India has built some of the most sophisticated, resilient, and valuable companies in the world over the past three decades. Our pharmaceutical sector supplies medicines to markets that cannot function without Indian generics. Our technology talent built significant portions of the digital infrastructure that runs the global economy. Our creative economy produces the world’s most-watched entertainment content by volume. And yet, when you ask a business professional in London, Frankfurt, or São Paulo to name Indian brands that they trust, follow, or aspire to — the list is painfully, embarrassingly short.
This is not a business failure. It is a communications failure. And the responsibility for it is shared between three parties who have each, in their own way, defaulted on an obligation: Indian corporations, the Indian government, and the Indian communications industry.
Indian corporations have, with some notable exceptions, invested in communications as an afterthought rather than a strategic imperative. The mindset that has dominated — particularly in traditional industry — is that quality products will find their markets, and that reputation management is a cost to be minimised rather than a capability to be built. The companies that have thought differently — Tata, Infosys, Wipro in specific contexts — have demonstrated what is possible. They are the exceptions that indict the rule.
The Indian government has largely failed to develop a coherent nation-branding strategy that creates the backdrop against which Indian businesses can be positioned globally. The ‘Incredible India’ campaign was tourism-oriented and inconsistently executed. The ‘Make in India’ initiative had the right ambition but lacked the sustained communications investment and narrative cohesion to shift global perception of India as a manufacturing origin.
And then there is the Indian communications industry itself — my own community — which has for decades been predominantly focused on the domestic market, has underinvested in global media relationships, and has rarely challenged clients to think about their communications in the global context that their business ambitions increasingly require.
The opportunity cost of this invisibility is enormous. Indian brands that are genuinely world-class in their categories are valued at significant discounts to comparable Western competitors, in part because of perception gaps that skilled communications work could narrow. Indian talent is globally sought but Indian brands are not globally trusted — a distinction with real commercial consequences.
Building India’s global brand reputation is a long-term project that requires sustained investment, strategic coordination, and genuine ambition from all three of those stakeholders simultaneously. It is also, frankly, one of the most exciting communications challenges available to anyone working in this industry in this country at this moment in history. I want to be part of that project. I believe our industry needs to decide, collectively, that it does too.
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