Digital Leapfrogging

Marketing Professor Vijay Mahajan documents transformation in India.

In his 14th book, Vijay Mahajan explores how digital technology is creating new market opportunities and enhancing the welfare of millions of Indians. Appropriately, Mahajan — marketing professor at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin — celebrated the release of “Digital Leapfrogs,” published by HarperCollins India, at a book launch yesterday at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce in New Delhi, joined by more than 100 guests.

Keynote speaker Himanshu Kapania, chairman of Vishvaraj Infrastruture Ltd., vice chairman of Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd., and business head of Sparkle, Birla White, and Aditya Birla Management Corp., praised Mahajan’s insights into how digital technology is changing the Indian economic landscape. Other distinguished speakers included Ajai Chowdhry, co-founder of HCL Technologies, Yogesh Andlay, co-founder of Nucleus Software, and N. Goswami, director general for finance for the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

“Every day it becomes all too obvious how critical a role these technological innovations will play in the continued emergence of developing countries and the 86% of global consumers who work, shop, play, live, and dream like consumers anywhere else in the world,” Mahajan said. “In my research covering over 150 organizations and markets in developing countries, from their upscale urban neighborhoods to slums and far-flung rural farming regions, I have witnessed the exponential changes brought about by technologies.”

Digital leapfrogging refers to how the lack of certain infrastructure provides an opportunity to adopt more advanced technologies, Mahajan said of the phenomenon, which is a reality in many emerging markets. Mahajan writes that in 2017, the idea of digital leapfrogging in developing countries started to coalesce in his mind, when he saw the similar ways that people used technologies during the monsoon in Mumbai and the hurricane in Houston.

Mahajan’s idea crystallized the next year. He saw that India was a country living in two centuries: one with the latest technology and another with a shortage of indoor plumbing. In his book, Mahajan offers the example of the Indian government’s digital platform, COWIN, which is helping to vaccinate people in the world’s largest democracy with maximum efficacy. The platform has now been made open-source — freely available for all countries to adapt and use, he noted. And even the author benefitted from technology’s ability to close gaps between people: During the pandemic, Mahajan and his co-authors, Dan Zehr and Jayadevan P.K., collaborated via Zoom.

Sanjiv Mehta, president of Unilever South Asia, praised the book, saying, “No longer restricted to social media campaigns and online marketing efforts. … Vijay Mahajan, in his new book, succinctly highlights the power of digital technologies in managing complex consumer markets in a developing country like India.”

Ajit Mohan, vice president and managing director of Meta India, also commended the book. “Insights and case studies included in this book highlight how digital technologies are helping countries like India simultaneously navigate the opportunities and issues of the 20th and 21st centuries,” he said.

Mahajan holds the John P. Harbin Centennial Chair in Business at Texas McCombs. He is a fellow of the American Marketing Association and has received several lifetime achievement awards, including the Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Research Award for visionary leadership in scientific marketing. The AMA also instituted the Vijay Mahajan Award in 2000 for career contributions to marketing strategy. Mahajan’s other books include “Africa Rising,” “The 86% Solution,” “The Arab World Unbound,” and “Rise of Rural Consumers in Developing Countries.” Mahajan received his M.S. in chemical engineering and Ph.D. in management from The University of Texas at Austin.

To learn more, read the Q&A with Mahajan in Big Ideas from Texas McCombs.

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