I was recently called as a speaker for a seminar on India versus Bharat. The participants were the top brand managers of the country. The experts were discussing how India can capture Bharat using great branding strategies. That set me wondering how many global brands India has produced. In the global Fortune 500 list, India had seven firms last year, compared to over 100 firms from China. We are the seventh largest economy, yet we hardly have any giant business firm in the global reckoning. Another curious aspect is that all the seven firms that featured in the global list are strong in the domestic market, called derisively as Bharat by many marketers. Is ignoring the Bharat costing India a lot?
There are many global brands that have tried their best to penetrate Indian rural hinterland and have failed miserably. Many Indian brands have even given up on Bharat. Usually, Indian business concerns try to transplant the practices of what had succeeded in the developed countries to Bharat with limited success. If we analyse the global giants, we can see they had first dominated their domestic market before taking on the world. It is true about US giants or Chinese conglomerates. However, India’s sunshine industries like Information Technology ignored Bharat and were busy solving the problems of the first world. So, we built our growth story of the last two decades without roots. No wonder it is showing the signs of slowing down and the unemployment rates of rural India are reaching monstrous proportions.
One lament of the business firms is that they cannot figure out how to capture Bharat. It is a quagmire out there, complains the CEO of one of the foremost consumer product brands. Perhaps, this delicious episode from Mahabharata may give some answers.
Draupadi is entranced by the fragrance of a rare flower called Kalyana Sougandhikam and insists to her husband Bhima to get her the same. Bhima is a great warrior trained under the legendary Guru Dronacharya. In modern parlance, he could be the Harvard-educated CEO going to conquer the Bharat. He is armed with his gada and has the arrogance of a city bred. As he travels through the hinterland of Bharat, he smashes everything on his path with his club. He enters the Kadali Vana, a plantain grove, and finds an old withered monkey sitting across his path.
This is his older brother Hanuman, born of the same father, the wind god Vayu. Bhima doesn’t recognise him and thinks this is just a wild monkey who he could easily trick. Unlike Bhima, Hanuman is a self-taught warrior. Like Bharat, he is as old as time. He is wise, yet rustic. And he refuses to budge from the path of the conquering warrior. With all the arrogance of his education and the belief in his skills, Bhima asks the monkey to move away from his path. His elder brother, the old monkey, says he is too weak to move. Wouldn’t the great warrior oblige him by shifting his tail aside to clear the path? Bhima first uses his little finger, but even the tip of his big brother’s tail doesn’t budge. Then he uses his weapon, gada, to lift the tail, and the gada snaps into two.
Perturbed and confused, he uses both his hands, then his legs and then his entire body. The result is that he is entangled in the coils of his big brother’s tale, unable to move and crushed under its weight. As the CEO put it, it is a quagmire. Humbled and desperate, Bhima begs to the old monkey to extricate him. Hanuman frees Bhima and reveals himself as his elder brother. When Bhima humbly asks for advice, he asks his younger brother to study his qualities. Hanuman’s qualities could be a lesson about the Bharat itself. Hanuman has eight qualities or siddhi.
Anima, the power to be small and nimble; Mahima, the power to think and act big; Garima, the power to be heavy; Laghima, the power to be weightless; Prapti, the ability to be anywhere at will; Prakamya, intense desire and the will to realise one’s desire; Ishitva, the ability to dominate through love; Vasitva, the ability to influence with goodness. And Hanuman is the epitome of loyalty. Bhima, armed with this knowledge, succeeds in his mission.
One of the greatest brands in the world is Ramayana. It originated in the Indian hinterlands, sung by country bards. The urban centres of the great Indian trading civilisation took it up as its own. Ramayana travelled in the trading ships from the ports of the south and the east and spread across Asia. It shows all the qualities of Hanuman. It changes as per the need of the culture. So Cambodian Ramayana differs from Indonesian one, which differs from Kamba Ramayana. Yet, all are the same. Talk about Glocalisation. It contracted when required and expanded when it was called for. The ballads are as heavy as it can get and it could be as light as a child’s fairy tale. It showed the ability to influence and conquer through love.
Maybe, along with great management lessons from the west, we should teach our business leaders a few tales of Bharat too. Bharat may look like a withered old monkey. But it will always remain the big brother. When India approaches Bharat with the arrogance of its learning, it will get entangled in the tails of the grand old monkey. But without awakening the sleeping giant and using its power, India would remain a relative pygmy in the world of commerce. mail@asura.co.in