Believe it or not, Bharat is gradually becoming India, at least in the matter of consumption of fast moving consumer goods (FMCG). Increasingly, the rural market is demanding — and getting served too — the kind of goods that the urban consumer takes for granted.

To put it in perspective, the urban market always ate biscuits; so did the rural market. The difference was only in the kind of biscuits and is blurring. It’s good news for FMCG companies. After all, 72 per cent of all Indian households live in the countryside and together consume 55 per cent of all FMCG products.

The converging FMCG choices on the two sides of the divide — still deep when it comes to income, education, sanitation, water and much more — are reflected in the product portfolios of FMCG companies which no longer have either a rural specific range or a strategy in personal care, food products and beverages.

“They may have different products for different economic strata though,” says Purnendu Kumar, Technopak vice-president of retail.

Going back to the biscuit simile, not very long ago glucose biscuits were what the rural consumer mostly ate. Today he demands chocolate biscuits. So narrow is the gap now that marketers no more use the term urban-rural divide.

They see rural India as a big market. Period.

Britannia Industries is a case in point. Rural India accounts for 55 per cent of its biscuit sales. Five years ago it would have been mainly glucose biscuits. Now they lap up cookies, crackers and cream biscuits as well. “In cream biscuits 40 per cent sales come from the rural areas,” says Anuradha Narasimhan, the company’s health and wellness category director. New Britannia products enter both urban and rural markets at once.

It is no more a question of choice; rather it is now only a matter of access. If companies can supply, the rural market will buy. In other words, make the right product, make it available, price it right and, voila, the rural market is yours.

According to Narasimhan, the only difference in tastes is a regional; it’s not a rural-urban difference. In basic personal care products the rural consumption pattern is not very different from the urban. But where the divide is still sharp is in niche and high-end items. The gap is narrowing but slowly.

In CavinKare’s experience rural India matches urban India in use of shampoos, toothpaste, soap and talc. New products are made available in rural markets within days of launch in urban areas. “This only justifies the money spent on marketing through TV or radio,” says the company’s market GM, S Viswanathan.

In telecom the success story belongs as much to rural India as to urban. What were entry-level handsets two years ago are today extinct even in rural areas. In the choice of cellphones, the rural consumer is exactly like the urban buyer, according to Vipul Mehrotra, director and head of smart devices of Nokia India. Nokia does not categorise products on the basis of geographies.

New mobile users in rural India still want cheap handsets but demand in them maximum features, including net access, high-res camera, long battery life, music and value-added services – exactly what the urban consumer demands. Two years ago there was a clear demarcation of what the two markets needed. That has disappeared now.

In motorcycles it is an old story that rural sales, rising on growing income in the countryside, have driven growth for most manufacturers. Here the only exception is the scooter, which still is largely an urban commuter convenience. But rural demand here too is picking up. An Icra analyst estimates the rural market accounts for 45 per cent of domestic sales of two-wheelers.

Two key factors drive rural demand. One, the rural economy is more stable than ever before. Earlier the only income came from agriculture, dependent as it is on the vagaries of weather. Two, newer streams of income have opened up in the shape of the rural unemployment guarantee scheme, education and shopkeeping, according to Kumar of Technopak.

Rising incomes have combined with exposure that comes from mass media, especially regional media, to raise overall demand for goods. TV exposure has made rural folk want to try new products. Price could still come in the way of the rural customer seeking a higher standard of living. “But this too may be taken care of gradually,” hopes Visvanathan.

Even hospital chains see a good rural market for specialty healthcare. This has led Apollo Hospitals to think of opening 250 specialty hospitals under the Apollo Reach brand in semi-urban and rural areas. Nearly a fifth of Apollo Hospitals’ patients are referrals from other hospitals. “Apollo Reach will provide care in those areas, instead of they coming to it,” P C Reddy, chairman of the chain, says.

(With inputs from G Balachandar & S Shyamala)