Changing lifestyles and urban landscape of Indian cities
As marketers look increasingly at small towns, they will need to differentiate
between the attributes of cosmopolitanism and westernization
Source: City Skyline of India
Demand Curve
India is changing rapidly in many different ways
and its cities are changing even more rapidly.
Typically, we find that most new technologies,
attitudes, fashions, etc., come about first in the
metros, then spread to other larger cities, and
eventually encompass the entire urban landscape.
Classifying cities according to their market sizes
into four categories, we have 10 alpha cities,
which include the four metros and Hyderabad,
Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Pune, Surat and
Coimbatore, the cities that are the first to adopt
change.
Looking at one of these new changes—the
emergence of the mall—we find the highest
concentration of mall users in these cities. With
the largest urban markets, high incomes and
nuclear families, these cities have been ideal
places to usher in the mall culture in India.

Alpha cities are also the most open to changing lifestyles and more westernized and cosmopolitan in
character than other Indian cities. However, there are a lot of variations. For instance, Surat and Coimbatore
are among the largest markets, but have low westernization levels. Similarly, the cosmopolitan character
tends to be greater in larger cities, but is not necessarily high in all large cities, where cosmopolitanism is
defined in terms of the share of people communicating in different languages—not including English.
Kolkata is a large city, but not as highly cosmopolitan as Nagpur, a beta city. Dhanbad is another gamma
city which is not usually thought of as highly westernized or cosmopolitan, yet as the coal capital of India and
it attracts people from across the country. Various dialects of Hindi, Bengali, Oriya, etc., are some of the
more popular languages there.
As marketeers look increasingly at small towns, they will need to differentiate between the attributes of
cosmopolitanism and westernization. Chandigarh, for instance, is quite westernized, but not really a
cosmopolitan city. Its markets are, therefore, characterized not only by English signages, but also by a highly
homogeneous set of products typically consumed by Hindi- and Punjabi-speaking communities.
Nagpur, on the other hand, has communities that have retained their historical characteristics—Newspapers
in Hindi, Gujarati, Oriya, and not just Marathi and English, have significant sales in that city. Surat started off
as a predominantly Gujarati city, but large numbers of migrants from the Hindi belt, Orissa and some of the
other eastern states are rapidly changing its character. Surat is quickly becoming a cosmopolitan city, but it
is neither a highly westernized city nor, given the trends, does it appear that it will become one in the near
future.
The economic activity that has pushed the growth of a city has long determined its character. Bangalore’s
high human capital-oriented growth required highly educated people from across the country. In the last
century, this could only be met through those who had been taught in English. A delta city, Varanasi’s growth
also required human capital, but religious tourism required a different kind of expertise, hence despite the
presence of Banaras Hindu University, its migrants took on a non-westernized character.
Gurgaon’s high-value manufacturing growth required greater skills, but Dhanbad’s mining activities could
welcome those who were uneducated and unskilled. Consequently, the two markets are also highly different.
They both have people from different communities and regions, but one set are better educated, better paid
and English-speaking; the other, less educated, less paid, and more comfortable with their mother tongues.
Demand Curve is a weekly column by research firm Indicus Analytics Pvt. Ltd on consumer trends and
markets.