Doing Business – Page 21

India’s FMCG market to grow 9-10% this year

Are you an FMCG exporter? Is India part of your plan?

According to market researcher Nielsen, India’s fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) market is expected to grow 9-10 per cent in the January-December period, matching the expansion rate in 2019.

There are two shifts in the Indian FMCG market – one is to branded products and the other is to online e-commerce.

A shift towards branded products has been driven by the GST.

“Following the implementation of GST (Goods and Services Tax), a lot of unorganised players have exited the market across different FMCG categories,” said Mr B Sumant, ITC executive director of FMCG. “As a result, there has been a clear shift in consumption trend from unbranded to branded products.”

Pictured above – the top Indian FMCG stocks

FMCGs can be divided into several different categories including:

Processed foods: Cheese products, cereals, and boxed pasta

Prepared meals: Ready-to-eat meals

Beverages: Bottled water, energy drinks, and juices

Baked goods: Cookies, croissants, and bagels

Fresh, frozen foods, and dry goods: Fruits, vegetables, frozen peas and carrots, and raisins and nuts

Medicines: Aspirin, pain relievers, and other medication that can be purchased without a prescription

Cleaning products: Baking soda, oven cleaner, and window and glass cleaner

Cosmetics and toiletries: Hair care products, concealers, toothpaste, and soap

Office supplies: Pens, pencils, and markers

Shoppers in India are leaping from buying unbranded at “mum and dad” stores to online purchasing.

The most popular e-commerce categories, not surprisingly, are non-consumable goods—durables and entertainment-related products. The online market for buying groceries and other consumable products is growing, as companies redefine the efficiency of delivery logistics which shorten delivery times. While non-consumable categories may continue to lead consumable products in sheer volume, gains in logistics efficiency have increased the use of e-commerce channels for acquiring FMCGs.

Amazon is backing India to the hilt

Pictured recently in India – Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos with Amit Agarwal, senior VP & country head, Amazon India, during the Amazon Smbhav event at the Jawahar Lal Nehru stadium in New Delhi

Amazon.com Inc Founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos said on Wednesday that his company would invest an additional $1 billion to help bring small businesses online in India, and also committed to using the retail giant’s “size, scope and scale” to export $10 billion of made-in-India goods by 2025.

Bezos has faced some problems in India, but he is bullish and active.

Seeking to reach out to critics, Bezos, donning traditional Indian attire, said his company was committed to be a long-term partner of India.

Bezos was into India so much – “I want to make a prediction for you. I predict that the 21st century is going to be the Indian century.”

Why? “The dynamism, the energy… everywhere I go here, I meet people who are working in self-improvement and growth. This country has something special, democracy,” he said.

Bezos contradicted my recent blog (India and Russia the closest relationship on earth) – “I make one more prediction for you: In this 21st century, the most important alliance is going to be the alliance between India and the US,” Bezos added.

The firm aims to digitise 10 million MSMEs with the proposed investment. In addition to providing training and enrolling MSMEs into its programmes, Amazon will help them work on cloud technology through specialised Amazon Web Services offerings at low costs. It will also establish 100 “digital haats’ in cities and villages throughout India.

Amazon has invested $5 billion in India in the past five years. The e-commerce platform also announced plans to support local neighbourhood shops and kiranas. It will expand its Amazon Easy programme.

In many ways, India retail is leapfrogging from the corner store to fully online.

For those in the FMCG sector this is a pretty exciting opportunity. Time to get your India strategy right!

10 reasons to look again at India in 2020

Dr Mark Morley is an Australian Trade Commissioner in India. In the last twelve months, like many of us, he has changed his view of Australia’s prospects in India. Why?

Here are 10 reasons to change – taken from his writings:

Indian tourists coming to Australia has for the first time beaten the number of Aussies going to India – there were about 350,000 and each of them sees “clean and green” and innovative Australia first-hand. Plus, more than 700,000 Indians live down under.
Across India, Australia has a great reputation for clean, safe and reliable supply. We are well known as a premium supplier of produce, and we have a global reputation for our quality brands.
India’s ease of doing business and transparency has improved, its regional infrastructure – including roads and airports, as well as its cold chain – is improving, it now has a national GST alongside unified regulations around food importation and labelling, and a hungry entrepreneurial scene that is looking for international brands.
Most importantly, and this is the game-changer for Australian FMCG producers, it has unified, national (or near national) platforms for Australian companies to connect their products with consumers. Can you believe this change? India now has a platform for Australian companies to connect their products directly with consumers.
Amazon, as well as other platforms such as FlipKart and niche online marketplaces such as NetMeds, have turned the retail environment on its head.
The scale and scope of the opportunity in India is now hard to ignore: Amazon India can deliver to 50% of all postcodes in India within 3 days of order, and 100% within 5 days.
The Amazon platform is currently adding 200k+ Stock Keeping Units (SKU) every day, joining the 170 million SKUs already present on the site.
With the cheapest mobile data accessibility in the world, 85% of Indians access online platforms via their mobile devices. This has huge implications for a market of more than 1.3b people.
Mobile accessibility has meant that the modern retail format in India has been largely leap-frogged. Greater connectivity, greater receptivity to international brands, and greater opportunity for Australian exporters.
India is a global player. But it’s not China (and that’s important for many of you with lots of eggs in the one basket). So, hasten slowly.

I would add to this list that India has 450 million millennials (those aged around 21 to 37), more than any other country and they will not live, learn, watch, listen, consume, travel, drive or behave like the previous generation.

Why not start a conversation with Mark? Email mark.morley@austrade.gov.au

The Belt and Road Initiative and the Geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific Region

David Morris is a former Australian diplomat and current expert/advisor on regional issues, risk and international relations. He recently wrote on “The Belt and Road Initiative and the Geopolitics of the Pacific Region” published in Research on Pacific Island Countries, Social Sciences Academic Press (China), 2019.

The Belt and Road Initiative has become associated with a geopolitical “China threat” discourse in the South Pacific, he writes.

Are China and Australia, the dominant regional player in the South Pacific, driven by geopolitical imperatives to compete for power? Or do their different geopolitical needs provide opportunity for cooperation that is mutually beneficial and manages risks in the region?

As a commentator on India and the Indian Ocean, I can see much of what David Morris writes could be applied to the Indian Ocean rim countries.

Morris analyses supposed Chinese “threats” as well as risks to China, including fears of a military base in Vanuatu, Chinese debt-funded projects in Tonga and closer economic cooperation with Papua New Guinea.

He concludes that it is feasible for Australia to meet its geopolitical imperatives if its regional security leadership can be maintained.

A geopolitical analysis of China in the South Pacific concludes that China is unlikely to seek regional security leadership if it can ensure access to trade routes and markets.

If Australia could move beyond geopolitical rhetoric, it should therefore be possible for Australia to partner with China to support sustainable development, mitigate risks and ensure broader stability of the South Pacific region, he writes.

With large doses of common sense, Morris writes that Australian activity could be complementary to China’s BRI, and that while there are political risks, the two countries could cooperate to reduce risk and ensure projects are sustainable.

This would be great – but my view is a big barrier to anything Australia does in our region is always its world view of “goodies and baddies” with the USA as the major “goody” and China the current “baddy”.

It would be great if influential countries like India, Australia and China could create a new collaborative model that brings real development to those poor communities in our region.

Is this possible?

India launches Artificial Intelligence knowledge centre for NSE

India’s National Stock Exchange (NSE) has launched a Knowledge Hub in New Delhi, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered learning ecosystem that will assist the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector.

India has two major stock exchanges – the NSE and the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Speaking on this occasion Commerce & Industry Minister Mr Piyush Goyal (pictured above right) said that although India has developed as the second largest fintech hub in the world, a lot of work still needs to be done in the BFSI sector. He hoped that the Knowledge Hub created by NSE will fill in these gaps and help the financial sector to move into the future.

The NSE Knowledge Hub will enhance skills and help academic institutions in preparing future-ready talent for the financial service industry. It is also available on mobile and attempts to bring together world class content and learners through this state-of-the-art and future-ready platform.

The use of AI will ensure that the skill upgrade is affordable and accessible. Piyush Goyal said AI and Machine Learning will contribute US$ 1 trillion to the Indian economy by 2035.

India critics get it wrong again!

2019 finished with lots of Indian critics slamming the economic performance of India. But the reality is shown in this Economic Times review of global investor interest – India is still an attractive investment on the rise, despite the critics.

Is India really growing? Hyatt Hotels think so, adding 11 new hotels in 2020

Hyatt Hotels is bullish on India and plans to open 11 new hotels across India by the end of 2020.

Hyatt now has 32 hotels across 20 destinations under its eight brands in India – I recently stayed at Hyatt Regency in Chandigarh and it was an outstanding hotel – well located, good food and beverage service and everything went smoothly.

The hotels at Thrissur, Kochi, Jaipur, Dehradun, Trivandrum and Udaipur will be under the Hyatt Regency brand.

India is a very important market for Hyatt. It is one of the top three global growth markets for the company after the US and China and there is a huge scope of growth as the demand still exceeds the supply.

So, for Hyatt, in 2020 India is a growth story.

How should you start a speech?

I have just had three wonderful weeks in India. I made some speeches. I listened to a lot of speeches.

I was asked: “What is the best way to start a speech?”

We all know the bad ways. For example, someone just reads from their powerpoint. Or someone is checking the microphone.

But from Conor Neill from Ireland I have long applied these three ways to start a speech:

Ask a QUESTION

My recent topic has been How to Communicate and Survive during Industrial Revolution 4.0. So some times I start with “How will you keep your job when robots take over?” The question should be about a problem your audience faces.

State a FACT

Find some amazing fact that leads to your topic. One of Conor’s favourites is “There are more people alive today than have ever died”. If the fact shocks, even better. With my topic I use “over 65% of the kids in school right now will find jobs that have not even yet been invented.”

Begin a STORY

“I was in India recently and I met a person who said something which changed how I think about communication and leadership”. The audience is keen to hear what that “something” was. It should connect to your topic.

So, that’s the beginning.

Then, I suggest you have a long pause every 5 minutes or so (shorter if you like) and use another beginning and bring the audience along again using one of these three starters.

Good luck! (equals good preparation).

Anil Wadhwa could be reviving Australia-India trade relations – Lowy Institute – but health, agri and sport could be the key

So good to read on the Lowy Institute daily publication “The Interpreter” that India is doing something unusual in response to Australia’s Peter Varghese report – it is responding with an Australian Economic Strategy (AES). By the way, well done Lowy Institute for powering this and other national discussions.

The AES is led by former Ambassador and Secretary (East) in the Ministry of External Affairs in India, Anil Wadhwa (pictured).

Let’s not get bogged down on the failed Free Trade Agreement with India – let’s not wait forever, and, by the way, trade is progressing without it. We would prefer to have one, but we can make mutual gains without it.

The key is that the AES from India means for the first time we will have a blueprint for economic engagement with another nation – this is the view of Mukund Narayanamurthy and Danielle Rajendram writing for Lowy Institute. Well done to you both!

They point out that unlike India’s engagement with the US, Canada, UK, and Japan, our relative size means that it is highly unlikely that Australia will have a similar scale of engagement with India. So, they say the crux of the relationship, certainly from a materiality perspective for both sides, will lie in mining, energy, infrastructure, education, and tourism.

This where I differ. They see healthcare, agribusiness, and sport having relevance but “may not be as material in absolute dollar terms” – my view is that these could be the areas that unlock the “India code” and get Australia into the big game with India.

The “India growth story” is a long-term one for investors and business

India remains a compelling long-term investment and business story – despite a lot of negative talk about the Indian economy (mostly politically motivated but also buoyed by a slow down in growth).

Most commentators expect the slowing to be temporary.

Take a look at the MSCI India index which has comfortably outperformed the MSCI Emerging Markets index (697.7 per cent vs. 485.1 per cent). Not too bad.

Favourable demographics is another driver with India having the world’s largest population of millennials – those aged between 21 and 38 – India has 450 million and these people will transform India. What it eats, drinks, how and where it travels, fashion, what it watches and listens to – life will change fundamentally.

More than 50 per cent of the population is under 25 years of age – a total of 600 million – with 1 million new people entering the workforce each month. Contrast this with China, which is ageing faster than any other country, with the over 60’s expected to account for 35 per cent of the population by 2050. Europe, the US and Japan face similar demographic challenges.

Urbanisation is another driver of growth – a third (34 per cent) of India’s population is urban, but it’s rising fast. Compare this to China (58 per cent) and Japan (92 per cent) – you can see the long-term growth story of India.

Then there is structural and economic change, with pro-business Prime Minister Narendra Modi – let’s steer clear of short-term politics but acknowledge that change has happened, and more is to come.

Visitors to India notice rapid improvement in infrastructure – road construction, plus 27 km of railway built per day, while India’s metro system is growing again, new airports and more.

Investors and businesses should be finding a way to participate in and benefit from the long-term India growth story.