Commercial Brand Over The Years

Today I am writing about the changes which happened over  the last six decades in the commercial branded goods.

Popular Commercial Brands Over The Years

50s- Popular commercial brands were Lux & Lifebuoy, Rexona and Pears for Bath soaps, Dalda for Vanspati Ghee, Energy Food and Shangrila for Biscuits, Fiat & Ambassadors for cars, Tata Mercedese Benz(TMB) & Leyland for Trucks, Colgate, Kolynos & Binaca for tooth pastes, Bullet and Jawa in Motor Cycles, Lambretta & Vespa in Scooters, Murphy & Phillips in Radios, Usha & Singer in Sewing Machines, Coca Cola & Pepsi in Soft Drinks,Polson Butter etc.These are few brands from this decade which I could recollect .

60s-In the bath soap segment Hamam enter the market, other soaps popular in 50s remained in the market;in the biscuits Parle group and Britania entered in big way  the other brands present earlier slowly started fading away; In the car & trucks market no new entrant came in the market; in tooth paste market Forhans was the new entrant but Kolynos went out in the Soft drinks Parle’s Gold Spot (present in small segments in 50s) & Limca entered the market but Pepsi closed down their Indian operations in late 50s only and Coca Cola Co. introduced their orange drink Fanta; Amul Butter entered the market & Polson started to decline ,in the detergent powder segment Surf entered the market;  in this decade Ceiling fans started becoming popular –Usha was leading brands.  Other brands of 50s retained their market.

70s-In this decade Coca Cola stopped their India operations due to govt regulation;, Parle introduced their Cola Drink Thums Up and one more Cola drink called Campa Cola came into market, one more Cola brand was also launched by Govt owned company, it was named 77. Vespa & Lamberatta ended their Indian collaboration and their Indian counterpart named their scooters Bajaj & API and one new scooter Vijay was introduced. In the car segment Fiat ended their collaboration with Premier Automobiles Ltd, Premier first named the their new car as Premier President and which was later modified and named Premier Padmini. In the ceiling fans Bajaj and Crompton also started becoming famous; Amul in the butter segment led the market. In the detergent powder market a low price brand Nirma entered the market in late 70s and started gaining popularity; in the detergent soap market Rin started getting acceptability from the consumers; rest of  the earlier mentioned brands were holding on to their market. In the bottled/mineral water segment the only brand which became popular was Bisleri.

80s-Three brands which were lauched in this decade  and these brands changed the consumer market were Maruti Car-manufactured in collaboration with Sujuki Motors Japan which changed the car market, second was Mango Drink Frooti in Tetra Pack which was a new concept for Indian beverage market and last was Mango Drink Maaza in Bottle, before Frooti and Maaza there were no fruit juice based beverage drinks available in the market in a big way. Mangola, a mango based drink was marketed by Dukes & Co. in Bombay, and Parle’s Maaza was earlier available in certain pockets of Andhra only, and suddenly you had choice of package also Tetra Pack or bottle and both these products were from the same group Parle Soft drinks; other major thing which happened was Colgate monopoly in tooth paste market was challenged by launch of three major brand Pepsodent, Prudent and Promise in this decade. Procter & Gamble also launched their detergent Tide to challenge the market controlled by Surf and Nirma. Fag end of 80s it was confirmed that Pepsi Cola is re entering the Indian  market.

After 90s-With Prime Minister Narsimharao opening up the economy in this decade, it led to open market and slowly all the major brands available in the world started planning to enter Indian consumer market.  In this decade all the major consumer brands of the world slowly started entering the Indian market. Some of the brand planned to come  by itself, while some others started taking over the Indian brands to get the benefit of established marketing/distributing network to launch their brands. Prime example of this was Coca cola buying over Parle’s bottled soft drinks brands like Thums Up, Limca, Gold Spot & Maaza. By this way Coca Cola got the established franchised networks of soft drink plants with them, to produce and market their brands also. All brands of cars and other consumer durable started getting available in Indian market. So many Auto giants planned to start manufacturing operation in India, looking at vast market for their products.

This trend continued in the first decade of millennium, and by the end of that decade most of the top consumer brands had established their manufacturing and marketing network in India.

And the trend still continues, and now all the world’s major brands are available in Indian market. Now from controlled economy, nation has moved towards free economy.

Awaiting your views/comments/feed back.

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

12^th Feb 2019.