What’s an Emerging Market?

What are emerging markets? Duh - Brazil, Russia, India and China (not in order, clearly), right? Or was it Brazil, India, China since Russia fell off some years back? Or is Russia back again? Or is this version outdated? Does the latest version of this definition contain Indonesia, Vietnam and blah?

Not sure. What we seem to be sure of is that we need a bucket to put emerging markets in. Why? Because they behave differently. Their needs are different, they are yet to evolve but have immense potential (some say population), they need to be invested in (some say spent on), nurtured with a long-term view (/ long breakevens  to be tolerated), and need a radically different approach (/ consultants to be hired). The logic, whatever it is, of having a bucket called Emerging Markets is sound.

The next part about putting the BRIC into that bucket pains me, especially coming from (over)-educated people wearing boring suits and smart glasses. Those four countries are huge animals to squeeze into the same bucket. Again, I get the need to treat emerging markets differently (just like the need to treat a child different from an adolescent to an adult or a geriatric). I just don't think India's one market, or China for that matter. 

I believe any market with a small size and a large growth rate is an emerging market. eCommerce in India could be emerging but Telecom probably isn't emerging anymore. Looks like Telecom's emerged fully, we can see the bottom and the bathwater dripping on the floor. And just for the sake of an example, maybe ayurveda or yoga or khadi in Europe is an emerging market. To my mind the logic of treating all these markets differently makes sense. The logic of treating everything in India, or every business across India, Brazil, Russia and China the same is tougher to get.

Come on, it’s 41% of the World’s population we’re talking about; just India + China is 36%, just for perspective.  

All Indians do not ride elephants (some do, I’ll concede), or charm snakes or work in BPOs or (I heard this recently) use tablets instead of notebooks. We have many different Indians in here. Indian businesses are also different. Snake-charming, elephant-riding is not emerging. Definitely. BPO did emerge but you’re very late to the party, some of us have forgotten the full form and just did a google-search on it to refresh. Only Tablets, as a business from that list could be emerging. 

See the difference?