The Hindu Business Line : ‘Brand India needs to reconcile with realities’

Brand stand: Standing (third from left) Prof R. Balasubramanian, MBA programme, and to his left Prof B. Srinivasan, Director of the school; seated (from left): Mr S. Ramachander, moderator, Mr Ramanujam Sridhar of brand-comm; Ms Rasheeda Bhagat, Associate Editor, Business Line; and Mr Prakash Dharmarajan, President, Ogilvy and Mather Advertising, with students and faculty after a meeting at SSN School of Management & Computer Applications.

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Chennai, Oct 9 Is Brand India a myth or reality? If branding is about creating a myth around a product, India has quite successfully created a ‘brand’, but unless the reality and paradoxes of India covering its poverty, literacy rates and infrastructure problems are addressed the brand will be on shaky ground.

Students of several business schools in and around Chennai congregated recently under the aegis of the Business Line Club at the SSN School of Management and Computer Applications on the outskirts of the city to participate in a weighty discussion on this subject.

Participating in the round table discussion were branding expert Mr Ramanujam Sridhar of brand-comm, Ms Rasheeda Bhagat, Associate Editor of Business Line, and Mr Prakash Dharmarajan, President of Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, Chennai. Moderating the discussion was Mr S. Ramachander, strategy consultant.

Ms Bhagat, who had recently returned from the CII Incredible India@60 programme at New York, and was witness to the hype about brand India at close quarters, told the students that India was visible all over the US now. Earlier while there was arrogance and ignorance about India, things have changed dramatically because of Indian enterprise. Brand Bollywood too has also helped create and shape the Brand India image, she said.

However, she pointed out, while brand India is booming, the other India is faltering and needs to be taken along. “Brand India at one level is being built for the world but the other India is lagging,” she said.

Mr Sridhar recalled his encounter in South Africa when a local person asked him if he was a software engineer from Bangalore, even though he didn’t know anything else about India. Software, he said, has become a great calling card and also gives India the opportunity to create good service brands. Knowledge and service brands can take India to a new level. He urged the students to make Brand India work. “In the ’80s it was an aspiration to go to the US but the quality of life in India can be far superior. The contribution of young people will keep brand India alive and kicking,” he added

Mr Prakash Dharmarajan explained that there were contradictory perceptions of Brand India – at one level of being a spiritual place and at another a materialistic one of a huge middle-class working cheap and taking away jobs from the Western world. “The challenge to brand managers is how to successfully manage the dichotomy of Brand India. The two dominant faces of India to the world are what they need to address,” he said.

Brands, he said, are myths and ideas which create stories and one needs to create a story for brand India. “We need to perpetuate these myths so that people will invest in India but Indian managers need to quietly tackle problems of infrastructure and literacy, otherwise the brand will be found out like all other brands,” he said.

The speakers were peppered with several questions from the students on the theme, including why the media cannot project Indian problems more sharply and on global brands out of India. Moderator Mr Ramachander wound up the deliberations saying that everyone has a role to play in being Brand India. “The way we conduct ourselves, our attention to detail, concern for others will help build the brand. We can’t just build or project the brand but we also got to be Brand India,” he told the management students.

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