Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)chairman Nandan Nilekani has outlined four key trends contributing to the rise of a new consumer in India.
Speaking to business leaders gathered at The Nielsen Company’s Consumer 360 event in New Delhi on November 24, Nilekani said this had come about in part because there was no effective way of reaching out to India’s poor.
The UIDAI chief said over a third of India’s 1.1 billion consumers had been largely overlooked in areas such as banking and social services. He also detailed four trends taking place across India:
1. A demographic disruption taking place in India with an expected 11 million new people joining the workforce every year for the next five years;
2. Mass migration to cities. The urban population is expected to grow by 31 people every minute for many years to come;
3. Low-cost mobile phones mean all social sets have access to the same or similar content;
4. Indians are increasingly impatient with failing systems. As a consequence, service providers are responding more rapidly than ever.
Stressing that these four broad trends have heralded the rise of a new kind of consumer in India, Nilekani said, “The Indian consumer today, irrespective of their income class, is highly aspirational, mobile, comfortable with technologies such as mobile phones, and eager for choices in faster, more accessible services.”
Maintaining that the new consumer, empowered with an ‘Aadhar’ number, will change the way she reaches out to products and services, Piyush Mathur, president, India region, The Nielsen Company, said, “We will need to adapt how we market to these consumers and win in the marketplace. In addition to price, place, promotion and product, it will bring the fifth P – Precision – to life.”
– IndiaRetailing Bureau
