Rural India
Rural India- Game for economy
Spread
across 650,000 villages, with an average population of 1,100 rural villagers
were long regarded by city dwellers as backward and impoverished and
irrelevant, something to drive past on the way to something else. That is no
longer the case. Rural India is now becoming a major market for India Inc. It
is not to forget that India lives in its villages. That's because roughly
three-fourths of the country's population resides in the rural interiors of the
country.
According
to a new report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), rural
India has 3.3 million active internet users. The research - part of the ongoing
I-Cube 2008 being jointly undertaken by IMRB International and IAMAI - also
notes there are 5.5 million people who claim to have used internet at some
point. For the first time rural India was mapped. IAMAI president Subho Ray
says that the penetration of internet in rural India is directly related to the
activities of the government and NGOs. India's 700 million villagers now
account for a massive $100 billion a year consumer spending in the country.
Millions step into consumerism each year, graduating from the economics of
necessity to the economics of gratification, buying themselves motorcycles, televisions,
mobile handsets and four-wheelers.
The
National Council of Applied Economic Research, or NCAER, has pared its demand
forecasts for automobiles, refrigerators and television (TV) sets for this
fiscal year and the next, signalling that a slowdown in demand for these
products, which make up a quarter of India's manufacturing output, may drag on
longer than foreseen by industry executives. NCAER is, however, bullish on
untapped potential in rural areas and believes demand in the countryside will continue
to clock double-digit growth.
Korean
consumer electronics firms LG Electronics India and Samsung, two-wheeler maker
Hero Honda, pharma products maker Nicholas Piramal, mobile services provider
Bharti Airtel are among a handful of well-established companies making a
concerted push into rural India in recent months to boost flagging sales. They
are joining some notable segment leaders like Bajaj Electricals and Bajaj Auto
that have had a strong presence in rural areas. Now, the largest consumer
electronics company in India by sales, LG, plans to focus heavily on rural
markets through channel expansion, set up a services network and roll out a
slew of entry-level products. Earlier Airtel and Samsung tied up with
IFFCO to sell their mobiles and services. IFFCO is the world's largest farmers
co-operative of fertilizers.
The
challenges
The rural market holds tremendous potential for any media. However, for the
internet to flourish in rural India, the applications need to be in vernacular
languages, preferably with Text to Speech capabilities. It would be better if
visual symbols, graphics and rich media applications are used. The key question
is, whether we have the right infrastructure to support these applications.
The first challenge is to ensure availability
of the product or service. India's 650,000 villages are spread over 3.2 million
sq km; 700 million Indians may live in rural areas, finding them is not easy.
However, given the poor state of roads; it is an even greater challenge to
regularly reach products to the far-flung villages. Any serious marketer must
strive to reach at least 13,113 villages with a population of more than 5,000.
Marketers must trade off the distribution cost with incremental market
penetration. For marketers, the challenge is to ensure affordability of the
product or service. With low disposable incomes, products need to be affordable
to the rural consumer, most of who are on daily wages.
Parag Rastogi
PGPABM-II
MANAGE, Hyderabad
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