12 May 2009 /

Made by vs. Made in

by Sahil Sachdev at 11:09 am 12 May 2009
Filed under: Branding

India is a global economic and cultural force to be reckoned with. So much is clear. But why haven’t many more Indian brands made their mark on the global stage?

As part of an ongoing Saffron study, we posed this question to the President of Brand Strategy at an Indian Fortune 500 company. His reply was straightforward – the marketing spend required is simply too high. In his opinion, establishing a brand on a global scale requires a huge investment, and the returns are anything but guaranteed.

To become internationally known and respected, he believes, Indian companies will have to grow by acquisition, à la Tata and Jaguar. This, says our interviewee, brings many of the rewards without much of the risk. With current market conditions leaving many major international brands vulnerable to takeover, such an approach becomes all the more viable.

It is possible that the Indian market will recover from the current crisis faster than the rest of the world. If it does, and is able to ‘take advantage’ of the downturn continuing in Europe and America, further acquisitions of large global brands by Indian companies are possible. By the time the slowdown ends, the world could look a very different place.

In it, companies from one part of the world will have to decide how they effectively integrate new acquisitions from a completely different cultural background. This throws up an interesting question – will one national ‘style’ come to dominate, or will national identities fade into the background as a transnational, truly corporate identity comes to the fore? Will ‘Made by’ trump ‘Made in’? Some participants in our study think so. It seems likely, therefore, that some companies will be associated less with where they come from (as with Sony) and more with what they are about (like Nivea).