Having read Rama Bijapurkar’s first book, We Are Like This Only way back in 2007-08 in Delhi, I was looking forward to reading this new book of hers called Lilliput Land: How Small is Driving India’s Mega Consumption Story. In her first book, she delves into why foreign companies find Indian consumers hard to fathom… Continue reading Lilliput Land Big on Message, Short on Meaning
While the title of this article might shock many of you, this is clearly not my intention. The idea, rather, is to assess the state of India’s state sector in the economy over the past many decades and see how they are faring as well as how many are still required in today’s business and… Continue reading Does India Need Public Sector Enterprises?
It’s been at least a couple of decades that we have been hearing about the falling circulation and readership of print publications in India and around the world. We know it is largely due to the arrival of the digital medium, and for many of the initial years, digital publications were free to read. Unfortunately,… Continue reading In Advertising vs Subscription Debate, Many Losers
A small bit of news during Q3 2023 corporate earnings struck me as curious. That luxury goods sales were slowing down. And not merely because of China’s economic slowdown, but luxury sales even in the US were reported to be lacklustre. If anything, China was still the saving grace. And it’s not just LVMH; Kering… Continue reading Why 2024 Ought to Be the Year of Rightsizing Luxury
It’s 20 years since I last worked at an advertising agency, that being RK Swamy/BBDO India in their Chennai office. As if that mistake was not enough, I made the blunder of then joining a PR firm in Delhi, Perfect Relations, in 2006. I was always a copywriter in advertising throughout my long career in… Continue reading How Should Advertising Agencies Be Remunerated?
What? There are no 'I's in the global economy, of course. Well, the year has begun with corporate earnings and once again it’s time to turn our attention to these to see what they seem to be telling us about the health of the economy. India’s, and the world’s. From the corporate earnings announced, they… Continue reading The Three ‘I’s to Watch in the Global Economy
Hello readers. In the New Year of 2024 that has just begun, I have four new blog videos to share with you. Videos that I made on the various dimensions of my blog that has just gone into its sixth year! These are the nuanced analysis that goes beyond news, nuanced and well-considered viewpoints on… Continue reading Four New Blog Videos to Start 2024
As most of India was celebrating the festive season last year, Cyclone Michaung hit South India and wreaked havoc in parts of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh inundating the city of Chennai once again. TV news reports were full of the levels of flooding in the city, where streets had turned into rivers and the… Continue reading How Livable Are Our Cities in India?
In India, organized retail is a fairly new phenomenon and it coexists with the traditional corner-shop or kirana store as it’s called here. Despite fears of the former destroying small mom and pop shops, the two have happily coexisted for a couple of decades now. That’s also because the Indian government didn’t allow large foreign… Continue reading When Fashion Goes Retail and Retail Goes Fashion
Recently, I wrote a piece here on my blog examining how much had really changed in the way consumers make their brand purchase decisions in today’s world. And I concluded that while plenty had changed in the technology dimension of advertising and marketing, consumers still make their brand choice decisions the way they always have.… Continue reading Advertising and Media in The New World
Peripatetic Perch 