Let us understand what Vocal for local is. It simply refers to strongly communicating your local origin. We may assume that localization is the focus, but in a true sense, communication is the key. We have millions of brands those have been competing with global giants but due to lack of clear marketing strategy, without exploring new communication techniques, and unable to adopt to the ever changing world, we have seen the death of Indian brands. How many of us have seen or still know about the Texla television? Probably the new generation has forgotten the brands. How many soaps we know are produced within India are truly Indian Brands? Probably we know most of the soap brands owned by HUL or P&G.

It’s not that we don’t have local brands or they are not doing well. It’s the communication which leads to the demise of these great products which have disappeared from people’s mind. It is also not about anti-globalization or global brands being present in the local market but local brands being perceived in the same manner as global products or services. Again, to perceive, we need to adapt to new market scenario and change our way to communicate with people.

Vocal for local can be adopted by people not by force but by truly convincing them with the products. We may produce the best product, but not being able to communicate it to the consumer may lead to failure of entire efforts. To go vocal for local, we must not only look for local material but local ways to communicate.

1-     Local Sourcing of Raw Material

Post Covid19, China has seen a faster recovery of industrial outputs with limited workforce rules. This recovery was led by decades of infrastructure building for manufacturing units that include a local supply of raw materials. In comparison to many countries being dependent on other nations for raw material are facing the larger challenge.

India has built its capacity for producing food grains and edible products for its population after years of hard work and government focus on the agricultural outputs. However, the Indian economy missed opportunity of globalization for manufacturing.

Ideally, local ancillaries units for manufacturing can drive the business forward and vastly adopt the Vocal for Local strategy. Unless we go for local supply chain route, it’s a long road.

Local sourcing of raw material can help manufacturing in India in various ways

–         The local raw material reduces international dependencies and global challenges

–         The time for production becomes faster compared to global sourcing.

–         The economy of scale improves therefore the production capacity of countries becomes competitive in a global competition ,both monetary and production time term.

–         Employment increases, which leads to higher consumption within the country.

–         It has a positive effect cycle on the entire economy from GDP to PPP.

2-     Use Indigenous Technologies- Training and developing within a country

What happens to a country which produces the highest number of engineers, doctors and scientists? It goes on the success path at a rapid pace.

Having a vast majority of the talent pool, youth and unemployed trained workforce, India needs to work on its indigenous technologies not only for defence but for small scale manufacturing too. Make in India may have driven international corporation to set up their facilities in our country however it does not allow the country to develop indigenous solutions.

We need to understand our socio-economic background and build solutions around it. The mass production and world-class product would need building own technologies that are owned by the country businesses.

Let’s think of a scenario of e-commerce, both largest eCommerce platforms in India are owned by Amazon and Walmart (Flipkart. This is a highly unacceptable scenario for building self-dependencies.  I would like to clarify here that Localisation does not mean stopping investment from outside however, we need to also have local solutions for every international product and services.

3-     Building own brands- Communication is the key

Globally people are moving towards veganism, vegetarianism, Ayurveda, Yoga and many ways of living with nature and embracing it. We have produced various products in these areas and we still miss the opportunity of building brands that makes an impact across the globe.

Besides raw material, India can produce global content- entertainment, education, digital services and information for the world. We should focus on creating brands that drive investments from outside.

The essential part of Vocal for Local is that our local brands to be at par with the world brands in terms of quality. They should adopt marketing strategies that are in trend and let the world experience it.

In the process of building local brands, first, remove the inferiority complex of local brands. In this, right mix of communication is the key. We might create a wonderful product or service and source the raw material or human resource within the country but without telling this story to the people, we might not creating brands for ourselves.

Therefore, raw material, indigenous technologies, skilled workforce and communication are major factors in going VOCAL FOR LOCAL.

Be the brand people would love, tell them why you exist and offer them better than your competition.