WHERE IS BRAND INDIA ?

Last week I happened to be in the Tommy Hilfiger show room and saw tommy Hilfiger T-Shirt for Rs 2600. Quality is good but very expensive . I think this premium is because of its brand name, positioning and marketing strategy.
Tommy Hilfiger is a US brand targeting high end brand conscious customers. For academic curiosity I started examining Tommy Hilfiger as a case study . I went to shopper stop and visited other Indian brand counters and compared these products with Tommy Hilfiger . Quality wise, both products are more or less same .But Tommy Hilfiger T –Shirt looks a bit good due to its colour combination. There is a startling difference in price. Tommy Hilfiger costs you Rs 2600 whereas Indian branded T-shirt costs you around Rs 800. The difference is Rs 1800. A case of brand premium.
I decided to go a bit deeper and visited Tirupur, Tamil Nadu where Tommy Hilfiger T-shirts are manufactured . The Tirupur textile manufacturing company that makes T-shirt for Tommy Hilfiger is getting Rs 250 to Rs 350 per T-Shirt.
The modus operandi of Tommy Hilfiger is; create a world class brand with modern design and then source low cost materials from counties like India, China, Bangla and sold the products across the globe with slight finishing touch up. The case in point here is ,MRP is Rs 2600 and cost price is Rs 300 and additional expenses may be Rs 700 including finishing touch up, logistics etc. Profit is 2600-1000= Rs 1600.
What a wonderful business ! Almost all multinational companies are doing more or less the same kind of business.
But the sad part is we, Indians, cannot boast a single such kind of international brand. We are not leaders ; we are just followers . Let us look at some interesting international consumer brands. Coca cola, Pepsi, Colgate , HP, Apple, Nokia, McDonold , KFC , Tommy Hilfiger , Intel, Sony, Toyota , Benz, Nike , Google etc. huge international consumer brands.
Just think about Indian brands ....none comes to my mind. To some extent we can be proud of Nano and IPL.
Let us consider Infosys, of course it is a wonderful and most valueable company. But so far Infosys could not create a product with international brand- its only branded product is FINACLE a banking and financial service software product. Just compare Infosys with Microsoft . More or less both these companies started their operations at the same time . After 20 years in the business Microsoft created a wonderful brand product called windows, a cash cow of Microsoft . Microsoft made $60 billion revenue with $ 22 billion profit in 2008 whereas Infosys made only $ 4 billion revenue and $ 1 billion profit. Microsoft achieved this by creating a software product windows. Infosys focused on services and lagging behind Microsoft . If USA entirely stops outsourcing, Infosys will have to shut the shop whereas Microsoft has a competitive durability.
Let us look at the cost analysis of apple’s 30 GB Ipod with a price of $ 224. It is manufactured in China and consists of 424 tiny parts. Out of these 424 parts, 300 parts cost one cent or less . the most expensive component is the display module, costs $ 20 . China assembles and tests all parts for just $ 3.70. Apple gets the largest share of $ 80 per Ipod . A company can make abnormal profits by creating international consumer brand.
This is the premium for the brand Apple. I am searching for an Apple in Indian business landscape, if you find please convey.
It is high time for us to think and form a national brand strategy. A joint effort between the government and the private sector is required to create Indian brands.