Why India hasn't produced a global iconic brand yet?
This question has made me wonder so many times. I am attempting to resolve this haunting question after roaming a few other countries who have been the womb of iconic brands (consumer brands, products, movies, enterprises, media, people and what not). The irony is I myself aspire to produce an iconic brand and I am from India. Given our past record, I should not dream about this. Even if I think of operate from any other blooming land of startups, I see that historically no Indian has ever succeeded in creating one. Yes, many are at senior level operating staff or are CEOs but even the outside born and raised Indians have nothing iconic credited to them!
The biggest of Indian houses like Tata, Reliance, Adani, Birla, Bharti and others are not known outside. They are not globally iconic. Mittal steel tried to be one but it ended up Arcelor only. Sabeer Bhatia is the only guy I know of who created a brand name which is known globally. Sadly Microsoft bought it out and has been trying so long to rebrand hotmail.com to live.com.
So, why? Here's my list of possible reasons working alone or all at a time.
1. We have too many cooks
As someone said, too many cooks spoils the broth. In India, we obstruct the creativity and creative flow with many checks called Managers or hiring too many low-skilled labor. And that's why we do so well in servicing, because servicing doesn't requires high level of skills and demands almost zero creativity. I remember an article explaining why Samsung was never able to compete sharply with Apple in design and innovation. The article revealed that in Samsung a design needs to get approved through a level of managerial hierarchy while in Apple its nearly a one step process.
2. Our products stays inferior
Compare an Ola or a Taxiforsure or a Meru app with Uber. You'll clearly get the difference. Or check any other local product manufactured here or in the mother-of-iconic-brand countries. Just look around yourself in a city and compare. It's really hard to furnish so many little details that developed countries takes care of, all of which just goes unnoticed in India. Just for example, after my recent US-Russia-Kazakhstan vacation, I landed on Delhi airport, came out at Arrivals to catch a cab. I felt something unusual. My baggage trolley was wobbling too much as I was pulling it across to reach taxi island. I realized that those islands were tiled everywhere, even in US and Russia. But here it was a shoddy piece of work. I strolled more to check whether its just a patch. But no, we don't care details and perfection. Even with same input and conditions, our output stays inferior.
3. We look at profits first rather product - we lacks vision
Since ages, even when we talk about baniyas or gujjus or marwaris or sindhis, we have remained hard focused on profits! It's not that we do not care about product or quality or customer experience, but our bottom-line stays profits!
4. Risks scare us
Among young Indians, parents has remained a decisive force on choosing a career path. Parents has always acted more than a guidance. Since we live on survival instinct first, parents just want their kids to secure a college degree that can get them a near guaranteed job (e.g. IT) irrespective of their interests. And most of us has learnt to live this way. When you are molded by your parents, it is really difficult to come out of that mold and take risks. P.S. Still your parents are guarding that mold.
I am not blaming Indian parents. Its more of circumstantial. But that has translated into a culture. A very few are breaking the molds, even parents are not making the molds, but they are very very few. And here I've not even touched the state in Indian rural.
5. We mostly don't follow our hearts
India is a country where survival comes first, providing for your family comes first. Dreams and ambitions are frequently road-rolled, crushed and cemented to death. Actually there's no such concept like following heart for profession. And why? We don't or are not allowed to explore much during our adolescent and growing years. Go to any engineering college admissions and you'll find lines of students who really don't know why are they there and what they like to do in life.
6. We start too late leading an independent life
Well some still make it pursuing what they like and want from life. But when they start leading an independent life, its already quite late to take on decisions that may involve risk. Its mostly that turn of life where Indians are supposed to get married. In US and Europe, people start leading quite independently at the age of 14. In India this age must be around 22! This delay and lack of experience makes it really difficult to take risks and they are pushed into a difficult age bracket too!
7. Right decisions battles egos in Indian hierarchies
Indian corporate environments, management structure and work style is much different. It is full of egos, credits-race, layers of management and lack of ownership. We do work mostly to please our bosses and show them that we deserve good ratings. Seldom people focus on the bottom-line, what their work is and what they should achieve. People don't take much pride in whatever they do. And this is reflected in the quality of output.
8. Lack of local venture capitalists
Due to play-safe nature, we never had investors for new, futuristic and radical ideas. Our capitalists has been investing mostly in traditional businesses where they know the returns are guaranteed.
9. We are not used to see global markets and vice versa - Lack of strategy
We fail to see potential in global markets, our aspirations are much less. When Uber can expand to more than 57 countries now, our Olas or Merus can't even think of it! Our strategies I think are not made with scalability in mind. Our business models become non-sustainable in foreign markets. And as a cyclic process, global markets also not consider us or even perceive us as potential competitors.
10. We love services - we have thriving examples and industry
Today only thing we can be too proud of - is our IT service industry. But again other foreign software giants are able to penetrate our industry but we can't even touch their software product industry. All seems hunky dory coz the overall service industry is growing at a fast pace.
I wonder again, what will change? And when we'll have a iconic true Indian brand/product after Basmati and Modi!
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