Presentation: Are brands underestimating the market?

Dainik Bhaskar's Peter Suresh noted how almost half of urban consumers' wealth is distributed between four city tiers that come after top eight metros.

Peter Suresh, head BIU, Dainik Bhaskar, in the recently held Unmetro seminar organised by afaqs!, attempted to provide a macro view of India's eight metros and 7,800 towns. Through a series of statistics and pie charts, Suresh presented a picture of the concentration of affluence and how the gap was narrowing between the metros and the smaller cities.

Citing the data drawn from Indicus Analytics Market Skyline of India 2013, Suresh showed how nearly half of urban consumer wealth in India is distributed between the four tiers of cities that come after the top eight metros. As a result, brands are now taking them seriously in their expansion and growth plans.

However, socio-cultural and economic variations have kept the Tier 2 and other cities from becoming metropolitan cities. Yet, Suresh attributed this spread of affluence to growth in market infrastructure and logistics in the last 10 years. In fact, cities with 1 lakh to 10 lakh population show higher consumption pattern among various consumer products, except internet usage, as compared to metros, he asserted.

He concluded the presentation wondering if brands were underestimating the depth of the markets. With the rising affluence in 'middle India', there is a need for revised assessment and monitoring techniques, he observed.