Localization is indeed a great step to incorporate into your business techniques to meet local demands. Several companies, from small-scale to larger ones, are still using this to achieve their business goals. However, what if we tell you that big foreign companies are adopting a new approach to their business and gaining better traction from Indian audiences than localization did?
It is 2025. India is tremendously evolving, developing, and conquering, in every field. Today, several companies from around the world are seeking opportunities to penetrate and grow their business in India and leverage the vast potential this diverse country holds. Therefore, to stay ahead among these many companies and mark your impression on such a wide range of diverse audiences, you need to think differently, think big, and think about what would work best in India, and for Indians. The answer is Indianization (#i11n), which makes your brand strategies and adapts your business techniques to your diverse target audiences’ cultures, languages, and preferences.
Let’s dig in deeper and understand why today foreign companies are adopting Indianization, and how turning from localization to Indianization could be the ultimate game-changer for your business expansion.
Why Foreign Companies are Adopting Indianization?
Have you ever wondered why, despite having every resource, some companies fail to expand their business in India or are unable to adapt to the country’s diverse consumer preferences?
Well! With Indianization, companies could leave behind these struggles, and establish or expand their business in India, easily and successfully. Let’s see here how:
- By respecting their consumers’ cultural values, aligning with them, and winning over their trust.
- By making the products/services familiar to consumers’ preferences, and increasing adoption rates.
- By navigating the diversity locally, ensuring that for every region, the business must have a different strategy.
- By resonating their brand with the Indian traditions and sensibilities, creating lasting customer relationships, and enhancing brand loyalty.
Understanding the Key Differences – Localization (#l10n) vs. Indianization (#i11n)
Localization simply means adapting products/services to align with a particular market. This is done by translating content including expressions, and jargon, modifying the features and even converting its currency formats to fit the preferences of the local audience.
On the other hand, Indianization is not limited to just the surface but also incorporates the cultural, linguistic, and behavioral elements into branding, messaging, and product offerings along with adding researched target audience’s preferences, demands, and challenges, with tailored market tips, business strategies, and microlearning videos to spread information and do promotion of the brand.
Indeed, localization makes understanding easier, but Indianization also ensures building long-term connections by building trust and relevance with the diverse target audience.
How is Indianization a game-changer? What are the Key Aspects of Indianization?
1. Adapting language
Here we are not only talking about translating the language but tailoring it too, as per the local audience. India, a country, having 22 official languages, and 1600 dialects, cannot work with simply translating the language. However, adapting the language and communication style would surely do wonders for any business – incorporate the local idioms, and metaphors, and even use the cultural reference to make it relatable to your audiences.
2. Integrating cultural relevance
When promoting your business in India, ensure that your brand’s messaging is culturally relevant. It should focus on the diverse Indian traditions, values, and festivals as well to gain customers’ attention and win their trust. For this, you could run your campaigns around various festivals and must avoid using any cultural missteps as it may hinder your business, and might even land you up into something lawfully serious.
3. Offering region-specific pricing and payment options
India is a price-sensitive market, and just like the cultures its payment preferences vary too, across regions. Therefore, ensuring region-specific pricing based on purchasing power is very crucial, and a significant aspect of Indianization.
4. Customizing products/services to Indian tastes and needs
Last but not least, understanding the tastes, needs, behaviors, and habits of your target audience and modifying your products/services as per them becomes very important. This also includes optimizing packaging designs and other variations.
Conclusion
Localization surely ensures to make your entry into the Indian market easier, but Indianization ensures to build long-term relations with your consumers based on trust. Moreover, Indianization guarantees your business’s existence and dominance in the market.
Companies, especially foreign ones, looking to penetrate the Indian market or expand their business in the Indian, local markets must take Indianization as a necessity and not an option. They should integrate this approach into their business strategies and witness the growth and profit it brings to it. Be it the local language adaptation to festival-driven marketing or localized pricing and culturally relevant branding, with Indianization, you could make your business truly, for Indians.
Interested in establishing your business in India? Contact Lexiphoria, and talk to the Indian market experts to get profitable Indian market insights, tips, and more.
