What is the first thing that springs to your mind when you bite into a samosa? Or hear a tiger growl? Or ride in an Ambassador car? Or see a sari-clad woman sporting a bindi on her forehead? Or a lotus bloom? Or watch a peacock unfurl its incredible tail?

The answer, of course, is ‘India’.

When it comes to nation brands, India has some pretty unfair advantages. Nobody makes a samosa like we do. Nobody carries off a sari like an Indian woman. No other country even makes the Hindustan Ambassador! The word ‘India’ immediately brings to mind a kaleidoscope of colourful, vibrant, and, from a brand context, uniquely different set of images.

For a country which is looking to create a unique brand identity for itself, no other nation, arguably, has the kind of choice ‘Incredible India’ has. The trouble is, while these images might be great for a tourism brand, they are not quite what one wants to pitch at potential foreign investors.

For a while, it promised to be different. For the last decade or so, India was being seen as the new promised land for global businesses. One of the biggest (and fastest growing) economies in the world, home to a billion young, aspirational consumers, home to one of the largest pool of technically skilled workforces in the world, and a country with one of the largest population of English speakers in the world, the post-reforms boom period had managed to put India on the must-have list of global investors and brands.

For a while, India’s emerging industries, led by the IT sector, had managed to transform India’s traditional image as the land of elephants and the Hindu rate of growth to the newest ‘tiger’ economy on the block. India’s IT engineers changed the perception of the country from a nation of poor to a nation of techies. And as the Indian consumer emerged out of the shackles of policy controls, India emerged as a global hub in manufacturing. From steel to motorcycles and cars to sophisticated project engineering, brand India could finally stand up and be counted.

Unfortunately, the global economic meltdown, followed by a couple of years of policy drift and inaction, has virtually undone the gains of the previous decade. “Brand India has evolved well since 1991. But it has been challenged somewhat over the past two years,” says D. Shivakumar, Nokia’s country head and the current president of the All India Management Association (AIMA), India’s apex body of management practitioners.

At a seminar on ‘Rebuilding Brand India’ organised by AIMA in Bangalore earlier this month, Shivakumar articulated the need for India Inc to get involved in branding India. “It is the collective responsibility of all stakeholders,” says Shivakumar, “companies, consumers and the government.” The reason is simple: a positive national brand image is essential if investment is to flow across borders.

The Japanese realised this early, when the country was rebuilding after World War II. Faced with an imperative to export, Japanese industry realised that a poor brand image – of a source of cheap, but shoddy manufactured goods, an image to be later acquired by China in the earlier stages of its manufacturing expansion – came in the way of not just price realisation, but even market penetration in areas such as automobiles.

Today, Brand Japan stands for technological innovation and manufacturing quality, just like Brand Germany stands for precision manufacture, or Brand France in the area of luxury. “We need to change,” insists Shivakumar, “we need to go from ‘cheap and cheerful’ to ‘differentiated and innovative’.”

“Companies are not looking at it holistically,” says Meera Harish, vice-president (sales and marketing) of Tata Coffee and the person behind the brand summit’s decision to focus on the nation’s branding. “It’s always my product, my company. My country, if it happens, is a bonus.”

Harish believes many corporates take India’s current image for granted, as if it had always been there. “Even in the ’90s, it was not so,” she recollects, “India was not a calling card you could take abroad.” Then with Titan, she remembers that her pitches to CEOs of foreign companies would always start with a presentation on India, then on Tatas and then only Titan. “That perception still persists,” she says, “we need to sensitise everybody – not just the people who go to Davos, but the small manufacturer or exporter – on the importance of Brand India.”

For Harish, Brand India is much more than an advertising slogan. “India's brand will be created by what we, Indians, are and by what we do,” she insists. “It has to be a nation lit up by a billion dreams and actions. India is what we bring to it.”

For Shivakumar, the three keys to building a solid nation brand are good governance, investments in infrastructure and investment in skill building. This is where a focus on Brand India has to be a key part of any corporate’s engagement with the external world, he says. “Boundaries are mere lines in a digital world,” he points out. Today, the forces which shape a country’s brand image lie as much with the media, through travel, trade and commerce and the social media as the government, he points out, adding, “A country brand is a collective responsibility.”

Harish agrees, but points out that it is important to decide what India should stand for. “A brand manager in a company knows what his brand stands for. We as a nation should also know what Brand India stands for. We need to identify this and then this can be taken up and amplified by the individual companies.”

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