India enters new period of widely shared optimism
Conditions ripe for brand building
Timing is everything.
Just a few months ago, India experienced a transformative moment when voters overwhelmingly rejected the national ruling party in favor of a challenger who promised to reenergize the economy and promote a culture of new possibilities and inclusive opportunity.
Now we're inaugurating the WPP BrandZ™ Top 50 Most Valuable Indian Brands 2014, a groundbreaking study that ranks these accomplished brands, analyzes their success, and points out important similarities and differences among the BrandZ™ brand valuation rankings in India, China, Brazil, Latin America, and the BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands.
The BrandZ™ Top 50 Most Valuable Indian Brands 2014 is the first edition of an annual study that will chart and anticipate the rapidly changing environment for brands in India and the changing value of India's most valuable brands. Whether you're an Indian company or international company, already doing business in India or considering it, I promise that in this report you'll find knowledge and insights to help create and grow brands in India more effectively.
On page 22, Take Aways provide succinct action-oriented prescriptive recommendations from our analysis for brand success. We've also included summaries of India's Top 50 most valuable brands. Brand experts from WPP Companies across India share their market wisdom in sharp insights and extensive thought leadership and best practices essays. And we've presented all this with stunning photography and a vibrant design as colorful as India itself. As you read the report, consider this:
- India's consumers like brands and Indian companies are sophisticated brand marketers. In India, 86 percent of brands are private. In China, 45 percent of brands are state owned.
- India is home to all kinds of brands. Global brands and national brands thrive, but so do innumerable regional brands that are targeted specifically to particular segments of this diverse country. And because India is home to 1.25 billion people, even a regional brand has scale.
- India is both old and young. India is one of the world's oldest civilizations but a young nation, independent since 1947. The median age of the population is 27, compared with close to 40 in the UK and US. Ecommerce is beginning to boom in India, and the leading global Internet and social media brands are active.
- Valuable Indian brands provide solid shareholder ROI. A portfolio of the BrandZ™ Top 50 Most Valuable Indian Brands significantly outperformed India's SENSEX Index over the past five years.
There are challenges, of course. The pace of change is more deliberate and slower in India than in China, for example. That's in part a consequence of India's democratic heritage, a fact that also ensures a high degree of political stability.