India's top 100 brands: Few local brands make the cut

INDIA's TOP 100 BRANDS: RANKING ANALYSIS

Just like across the rest of Asia, Samsung continued its dominance in India too for one more year in our ranking of the top 100 brands in India.

Nestle (second), LG (third) and Sony (fourth) also retained their positions while local brand Amul made it to the top five, at the expense of the other local brand in the top five last year, Ola. Ola remained in the top 10 at number seven. Sandwiched between the two local players was global tech major Apple, at number six.

Philips, Google and Big Bazaar completed the top 10.

What’s interesting is that while the sentiments for ‘local brands’ are rising, the next such brand on the list comes at number 21, Patanjali. This could see a big change though with rumours of the Baba Ramdev-led conglomerate looking to bid for the Indian Premier League as it looks to change perceptions. If the IPL deal doesn’t come through, the brand has also been in the news for a Covid cure (Coronil).

The other big development in the top 100 sees Jio slip five places from number 30 to 35. Since the study was conducted, the tech company from Reliance Industries has got a slew of investments from global tech players like Google (ranked nine) and Facebook (ranked 41) and also announced the launch of several local products such as JioMeet, JioGlass and a low priced smartphone which could result in a higher placing in next year’s rankings.

Uber, like its India competition Ola, also lost places as it moved down to number 27 (from number 16) in the study. This despite a major campaign around the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup in which it was a global partner. In early 2020, Uber’s food delivery platform Uber Eats was bought over by Zomato, a brand missing in the top 100 this year.

A big move up in the top 30 is that of WhatsApp. The Facebook-owned chat messenger wasn’t part of the Top 1000 brands last year (this year is the first year we asked about messaging apps). The brand did no ATL advertising during 2019, although it did release a TV campaign in late 2018 which looked to curb the spread of fake news. 

Aatmanirbhar bharat

Following prime minister Narendra Modi’s speech during the early weeks of the lockdown in the country due to the Covid-19 outbreak, which urged the country to be #VocalAboutLocal to make India more self-reliant, consumers have turned to local brands. The India-China border skirmish then increased anti-China sentiment, and consumers reacted by throwing out Chinese brands and products from their houses.

This creates an opportunity for several ‘local’ brands to come and showcase their dominance.

Cricket could play an important role in this development.

The IPL itself has been moved out of the country, but the next sponsor of the tournament is likely to be an Indian brand, after Chinese smartphone maker Vivo pulled out of the tournament. Nike’s deal with the Indian cricket team as jersey partners is also under review. Byju’s the sponsor of the Indian cricket team also has Chinese investments.

If these brands do happen to move out of their deals, there’s scope for local brands to step in. The IPL should be back to India next year. The ICC has announced that the T20 World Cup will remain in India for 2021 and rescheduled the one to be held in Australia this year to 2022.

There’s also a full backlog of the bilateral series Team India was to be a part of that have not gone ahead. If the anti-China sentiment continues, this is a big opportunity for local brands to step in.