The Hindu Business Line : Incredible @ 60!

What images come to your mind when I say India? More critically, what images might come to the people who live in other parts of the world? The immensely beautiful Taj, the divine beaches of Goa, the backwaters of Kerala, the stifling traffic jams at Bangalore, famished beggars at signal lights at Mumbai, unfortunate people living on pavements, politicians with shady credentials, towering software glass domes, a booming stock market, a new breed of millionaires … Co nfusing isn’t it?

Much earlier, the sheer diversity of the country, its unique culture, amazing sights and hospitable people made tourists come back to this country wonderingly. The really smart ones accepted it. But others with business interests ridiculed the lack of progress even as they lamented the country’s poverty. India certainly was not the happening place in the world of business and commerce. But all that has changed. It is all happening here, as the Australian commentator Bill Lawry would say, right here in front of our very eyes and we had better savour the moment.

It happened at New York

There was an earnest attempt to showcase India at the Incredible India@60 celebrations at New York from September 23-26.This was a partnership between the Ministry of Tourism and the CII, addressing and showcasing India’s capabilities in two key sectors – tourism and business. Eight Indian ministries, 33 Indian companies and eight local partners in the US got together to spend $10 million and create a showpiece event around the cultural and business capabilities of a nation that is a young 60.

There has been a great divide between India watchers. One is the tourist who never ceases to wonder at its rich heritage and culture, the sights, sounds, the yoga … Here is one satisfied customer who returns to this country whenever an opportunity presents itself. The other is the investor or the businessman who never ceases to wonder at the lack of infrastructure and the red tape that engulfs him when he enters the country. As P.G. Wodehouse might say, the red tape in other countries seems to be a mere, pale pink in comparison!

This second person keeps watching the developments in this country with trepidation and never did these two diverse viewpoints meet or match. India has continued to thrive on its diversity and continued to confound its friends and foes alike. This recent exercise, to my mind, is an amazing attempt to try to depict that India is more than a country with a past. It is a happening country today and will provide an amazing opportunity in future; and the sooner the rest of the world comes to terms with that the better, is the message.

In that sense, Incredible India@60’s timing could not have been better as it was timed to coincide with the UN General Assembly, thanks to the initiative of the CII. Driving this activity were some of India’s leading industrial lights such as Sunil Mittal, President, CII, and Founder-Chairman and Group CEO, Bharti Enterprises, and CII Brand India Committee Chairman and Co-Chairman of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani. These eminent industrialists, apart from furthering the fortunes of their own successful corporations, have spared the time, energy and enthusiasm to ensure that India gets its due place under the sun through this event.

The India brand

Today, branding is in as a discipline and offers an opportunity for companies, products and services to showcase their abilities and worth. There is also increasing realisation of the need to brand nations as well as tourists and investors have multiple choices before them. If any nation needs branding it is India, despite its numerous achievements, as the negative perceptions about it are clouding the brand’s real and genuine achievements.

Thankfully, there is a real interest in India and its achievements; leading that interest has been India’s phenomenal achievements in the area of software. A combination of smart business and pricing strategy, an English-speaking working population, a network of global offices to be close to their customers and access to global capital markets have all contributed to make India a success story. It has also meant that India’s software capability has overshadowed its past achievements and helped us overcome our earlier failings as well.

In branding, we keep doing ‘word association’ tests and ask consumers what word comes to their minds when we mention specific brands. If today you were to mention the word ‘India’ to the rest of the world, the immediate word that would be cued in their minds might well be ‘software’, so powerful has that sector become. It has created words like ‘Bangalored’ that have certainly created fear and uncertainty in the minds of some audiences as well.

But there are other dimensions to India’s success as well, which have perhaps not got the attention they richly deserve. The booming service economy and the emergence of strong brands such as Jet Airways that are serving international customers and getting their appreciation makes me believe me that another pillar of the India brand has to be ‘service’.

The nature of work that we are doing in technology (selectively) and the fact that we have a tremendously young population ready to get into the mainstream of work and the increasing importance given to education by parents both rich and poor makes me believe that India has the capability and potential to have ‘knowledge’ as another pillar on which the brand can be anchored. In short, the new brand India is not the land of elephants and snake charmers but an economy that is growing, built around software, service and knowledge.

And there is another thing that we tend to forget. We are a free country. A democracy which can be a bit of a frustration as well when we try to compare with economies such as China, but the position that India has been conveying rightly to the rest of the world has been encapsulated in the slogan ‘Fastest growing free market democracy’. Let’s remember this even in our dark moments.

The brand within India

Every brand has two sets of audiences, both internal and external. A company, for instance, has customers, investors, vendors and media on the outside while its own employees are on the inside. A brand has a problem when significant differences exist between the outside and the inside audiences in terms of perceptions. This is India’s problem.

The rest of the world is going gaga over our software capabilities, investors are pumping in money in millions and foreign business visitors are thronging our airports, but we still have people who are poor, hungry and feeling increasingly alienated with the progress. A democratic country has another downside as well – media that looks for ‘breaking news’ more of depressing nature than positive, which is faithfully, and, on occasion, gleefully reported by foreign media as well. Yet, we need to remember one important fact — the weaker India is a part of India and yet it is a bit like the Indian family of the early 1900s which used to have 12 children. Two of the children would be phenomenally successful and the remaining ten would have been left out of the success due to a variety of reasons. The ten would be angry, depressed and even envious of the success of their own brothers.

Today’s India is facing this same problem as 750 million people are outside of the success and we need to seriously think about improving their lot and those who have must share, give, lead and guide as they are doing, albeit in a small way. But that is not the scope of this piece and I am sure there are people who are eminently more qualified to offer a solution to India’s current economic travails and I shall stay with the brand that is India.

India needs brand champions

Every company and corporate brand has four types of employees – the brand champions who actively and passionately bat for it, the brand agnostics who are neutral about it, the brand cynics who, as the category suggests, are not too kicked about what is happening and finally, the brand saboteurs who are actively working against the brand idea.

Sadly, a lot of people within India are sabotaging their own brand and doing their utmost to knock our genuine achievements as a nation. Our media, in their anxiety to get rating points, goes overboard in highlighting catastrophes and the average middle-class Indian is extremely articulate and, usually wrong, in his criticism of the country. India needs champions who will stand up for it to its internal audiences. Champions who are passionate about it. We are India. Only you and I can make India’s incredible progress credible by being passionate about our country. I am ready. Are you?

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of One Land, One Billion Minds).

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