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Is "Made In India" a USP?
Pratyush Shrivastava .

Is "Made in India" a USP?

The recent wave of the Indian Government banning Chinese Apps, the push towards Atmnirbhar Bharat and Make in India gave rise to a new breed of cloned products.

Now, I don't have anything against anyone.

It's rather brilliant to identify a market gap because of shifting sentiments among people and coming in to fill that gap.

The question is, what are you filling in?

These products have the "Make in India" logo as their marketing centrepiece and position themselves as an Indian alternative to XYZ.

They don't talk much about the features, how are they better etc.

The approach works because people are sentimental, and this might lead to instant virality, but is this the right way to create sustainable companies?

Would you use a mediocre Indian product or an objectively better product irrespective of the country of origin?

PS: I am not generalising. There are companies like Freshworks, Zoho and Directi who didn't have to sell their "Indian-ness" to become successful. We need more of those.

Originally Posted Here
10 Comments

Sayan Ganguly

Make in India still has a long journey ahead for becoming what it was expected to. The system is now learning about it slowly but at a snail's pace. A revolution can only come from the Corporate Sector, which is again crippled by the tax regime, some wrong Policy decisions and then this pandemic. Hope the solutions towards the pandemic would help the Private sector to unwind itself and then work towards bringing the revolution which is long due. Until then, amateurs will continue considering it a USP.

Pratik Gupta

People have started looking for made India tag on the product

Pratyush Shrivastav

We have a short term memory. Looking for "Made in India" tag will remain a fad only as long as "Boycott China" is a trending prime time material or maybe a little beyond that.
In the long run "Made in India" tag will be important only if it is associated with good product quality.

Pratik Gupta

No....
This time sentiment is strong. And all the news is fake news. Many sellers have started hiding made in china label.on kids toys.tier 2 cities are ahead in this.

Deepanjan Datta

Yes. Its certainly USP for Consumer products. There is absolutely no doubt about it.

Karan Modi

Depends. For something like clothing, generally no; for an F1 car, probably yes; and for a Covid-19 vaccine, potentially either yes or no.

I think the larger USP is whether being 'Made in India' delivers any additional benefits that one would associate with being made here i.e. something like lower costs, better sourcing of raw materials, usage of high-skill personnel for the given domain (E.g. Software/IT), etc.

Pratyush Shrivastav

Exactly my point. "Indian-ness" alone won't sell for long, it has to be associated with something that the free market cares about.

A car manufacturer can benefit from putting up a "Made in Germany" tag because that's associated with quality.

Jayanta Samaddar

The brand is important but people build or destroy a brand. Like "Made in Italy" for leather goods, automatically gives you an idea of the meticulous craftsmanship.

Pratyush Shrivastav

Exactly.
For now, "Made in India" does not associate with much that the free market would care about.

Shlok Joshi

https://youtu.be/u_JBnZ3HISs

I think we need to make great products in India, it would most certainly be a USP

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