Amul Essay 8

INTRODUCTION

“Come with us to the fields, or go with our brothers to the sea and cast your net. For the land and the sea would be bountiful to you even as to us”- Kahlil Gibran

The footfalls in the villages are getting louder and louder as companies scramble to woo the rural consumers. Villages are no longer an abstraction, but fashionable in marketing terms.
From talking endlessly about potential growth, companies are now actively cultivating the rural markets. And why not?
Consider the market; out of five lakh villages in India only one lakh have been tapped so far.

What has made the rural consumers so attractive to companies now? After all, the 122-million village households were not created overnight.
The answer is simple. The urban market is getting saturated while villagers are flush with 'disposable income' thanks to bountiful harvests in the last four years. It is this income that the companies are raring to cash in on. The estimate speaks of the potential volume of business that can be generated in rural Indian markets. The estimate is about three times that of the European market.
    ← Hindustan Lever's 'Operation Bharat' will reach 22 million new households in the villages by the end of the year.
    ← Every area that has a police station will soon boast a Godrej dealer & service centre.
    ← BPL is planning to add 13,000 active dealers this year to its existing network of 15,000 throughout the country.
A dramatic change is in progress. Villagers who used to crack open peanut candies, eat the nut and throw away the shell are now demanding chocolate candies that will melt in their mouths, not in their hands. Charcoal-cleaned teeth are a rare sight; so is the case with twigs of niim (neem) and babul (babool) tree. Today, the ultra bright shine of Colgate or some other international brand of toothpaste holds more appeal than the traditional methods of cleaning teeth. Even the native expressions of cleaning teeth, such as daatun karnaa and... [continues]

Read full essay