India: A billion people have no real money to spend, says report

Yikes, and it’s not like there’s some magic in the free market that “helps” those folks… if anything they’re a market that companies might avoid….

High skilled Indians are leaving in large numbers due to the tax regime that India is. I think it was 2022 where we recorded the largest number of Indians surrendering Indian citizenship. It's like India prepares and grooms them and they just leave. And I dont blame them.

Every single damn thing can be traced back to tax we are burdened with irrespective of left/right govt in power.

We pay tax like first world countries but get services like poorest of the poor countries.

Corporates are levied high tax. And international corporates even more. The argument is to support Indian companies.

And almost every Indian company provide horrible services which is why Indians always prefer foreign products/services. Now with International companies levied hefty tax, they cut corners, increase prices. So in effect we pay more and always get bad experiences.

Just take BS4 to BS6 transition in automobiles. Vehicles with a larger width or something was added with luxury tax and many of companies moved to cut corners to stay in business. My car has provision and setup for ventilated seats but its removed to cut corners. BS6 version of my car have cheaper infotainment systems than my BS4 version.

We pay the highest tax for fuel. There are countries we provide fuel for which has 60ish/litre in our local currency. But we pay 100+/litre. Surpise, its tax.

We dont get any good electronic products cos high import costs. And companies which has released stuff always have limited options or pay higher price for the same setup than everyone in the world. IIRC Indians pay the most for an Apple product in the world. I donno if things have changed after they moved production here. I dont think so.

We pay 15 years worth of road tax in advance and we still have to pay for toll plazas. And we have horrible roads.

Oh and we dont get any high quality products we produce. Whether it is tea (assam, darjeeling), coffee, nuts like cashew nuts, fruits. We get 3rd, 4th or quality and everything in 1st quality is exported. If you want high quality cashew. You go to duty paid shops and get it. And you will see its imported but the brand is an Indian brand and its actually sourced from India.

Automobiles as well. There are automobile factories which produce high quality stuff for EU in India and the same factories produce subpar thing for India.

I can go on and on. This govt changed some things for middle class in this budget for tax. So lets see.

burnermore 2 minutes ago [dead] | parent | context | unvouch | favorite | on: India: A billion people have no real money to spen...

Indians who have huge spending potential are in huge numbers. They are just leaving India. High skilled Indians are leaving in large numbers due to the tax regime that India is. I think it was 2022 where we recorded the largest number of Indians surrendering Indian citizenship. It's like India prepares and grooms them and they just leave. And I dont blame them.

Every single damn thing can be traced back to tax we are burdened with irrespective of left/right govt in power.

We pay tax like first world countries but get services like poorest of the poor countries.

Corporates are levied high tax. And international corporates even more. The argument is to support Indian companies.

And almost every Indian company provide horrible services which is why Indians always prefer foreign products/services. Now with International companies levied hefty tax, they cut corners, increase prices. So in effect we pay more and always get bad experiences.

Just take BS4 to BS6 transition in automobiles. Vehicles with a larger width or something was added with luxury tax and many of companies moved to cut corners to stay in business. My car has provision and setup for ventilated seats but its switched off to cut corners.

We dont get any good electronic products cos high import costs. And companies which has released stuff always have limited options or pay higher price for the same setup than everyone in the world. IIRC Indians may the most for an Apple product in the world. I donno if things have changed after they moved production here. I dont think so.

We pay 15 years worth of road tax in advance and we still have to pay for toll plazas. And we have horrible roads.

Oh and we dont any high quality products we produce. Whether it is tea (assam, darjeeling), coffee, nuts like cashew nuts, fruits. We get 3rd, 4th or quality and everything in 1st quality is exported.

Automobiles as well. There are automobile factories which produce high quality stuff for EU in India and the same factories produce subpar thing for India.

I can go on and on. This govt changed some things for middle class in this budget. So lets see.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/ind/ind...

The problem with income inequality is that the pie is unlikely to keep growing forever, but your part of it can definitely keep shrinking. The underlying report goes into more detail of the mechanics.

https://marcellus.in/blogs/indias-middle-class-is-losing-gro... (to read it you have to affirm that you're not in the US, since the content could be construed as investment advice - this seems excessively cautious to me, but if you say you are in the US it will boot you to a generic landing page)

The first time I was shown a case study of Amul (cooperative model of food production), it was a really eye opening moment, cause they had reached massive scale, profitable, invested in quality/innovation, really super creative (on the marketing side without any great budget) and most importantly Sustainable.

Like me if you have studied Dominoes, KFC and McDonalds this is not supposed to be possible. It shows how constraints in the local environment lead to innovation and totally different models that work.

Anyone getting thrown into the deep end of the Indian market, equipped with Western models are quickly confronted by assumptions that don't hold, and then they come up with stuff we don't see in the west.

Just look at their Dabbawalas (decentralized supply-chains/logistics), UPI (disintermediating Mastercard and Visa), IPL (no one thought cricket could compete when literally less than 10 countries playing the sport) etc

Western companies built their scalable models by optimizing for capital-heavy, consumption-driven economiess, but that doesn’t mean those models are the only viable ones. India (and other low-consumption economies) often find more sustainable ways to solve the same problems because there’s no safety net of endless VC funding, mass credit, or impulse spending to prop things up. Most Western companies operate in winner-takes-all mode (Amazon crushes small retailers, Uber kills taxis). But Indian models like UPI, Amul, Kirana networks show models of growth in a more cooperative manner.

Imho the world needs more Amuls than McDonalds.