Rural India – Few Consumption Data to Blow your Mind

November 13, 2009
By sinha

While there is a general tendency to equate rural India to BoP market, here are some of the consumption numbers that will blow your mind

  • 46% of the soft drinks sales happen in the rural areas.
  • Rural India accounts for 49% of motorcycle sales.
  • Rural India accounts for 59% of Cigarettes sales.
  • 53% of FMCG sales happen at Rural India.
    Rural India  Opportunities

    Rural India Opportunities

  • Talcum powder is used by more than 25% of rural India.
  • Lipsticks are used by more than 11% of the rural women and less than 22% of the urban women.
  • Close to 10% of Maruti Suzuki’s sales come from the rural market.
  • Hero Honda, on its part, had 50% of its sales coming from rural market in FY’09.
  • Rural India has a large consuming class with 41% of India’s middle-class and 58% of the total disposable income accounting for consumption.
  • By 2010 rural India will consume 60% of the goods produced in the country.
  • In 20 years, rural Indian Market will be larger than the total consumer markets in countries such as South Korea or Canada today, & almost 4 times the size of today’s urban Indian market.

Can you dare to ignore this market?

[data via: 1, 2, 3]

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9 Responses to “ Rural India – Few Consumption Data to Blow your Mind ”

  1. Anuj Rathi on November 13, 2009 at 6:00 pm

    Nice amalgamation of relevant data, Ashish. I think rural market is very important for FMCG/retail, communications and automobiles industries. Internet, not so much yet. Just waiting for a day when internet penetration would be much higher than it is today.

    Also, could you please elaborate on what exactly do you mean by “rural
    ? I mean, do you define it by population, e.g. places with <50,000 people, or by area, or any other metric?

    • Ashish on November 13, 2009 at 6:05 pm

      Definition of ‘Rural’ – that’s a great question!! It’s not just ‘people living in villages’ but lets look at how companies define the rural market.
      That’s fodder for the next post ! :)

    • arvind on November 13, 2009 at 7:10 pm

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglomeration

      Should clear most of your doubts regarding rural, urban, sub-urban….:)

  2. Shashi on November 13, 2009 at 6:28 pm

    great compilation of stats Ashish. Incidentally I read another article just before this. And that one was talking about employing people in Rural India.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/world/asia/13india.html?_r=1&src=twt&twt=nytimes

    No wonder then that the share of the rural market is significant.

  3. Kasi on November 14, 2009 at 11:42 am

    Ashish,

    What does this sentence mean?

    “58% of the total disposable income accounting for consumption”

    Does this mean rural income group spends their 58% on consuming apart from spending on education, housing and savings?

    Kasi

  4. Pravin on November 14, 2009 at 12:19 pm

    I also had same question ‘What is rural?’ Is it (India – Metros)? then data might be misleading. Even lot of small towns cannot be considered as Rural India but offered good market.

  5. Brijesh on November 14, 2009 at 1:15 pm

    Truly mind blowing Ashish.

  6. [...] India are being targeted by many companies. Pluggd.in has now posted some stats that highlight what consumers are buying in rural India. [...]

  7. Sud on November 15, 2009 at 10:53 pm

    Thanks for compiling this Ashish. Good one.

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