Indians innovate for 'Value', while the world innovates for value additions

The mass consuming class of India has always been oriented towards ‘value for money’. It is this class that makes up the bulk of India's staggering population and it is in addressing the needs of this segment that Indian companies have realised the importance of products that satisfy the very rigid, Indian price value equation.
Products as diverse as toiletries, automobiles and footwear have seen that their popular price segment is always the biggest… Lifebuoy being the biggest soap brand in India, Maruti selling every second car in India, Goldfake cigarettes outselling the premium and sub-premium competition, India is a land of in betweens, where people demand a mix of premium value at popular price.
It is in their need to meet and satisfy this demanding mindset that Indian companies have had to innovate the services they provide. In India one can see that some of the biggest companies, Godrej, HUL, TATA are all value driven volume players; depending more on mass sales driven by products that epitomize the concept of value for money.

It is this mindset that has necessitated looking at innovation as a means to add value rather than adding value through innovation
In India innovation is not about sleeker mobile phones… but about dust resistant mobile phones. As a practice, innovations in India (unlike their western counterparts) are almost always targeted at the bottom 90% rather than the top 10%.
TATA’s new venture the Nano is not supposed to replace the Maruti 800s but rather the Indian family motorcycle. Vehicles in India have always stressed on mileage, long before it become the ‘in thing’ to do, not because Indians are environmentally conscious but because Indians have always and will always be ‘paisa’ conscious.
Providing services that give utility over luxury, products that have major reasons to buy, innovating for value rather than image have created certain fundamental pillars around which much of India Inc. builds itself. And these same pillars mean that Indian companies have a higher probability to successfully address the changing , increasingly value-hungry ,mindset of the global economy.