In this conversation with Soumya Mohanty, Jasravee Kaur Chandra discusses the insights for India’s Most Valuable Top 100 Brands of 2025 by Kantar BrandZ
The uncomfortable question Indian marketers must answer
Brand value growth in India dropped from 19 percent to just 6 percent this year. For a market obsessed with premiumisation, valuation, and growth-at-any-cost, this slowdown is not just a number. It is a warning.
As Soumya Mohanty, Managing Director and Chief Solutions Officer at Kantar South Asia, says bluntly: “If I’m losing relevance, I will start losing penetration. If I’m losing difference, then I will not grow.”
This blog breaks down the key lessons from her conversation. These are lessons every Indian CMO needs to tattoo onto their 2024–25 playbook.
India’s Brand Value Slowdown: The Truth Behind The 6 Percent
GDP is fine. Consumer sentiment isn’t.
While GDP grows at 6 to 6.2 percent, brand value growth mirrors this. But the discomfort comes from where growth is coming from.
• Government spending is doing the heavy lifting.
• Discretionary income is under stress.
• Private consumption is weak.
Soumya explains: “There are category headwinds. Even the strongest brands must remain resilient.”
In other words, growth is no longer guaranteed by category momentum. It must be earned through brand equity.
Why Some Brands Are Winning: The Zomato–Taj–Mahindra Playbook
Soumya doesn’t mince words: “Zomato is definitely our smartest brand builder.”
Why Zomato?
• Controlled costs
• Sharp, witty advertising
• Micro-innovations (veg mode, healthy mode, district integration)
• Category tailwinds in the experience economy
• Strong cultural resonance
• Efficient operations leads to true profitability
Zomato wins because it understands India’s post-COVID appetite for small treats, micro-moments, and convenience.
Taj Hotels & Mahindra
Taj leverages the national pivot toward experiential choices.
Mahindra, meanwhile, is the case study in continuous reinvention: reimagined SUVs, EV pivot, 20 years of brand coherence
As Soumya puts it: “It’s not one silver bullet. It’s continuously being linked with innovation.”
The Formula Behind Brand Value: Investor Confidence + Consumer Equity
Most marketers forget this: Financial valuation mirrors investor confidence. Consumer equity mirrors market reality.
Kantar’s methodology blends:
• Financial value
• Consumer confidence
• Investor confidence
Consumer equity in big brands can be as high as 50 percent of total brand value. In weak brands? As low as 15 percent.
Brands that rely only on investor enthusiasm , without building consumer meaning, collapse during downturns.
The Meaningful Difference Crisis in India
Relevance prevents decline. Difference drives growth.
Many Indian brands are losing difference. They may stay relevant enough to not collapse, but they won’t rise either. This is the heart of the slowdown. FMCG is the perfect example
Penetration and relevance are everything in India’s volume-based economy.
Lose relevance = lose penetration in two years.
Lose difference = stagnation.
Why Indian Consumers Are “Promiscuously Brand Loyal”
Rama Bijapurkar has said it for years: India does not behave like the West. Soumya agrees: “We flirt with brands.”
Meaning: you cannot protect share through inertia. You protect it through predisposition.
The MDS Framework: How Brands Really Grow
Every marketer must understand Kantar’s Meaningfully Different Salient (MDS) framework.
Brands must:
1. Come to mind at the right moment. If the consumer doesn’t think of you , there is no chance of purchase.
2. Be relevant to needs + create emotional connection. Relevance is contextual:
Coffee → morning recharge, Biscuits → snack time, Hotels → experience economy
3. Be different enough to shape the category. Consumers must sense something distinct: not just functional, but emotional and cultural.
All three must be reinforced continuously. Not quarterly. Not during campaign bursts. Continuously.
The AI Reckoning: Signals vs Outcomes
Half of India’s ad spend is now social + influencer-driven.
This has caused a massive shift:
• More signals
• More attribution noise
• Less clarity
• Faster decisions
• Less strategic thinking
Soumya warns: “There is no one single KPI. The root has become more important than the outcome.”
AI is not the strategy. Influencers are not the strategy. Dashboards are not the strategy.
The strategy is: Build meaning. Build difference. Build salience.
AI is only an enabler.
The Most Misunderstood Metric: Repeat vs Acquisition
One of the most important insights:
“It is very easy in India to acquire customers. Repeat is not easy.”
Acquisition = cash burn
Repeat = emotional connection
If repeat is low:
• The brand lacks meaning
• The product lacks connection
• The marketer is too “inside-out” instead of “outside-in”
The “Uncomfortable Truth” Indian Marketers Don’t Want to Hear
Soumya ends with the most important statement in the entire conversation. “You can only extract that much value from your consumer. You have to start giving value back.”
Indian marketers have become:
• Obsessive about valuations
• Obsessed with pricing power
• Obsessed with stock-market expectations
But India is a volume game, not a premiumization-only game. To win India, brands must grow categories , not just margins.
The Future: Categories Ripe for Disruption
According to Soumya:
• Big food brands
• Big alcohol brands
India’s experience economy wants freshness, experimentation, and newness.
Summary: What CMOs Must Do Next Monday
• Build predisposition at scale
• Reinforce relevance + emotion + difference
• Use AI only on solid data
• Focus on repeat, not vanity acquisition
• Measure consumer sentiment, not dashboards
• Build categories, not just valuations
• Treat influencers as strategic assets, not shortcuts
• Stay externally oriented
Because if relevance drops, penetration drops. If difference drops, growth stops. And that is the entire game.
Jagged with Jasravee, the Marketing Show 
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