Rural India: The Indian Marketer's New Game Field

chillibreeze writer — Puneet Srivastava

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Rural! This word immediately brings to mind a distinct set of images: a typical village environment, like the one we drew in our colouring books in school, turban-clad men in ethnic dressings, bullock-carts, houses made of mud, thatched roofs, and women drawing water from wells.

When marketers talk about the word rural, we generally visualize rustic shops, unbranded products, small, ticket-size transactions, and so on.

I am a marketer and with this image in my mind I set out for the rural market. The journey started from Pune on NH 9 towards Solapur, with a government-published map marking all the talukas and village locations.

But I seemed to be having a few problems. Firstly, even after having crossed the race course and the Fatimanagar signal and after journeying well into Hadapsar, Pune simply refused to end. When it finally ended after the toll-booth at Phursungi, I drove into Urlikanchan, perhaps my first rural location.

But then where was the rural paraphernalia?

And what was that ATM doing next to the any-time-any-where banking branch? And then there was the telephone exchange providing seamless broadband connectivity, mobile phones, branded garments, IT education, and even SUVs on the roads!

What had happened to the rural I thought I knew? Maybe, we are still too close to Pune?

I move forward in great hope… Yavat, Warvad, Chaupala, Patas, Kurkumbh - the industrial township and then the villages and I give up. I simply seem to have lost my rural.

But then, this is Maharashtra, one of the most prosperous states of India and Pune being one of its best revenue generating divisions.

Let’s try somewhere else. Say, Uttar Pradesh, one of the presumably lesser prosperous states. Now, ever since they built that swanky highway, there’s no point talking Lucknow-Kanpur. I choose Lucknow-Jaunpur, instead. What do we see when we travel this particular road?

Fewer people wearing turbans or dressed traditionally, youngsters in trousers and shirts, SUVs on roads, mobile phones, mobile phone advertisements and mobile phone towers, core banking connected branches, ATMs, private clinics claiming to be nursing homes and nursing homes claiming to be hospitals, an engineering or a management college every few hundred kilometers, brands and hoardings of brands, road-side dhabaas (eateries) serving branded soft-drinks, bottled mineral water and the Chinese chow-mein also called hakka noodle at places, dishes served with paper napkins, petrol pumps with clean toilets and multi-storied houses with painted exteriors.

Wait! Wait! Wait! But weren’t we looking for rural?

I repeat this experiment in as many as five states: Rajasthan (Udaipur-Dungarpur), West Bengal (Kolkata-Bardhman), Karnataka (Belgaum-Haveri), Tamil Nadu (Chennai-Kurnool), and Assam (Gwahati-Sonapur). Everywhere, the observation is the same.

A change has been quietly sweeping over what has traditionally been called rural. The change is universal across the country, though its pace might vary from place to place.

I recall talking to a small-town retailer about fifteen years back and he had commented, "What’s 'fashion' in here?" I doubt if anybody can make a statement like that today.

Rural India is fast becoming urban and with it the aspirations of its inhabitants are also becoming urban.
While it is not completely urban yet, it is hardly the 'rural' that it once was. It is somewhere in between; furthermore, this transformation has not been uniform across the country. Small towns and villages on national highways and those in the hinterlands still have huge variations.

If there is a challenge ahead of the marketer today, I feel it lies in addressing the demand-potential across this variation spectrum and still making money.

In Latvia, there’s a strange custom. In a party, one is not just expected to drink, but to drink a lot. To make sure there’s enough for all to drink, they bring their vodkas in big jerry-canes and not bottles.

Toasts are raised for the silliest of reasons and everyone must necessarily participate. But, with all this liberty there comes a small rule - you are also required to hold on to your drink! Falling down drunk is considered really bad in that society.

Rural markets in our country come very close. A marketer could sell as much, preferably in small ticket sizes, provided what’s due is delivered. There is no room for any broken promises.

Consider this: electricity being such a big issue, how do you think beer is being served in the countless road-side dhabaas along the highways?

Chilled, of course! Wonder how? Visit an outlet and ask that street-smart, business-savvy owner who knows precisely how to keep his customers despite all the constraints.

If you can master the trick, the floor is truly all yours! Rural markets in India are only now opening up to their unrealized potential. Move ahead and claim your share!

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