Market Access
Entering India’s business environment comes with a few challenges to overcome. Firstly, India has high tariffs and protectionist policies in place to help develop the nation. Tariffs for sanitary products coming from Canada would be approximately 10% on all goods that would be imported from Lunapads (Tariff 2015-16, 2016). Under Prime Minister Modi’s government, India is moving toward a more federally regulated and less provincially regulated market with more pro-market policies encouraging foreign investment (Isfeld, 2014).
Other non-tariff barriers to trade in India are corruption and bribery, bureaucratic import procedures, high cost or delays caused by poor transportation and poor or lack infrastructure (Sarkar, 2015). Many of these issues are of integral importance to the federal government to reduce these barriers to continue encouraging foreign direct investment in the country. It is in a cautiously optimistic view that one could say the ease of doing business in India will increase incrementally over the next decade.
Market Size
India’s general consumer sector has grown at an annual rate of 5.7 per cent between 2005 and 2015 (IBEF, 2017). This growth is driven mainly from increasing population and disposable incomes. Approximately 355 million women and girls in India are currently using feminine hygiene products or homemade methods of managing their menstruation (Geertz, 2016). The potential market size for Lunapads would be this figure of 355 million consumers. Additionally, India’s population is ever-growing which means the number of girls and women in menarche are going to be increasing which makes this market sustainable.
For the purpose of this expansion, the bottom of the pyramid in India is typically defined as households with earnings below $4,000 USD (Luce, 2016). The upper segment of the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) in India, households between $2,000 and $4,000 USD income, has approximately 400 million consumers who are generally young, optimistic and have a growing level of disposable income.
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Market Characteristics