In his welcome note, Ajit Rangnekar, Deputy Dean, ISB, spoke about the situation ten years ago, when India was on nobody’s radar. “Brand India is totally a private sector creation. It is the creation of newly emerging industries like the retail and the media. So it will be of interest to see how our eminent panel today position India,” he said. Mr Rangnekar contributed the phenomenal growth of the ISB to the same Brand called India.

A brand by himself, ace ad filmmaker Prahalad Kakar said, “A silent movement to build this brand had begun ten years ago. 100 of innocuous minds were working towards it. The world realised the impending threat, and so they battled it out by discrediting our products and creating a deliberate disinformation campaign about India.”

According to Kakar, the concept of Brand India is just the tip of the iceberg. “It is the professional entrepreneur, the single minded industrious community outside India, who is the actual brand,” he said. The best product that India has created, according to Kakar, is its people. However he was critical about the government’s inability to provide a conducive environment to encourage entrepreneurship. In typical and inimitable style, Kakar said that the media had no role to play in positioning India as a brand. “Let us not create hypes, let us just surprise pleasantly. Let us focus on brand Indians, not on a faceless India.” He urged the media to showcase the journey of collective Indians, like Narayana Murthy, Sania Mirza, Sachin Tendulkar, and even the movie industry, which represent Brand India., “Don’t take Brand India for granted. Do your bit,” he said.

According to Arnab Goswami, Editor-in-Chief, Times Now, the “Domain experience of the media, its competitive instinct, its logic, its linguistic experience” will help take Brand India abroad, and it applies to any other industry. Arnab said that Indians today are willing to experiment and know how to change with the rule of the game. That gives us the necessary edge in global positioning. He was however sceptical about the inorganic growth of the Indian Television industry and expressed faith in the “sheer force of the idea” that will take India places.

V. Sunil, Creative Director, Aontheweb, talked about a serious disconnect that Indians have with regard to knowing what is ‘cool’ and ‘in’. “There is an identity crisis as far as Brand India is concerned,” he said. Sunil said that the problems are to do with poorly branded products and services, which are globally uncompetitive, a dearth of creative people which leads to an insecure management, which again, leads to the typical “babu” mindset. He said that we need to come out of that “jargon is king’ mindset and inject fresh blood, and focus on experience design if we really want to promote Brand India internationally.

“Where is the need to market India? The action is happening here. Why do we need to sell ourselves abroad?” asked Vikas Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer of the Ananda Bazaar Patrika Group. Gupta called for all Indians to get over “the white man’s approval” hangover because New India has the power of young minds at a time when in countries like Germany the population is decreasing every year. The media, he felt, should “be fair in displaying the opportunities available here, instead of indulging in sensationalism. The media should do its bit by ascertaining India abroad,” he said.

Rajeev Sawhney, President Reliance Entertainment, said that the current generation of Indians were free from guilt, pity and self deprecation, which the earlier generations were party to, and were representative of Brand India. “Brand India is a myth, perpetuated by the media,” he said. Brand India, according to him, was an acronym of BBB – Bollywood, Bangalore and Bhatia (NRI making it good abroad). “24% of newspaper coverage and 31% on television is the share of Bollywood gossip. Three fourth of all international media about India reports is about outsourcing and fear of loss of jobs. The other fixation for the media is the NRI’s. That’s what I call as the Bhatias. The latest fixation being Laxmi Mittal,” he said.

Niranjan Rajadhyaksha, Ex-Deputy Editor, Business World, spoke about his scepticism regarding the term Brand India. “It is the success of micro units and the goodwill created by hundreds of entrepreneurs and ordinary Indians. That is Brand India,” he said. He urged the Indian business media to stop celebrating national greatness and promoting or running down a brand. He asked them to highlight and assess the risks involved.

Khozem Merchant, Business Director, Financial Times was the moderator for the esteemed panel, which saw huge participation from the packed audience. In the end, Drishticon 2006, succeeded in being the Media Club’s first open conference aimed at creating a discussion forum.