ASIA FAST FORWARD
“A tale of two cities"
Sandeep BudhirajaKalyan Karmakar
Abstract
Shanghai is the largest city of the People's Republic of China and the seventh largest in the world. It is widely regarded as the citadel of China's modern economy and the city also serves as one of the nation's most important cultural, commercial, financial, industrial and communications centers. Mumbai in India is the economic hub of the country, contributing 40% of all income tax collections, 60% of all customs duty collections, 20% of all central excise tax collections, 40% of India's foreign trade and Rupees 40 billion (US$ 9 billion) in corporate taxes. Mumbai is one of the world's top 10 centers of commerce in terms of global financial flow. Like Shanghai, Mumbai is also the commercial and entertainment capital of its country. Both the cities attract migrants from all over their respective countries and now the world because of the immense employment opportunities and the relatively high standard of living.Shanghainese and Mumbaikar are words that stand for people living in these cities. The two words have now entered dictionaries. The cities owe their success to the people who were born there and live there and the ones who come here to make a living and never go back.
The paper tries to understand the lives of working professionals in terms of the challenges and opportunities that are presented to them. It would also try and find commonalities that are there between the people in two cities and also what sets them apart. For example, why is it that the working people in both Mumbai and Shanghai are almost apathetic to politics while their counterparts in New Delhi and Beijing more politically conscious. What drives a person in these cities to work that hard and that long? What makes these cities commercial as well as cultural capitals for their countries?
We have focused on working professionals as they are at the centre of the social and economic changes which both these cities represent. After all they both represent the centres of change in the erstwhile closed economies of China and India.
We would be using social networks, blogs, mails and formal depth interviews to research this topic and to come up with an insight into two fascinating cities. In sum we would try and answer, “Are Mumbai and Shanghai separated at birth or are they poles apart?”
Sandeep Budhiraja
Sandeep Budhiraja is a management graduate with 13 years plus of marketing research experience and has worked across a wide spectrum of industries, covering FMCG, Services, telecom, consumers durable, finance and media. Sandeep has worked for other global agencies like Nielsen, icon Added Value & IMRB International. He also has worked with Lowe in Account Planning.
His area of interest is branding, brand equity, new techniques in research and segmentation. He has written number of articles in agencyfaqs, USP Age and Winning Edge magazines.
Sandeep is a visiting faculty at Indian Institute of Management at Indore, Lucknow & Kozhikode in India. He has been taking full courses on Brand Management & Advanced Market Research.
Kalyan Karmakar
Kalyan is a Sociology Hons graduate (Presidency College, Calcutta) and did his MBA from IISWBM, Calcutta. He has worked for more than ten years in qualitative and quantitative research and account planning.
Kalyan has recently joined The Nielsen Company, India as an Associate Director. He was in the Team Moto in IMRB International in his last assignment. Apart from in market research, Kalyan has worked in Draft FCB ULKA in account planning.
Kalyan is interested in the areas of marketing communication and brand development. His paper 'Ties That Bind' (presented in MRSI 2007), on master brand and sub brand relationships, was the runners up in the Platinum Category of Millward Brown's Knowledge Awards 2006-7. He has also published cases on Celebrity Advertising, Life Values Segmentation and Brand Relaunches on the MB Knowledge Bank.
Kalyan loves cooking, eating and travelling. He is an aspiring food and travel writer and blogs regularly. He is married to a creative director in an ad agency.
Kalyan moved into Mumbai soon after his MBA and has lived there happily for the last ten years.
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