By Rutu Mody-Kamdar
In India, brands mean a lot. For decades, they’ve woven themselves into the cultural fabric of everyday life. Legacy names like Amul, Bajaj, Parle, Godrej and Tata have occupied this space with quiet consistency. They built trust over generations, speaking to Indian consumers in a language of stability, reliability and reassurance. From being mere commodities to becoming rituals of daily life. The biscuit that accompanied chai, the disinfectant that signaled safety, the ghee that stood for purity, the steel almirah that stood for security and reliability.
But culture itself has changed rhythm. The consumer of today scrolls, swipes, toggles, and tries on identities at a speed unimaginable even a decade ago. Into this world has arrived a new wave of brands: BoAt, Swiggy, Mamaearth, The Whole Truth, Wellbeing Nutrition. These brands are fluent in the grammar of immediacy. They thrive on agility, design-forward storytelling, and the ability to collapse aspiration into a shareable reel. Their edge lies in relevance, in making a product feel like it belongs to the now.
Yet, both sides have their blind spots. Legacy brands, for all their authority, often struggle with lightness. They can appear too grave, too rooted in the past, hesitant to embrace the playfulness and transparency demanded in the digital age. Meanwhile, the new-age insurgents, for all their speed and wit, risk building on fragile foundations. They win followers, but can they win loyalty? They generate noise, but can they sustain meaning?
The truth is that the Indian consumer lives in both worlds at once. She draws comfort from the familiar yet yearns for the thrill of the novel. She buys Tata Salt because it feels like the right patriotic thing to do, but she experiments with fortified salts and seasonings from Urban Platter because they feel like the future. The same household fridge often holds both the legacy of Amul butter and the reinvention of Epigamia yogurt.
This is why the richest learning lies not in separating the past from the present, but in adapting and evolving with time. Legacy brands must learn to lighten their voice, to shed the weight of authority without losing credibility. They must show up in memes, reels and pop-culture conversations without appearing like tourists. Amul’s topical billboards remain a masterclass in this balance. Heritage wrapped in humour.
Equally, new-age brands must learn the discipline of depth. They need to move beyond campaign bursts and influencer-led chatter to create enduring associations, cultural rituals and intergenerational trust. Paper Boat offers a lesson here: a relatively young brand that tapped into nostalgia with the seriousness of a heritage player, crafting products and stories that feel timeless, not fleeting.
At stake here is cultural relevance. In a country where consumers inhabit multiple eras simultaneously, tradition and modernity, ritual and experimentation, thrift and indulgence, brands that can straddle both weight and wit will endure. The rest risk being remembered only as passing fads or fading giants. Because in India, brands become part of the cultural memory. And memory, unlike a reel, is built to last.
(The author is the Founder of Jigsaw Brand Consultants)
