Gurugram: In a stirring keynote at MMA Global India Impact 2025, innovation and leadership scholar Navi Radjou urged India to reject the binary choice between hyper-growth and de-growth and instead embrace a third, uniquely Indian path he calls “frugal growth”—a model that champions doing better with less.
“India can’t afford to blindly pursue American-style hyper-growth,” Radjou declared, highlighting the environmental toll such a path would take. “If every Indian consumed like an American, we’d need five planets to sustain us.”
Radjou, co-author of the seminal book Jugaad Innovation, underscored the mounting challenges India faces: 54% of the country is experiencing severe water stress, and over 500 districts are projected to warm by at least one degree Celsius over the next 12 years. Yet, he made clear that de-growth—a concept gaining popularity in post-industrial Western nations—is not viable either. “In India, de-growth is immoral. We still need to raise the living standards of over a billion people.”
Instead, he called for a middle path rooted in Indian philosophical traditions—what he terms “frugal growth”: an inclusive development model that decouples growth from resource consumption. “It’s not about doing more with less,” Radjou said. “That’s capitalism. It’s about doing better with less. That’s dharma.”
Three Principles for Frugal Growth
Radjou outlined three guiding principles marketers and business leaders can adopt to enable frugal growth: transform constraints into opportunities, valorise underused resources, and co-create value with atypical partners.
1. Transform Constraints into Opportunities Radjou’s first principle leans heavily on the Indian ethos of jugaad—a resourceful approach to problem-solving under constraints. He cited how Indigo Airlines responded to a major IT outage by issuing handwritten boarding passes to 2.4 million passengers. “Young consumers actually found the retro check-in vibe cool. A problem turned into brand equity,” he noted.
He also pointed to chef Massimo Bottura’s famous dessert “Oops! I Dropped the Lemon Tart,” born from a kitchen accident, now a culinary icon. These stories illustrate the power of reframing problems as innovation springboards.
The rise of AI, he noted, brings a paradox: “Data centers powering AI consume 3% of the world’s electricity.” Half of that energy is used just to cool servers. But companies like France’s Carnot Computing are flipping the narrative—harvesting server heat to warm homes and offices. “That’s jugaad engineering,” Radjou said. “Turn waste heat into distributed computing networks and hot showers.”
2. Valorise Existing Resources Radjou’s second principle calls for extracting untapped value from existing assets—whether material, digital, or human. He praised Hermès for launching Petit H, a sub-brand that upcycles production waste into high-end products. “Don’t discard. Repurpose. Make it desirable.”
In India, startups like AlgoSearch are repurposing 2D X-rays into 3D models using AI—cutting costs for hospitals. And fintech firm Lulaland in South Africa evaluates loan applicants using social media and utility data, enabling financial inclusion for SMEs.
“Waste nothing. Valorise everything,” Radjou urged, highlighting the overlooked promise of rural India. He described being astonished by the AI talent emerging from a village in Tamil Nadu, employed by DesiCrew to build marketing solutions for major brands like Walmart and Hungama. “You think rural India means cows and calm. I saw cutting-edge AI.”
3. Co-Create Future Value with Atypical Partners Radjou’s third principle encourages a radical rethinking of collaboration. While co-branding is common, he urged marketers to go further—partnering with players outside their sectors to anticipate future needs and build integrated solutions.
He spotlighted InHome, a French initiative where seven unrelated brands co-designed solutions for homes of 2035. This approach, he noted, taps into a $60 trillion opportunity in cross-industry solutions over the next decade, according to McKinsey.
Radjou advocates going beyond “second-party” data to develop “shared-party data” strategies that unlock hidden synergies. “Your current assets will be irrelevant in ten years,” he warned. “Time to recombine capabilities like Lego bricks.”
A Call to Action for India’s Marketers
In conclusion, Radjou painted a sobering yet hopeful picture: “We are entering a VUCA world—volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. But in every crisis lies an opportunity.”
His prescription? Embrace frugal growth by transforming constraints into creativity, valorising neglected assets, and boldly co-creating with the unfamiliar. “That’s how we will do better with less—and lead India into a resilient, inclusive future.”
