Mass marketers hitch a ride down country roads

NEW DELHI: Junk whatever half-baked information you may have gathered about India’s teeming millions in rural India, accounting for over 70% of the country’s population across its 6,38,365 villages.

Though much has been written and said about the rural rich, the mass of rural India’s consuming class still remains an enigma to even the most street savvy marketers.

In this second part of a three-part series, ET in partnership with New Delhi-based research outfit, Indicus Analytics, presents a first-ever compilation of rural bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) markets in India, district-wise, with their ranking, location and market potential.

At the top of the rural BOP list is West Bengal’s Medinipur district, with Rs 6,138-crore annual spends by households earning less than Rs 1.5-lakh per annum.

South 24 Parganas (Rs 4,887-crore) and Murshidabad (Rs 4,057-crore) rank second and third in the top ten rural BOP list, closely followed by Karimnagar, Dharmapuri, East Godavari, North 24 Parganas, Ahmadnagar, Solapur and Belgaum.

From a mass marketers’ perspective, what’s interesting is that these rural BOP markets have a high share of consumption spends as a percentage of all households’ spends in their respective districts. The lowest is 41% for East Godavari, with Maharashtra’s Solapur district with BOP households share of 70 % in the total district consumption expenditure.

In comparison, Erode has the highest 35 % share, with Bangalore lowest at 9%. In the contours of India’s overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the belly of largely agrarian rural India may not appear to be a big consumer force, with agriculture contributing less than a fourth of GDP, but any big brand marketer will tell you the importance of India’s teeming millions in rural India.

Infact, three of the top ten rural BPO markets in the country, Medinipur, South 24 Parganas and Murshidabad have absolute BOP spends higher than all top ten urban BOP markets, except the top one in Mumbai (suburban), which has a BOP household spend of Rs 7,885-crore.

No wonder, even a big marketer such as Hindustan Lever derives almost half of its sales from rural India, selling low-priced packs of its power brands such as Wheel detergent, Lifebuoy soap and Sunsilk shampoo.