in India. One thing is clear — you’re going to stay away from India at your own peril,” he added.

Only a day earlier, the Cisco chief, Mr John Chambers, had proclaimed that he believed India was the best country in the world for a strategic and long-term partnership.

(In an informal chat with journalists, the Infosys Co-Chairman, Mr Nandan Nilekani, had later said that Chambers deserved an award from India for building “India’s brand so effectively”.)

Mr Sarin said the Indian market was very competitive and the Indian consumer “very discerning and demanding”, so low-cost operations had to be combined with high-efficiency levels. “But what has surprised me most there is the quality of the people. Whether it’s a marketing or technology person, they are outstanding; if you are getting a general manager, he knows how to manage. They’ve all been educated and trained very well.”

A combination of all these factors — mobile payment, distribution, cost management — had given his company the opportunity of taking “many great new ideas” out of India into the rest of Vodafone’s markets around the world. He was very happy to find that Hutch was a “very well-run company, and we didn’t need an overhaul in either management or systems.”

Addressing the discussion titled ‘Brand India – what next?’, Mr Nilekani said the IT industry had played a huge role in establishing India’s brand.

Role of IT

From a mere $50-million industry in the “make-or-break year of 1991”, it had grown into a $30-billion industry that employed 1.5 million people and accounted for 3 per cent of India’s GDP. “We hope to become a $60-billion industry in the next 4-5 years. IT has indeed played a huge role in building India’s brand and creating confidence in clients.”

He added that three years ago business leaders in the CII had felt that India needed a “more visible-high impact” brand exercise, and the result was the “India Everywhere” campaign in Davos in 2006.

Mr Nilekani added that the India brand needed to be developed at various levels; a “soft brand” would be that which was connected with either Bollywood, or niche tourism aspects such as yoga, Ayurveda, something that Kerala had done with success. Another kind of brand projection would have to be that of a resurgent, confident nation that was a free market and a strong and resilient economy.

The Tourism Secretary, Mr Amitabh Kant, recalled his experience in transforming the Kerala brand from one of “only beaches where planeloads of British garbage collectors came and occupied hotel rooms at £15”, to ‘God’s own country’ which attracted the high-spending international visitors.

But building ‘Brand India’ to push tourism was a far more complex game and various State Governments would have to work towards building their own brands.

Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP group, said he was amazed by the “immense confidence” of the youngsters in India and the rate at which the country was growing, one of the “most difficult factors that the US and Europe would have to get used to is that they will no longer be the dominant economies in the years to come.”