Punjab likes tea with extra milk, so Hindustan Unilever (HUL) sells stronger blends in the state. The brand names are the same, the packaging is pan-Indian, but the tea itself changes from region to region. Welcome to the era of ‘micro-markets’ where one size no longer fits all, and marketers slug it out for dominance in each one of the ‘many Indias’.
“Step back and compare South Mumbai to suburban Mumbai,” said HUL CFO Srinivas Phatak, “there’s a fundamental transformation in the profile of consumers.” Their tastes and budgets are different, so the way stores are stocked differs. For companies, the challenge is to achieve the right level of ‘disaggregation’. “If you are able to get that right, you are able to service the consumers very differently.”