Is glocalisation the future of brand communications in India?

As global technology companies look to unlock growth in India, one challenge remains constant: how do you build a globally consistent brand while staying deeply relevant to one of the world’s most diverse and dynamic markets? In a communications landscape shaped by multiple languages, cultures, consumer behaviors, and rapidly evolving digital ecosystems, success increasingly depends on mastering the art of “glocalisation” and blending global vision with local resonance.

The idea of “glocalisation” has moved beyond marketing jargon to become a strategic imperative. It demands a deeper understanding of audiences, sharper cultural intelligence, and the ability to balance consistency with context. As India continues to emerge as a critical growth market for global businesses, communicators are becoming proactive to rethink conventional playbooks and build narratives that resonate across regions, industries, and stakeholder groups.

In this conversation, Mia Karlsson, SVP Marketing & Communications at Wirepas, reflects on some of the questions shaping modern brand communications. Can a global brand maintain consistency while adapting to vastly different local realities? What does meaningful localisation look like in a market as diverse and fast-moving as India? And as audiences become more fragmented and sceptical, where does trust fit into the communications equation?

From cultural nuance and stakeholder engagement to the evolving role of storytelling in technology-driven industries, the discussion explores the tensions, trade-offs, and opportunities that define the glocalisation challenge today.

Excerpts:

How do you define glocalisation, and what does it practically mean for brands establishing their presence in India?

Glocalisation, at its core, is the discipline of staying globally consistent in purpose and quality, while being genuinely locally relevant in how you show up, earn trust, and build meaning. It is not about creating two versions of your brand, it is about having one strong identity that knows how to speak differently depending on who is in the room.

For Wirepas, as a company providing large-scale mesh connectivity solutions for critical infrastructure like smart electricity meters, this translates into something very concrete. We cannot walk into the Indian market with a European playbook and expect the same outcomes. India operates on its own set of trust mechanisms. Relationships are built differently, credibility is earned through different signals, and business ecosystems function with their own internal logic one that demands presence, patience, and genuine participation rather than top-down messaging.

Practically speaking, glocalisation for us means taking our global product narrative and grounding it in the language of local realities the specific challenges that Indian utilities face, the pace of infrastructure rollout under national smart metering mandates, and the way our partners on the ground actually talk about what we do together. It means letting local proof carry the message further than any global press release ever could.

What makes India uniquely challenging or exciting from a communications and brand-building lens compared to other global markets?

India is one of those markets that defies easy categorisation, and that is precisely what makes it so compelling. On one hand, you have extraordinary digital adoption a digitally native workforce, rapidly expanding internet access, and an entire generation of professionals who engage first through digital channels. On the other hand, India remains deeply human at its core. Word-of-mouth carries enormous weight, peer validation matters intensely, and ecosystem credibility the kind built through relationships, references and visible deployment success is often what closes the deal, not a well-crafted campaign.

What this means in practice is that a 100% digital-first communications strategy simply is not enough. You can run excellent content marketing and earn strong media coverage, but if your ecosystem partners are not actively talking about you, and if you do not have visible, proven deployments on Indian soil, you are building a house without a foundation.

The scale and diversity of the market adds another layer of complexity. India is not one market it is many markets operating simultaneously, with varying regulatory environments, infrastructure maturity levels, and stakeholder dynamics across different states and sectors. Building brand presence here requires a long-term commitment to showing up consistently, not just arriving with a big launch and expecting the market to come to you. When you get it right in India, the credibility you earn travels. The ecosystem validates you. And the scale of opportunity particularly in infrastructure-adjacent sectors like ours is unmatched.

India moves fast, but it is also culturally layered. How does your India communications strategy differ from your global playbook?

The core of our global narrative remains consistent we believe in what we build, we let our technology and real-world deployments speak for themselves, and we stay deliberately grounded in facts rather than hype. That does not change regardless of which market we are operating in.

What changes significantly in India is the emphasis and the hierarchy of channels. In our global playbook, we might rely more heavily on direct communications, analyst relationships, and thought leadership in global trade media. In India, we place a much stronger weight on ecosystem storytelling. What our partners say about us, how they describe the value we have created together in actual field deployments, carries significantly more trust than any message we could craft ourselves.

There is also a much stronger emphasis on real-world proof in the India context. We focus deliberately on how our partners, customers, and field deployments tell the story on our behalf. This is not passive we actively work with our ecosystem to surface these stories, help articulate them clearly, and ensure they reach the right audiences through the right channels. The validation does not come from the brand itself; it comes from the people and organisations who have chosen to work with us and have seen results firsthand.

We also invest more in in-person presence in India than our global playbook would mandate. Showing up at the right industry forums, participating in conversations rather than just broadcasting this signal a seriousness of intent that matters deeply in this market.

How do you design a communications framework that resonates across India's multiple regions, languages, and audience segments? What channels have proven most effective?

In our specific sector connectivity technology for infrastructure we work primarily with professionals who operate in English, so that simplifies one dimension of the challenge for us. However, diversity of audience type and decision-making context is still something we navigate carefully.

Our framework is built on the recognition that there is no single channel that does it all in a market this complex. Our most powerful channel, by a significant margin, is our partner ecosystem. When partners share authentic accounts of their experience working with Wirepas the challenges they brought to us, the deployments we have built together, the outcomes they have seen it resonates in a way that no traditional media placement can replicate.

One of the most meaningful signals we have seen of this working is that partners have begun to independently refer to us as the original mesh. That kind of organic positioning, which emerges from a genuine community of users rather than from a marketing team, is exactly what we are aiming for. It tells us that our ecosystem communications strategy is building something real and lasting.

Beyond the ecosystem, we maintain consistent presence across relevant trade media, industry events, and digital channels to ensure we are visible in the conversations that matter to our audience. But we always return to the same principle: third-party validation from people who have deployed our technology carries more weight than any first-party claim we could make.

Most brands rely on media, events, and digital. What is an unconventional route you have explored or want to explore?

Our most unconventional and arguably most effective communications channel is one we have essentially built ourselves: our partner ecosystem as a storytelling network. Rather than treating partners as distribution channels, we treat them as brand voices. We invest in helping our ecosystem partners articulate their experiences, share their deployment stories, and represent Wirepas in conversations we could not access ourselves. That is an unconventional frame for what many companies would call partner marketing, but for us it has become a genuinely distinct communications strategy.

Beyond the ecosystem, we have also continued to use printed newsletters which, in a world saturated by digital noise, feels almost radical. But the response has consistently surprised us. There is something tangible, personal, and deliberate about physical communication. When someone receives a newsletter in print, it signals that you have invested in them, not just clicked send to 10,000 addresses. It stands out precisely because it does not try to compete in the attention economy it steps outside of it entirely.

We are also continuing to explore the space between B2B and B2C storytelling. Complex technology becomes far more relatable when it is communicated with human warmth rather than purely technical precision. Using real imagery, real stories from the field, and a narrative voice that treats the audience as people first and technical professionals second that is an approach we believe more B2B brands in the technology sector should be embracing, especially as audiences become increasingly resistant to corporate polish.

In a market like India where multiple players are competing to define the connectivity and IoT narrative, how are you differentiating Wirepas?

The connectivity and IoT space in India is genuinely crowded, and differentiation by technology specification alone is increasingly difficult to sustain. Every player has a compelling story to tell about what their technology can do. Our approach to standing out is rooted in something different — we differentiate by what we choose not to do.

We do not over-promise. We do not inflate our capabilities to match the market hype cycle. Instead, we anchor everything in what is already proven in the field real deployments, real outcomes, real numbers that withstand scrutiny. In a sector where trust is mission-critical because infrastructure failure affects millions of homes and businesses this restraint is itself a form of differentiation. It signals maturity, reliability, and a genuine confidence in our product that does not need amplification.

Our communications are also intentionally human rather than polished into the sleek, impersonal voice that often characterises technology brands. We use real imagery from real deployments, real stories from the people who have built with us, and a narrative tone that prioritises clarity and relatability over technical complexity. In a world where AI-generated content is making brand voices sound increasingly similar, choosing to sound genuinely human is a meaningful point of distinction.

The recognition we have earned as the original mesh from within our partner community is probably the clearest evidence that this approach is working. It is the kind of differentiation that cannot be manufactured it has to be earned over time, through consistent delivery and authentic engagement.

Where do you think glocalisation fails most in India, and how are you avoiding that trap?

Glocalisation fails most often when global organisations mistake localisation for surface-level adaptation only. They translate a website, appoint a local spokesperson, or issue a regional press release and then wonder why the market does not warm to them. The problem is that none of those things address the deeper question of whether the brand has actually invested in understanding how credibility, relationships, and decision-making work in this particular ecosystem.

The most common version of this failure is over-standardisation. Global headquarters defines a messaging framework that works well in European or North American contexts, and then requires local teams to apply it wholesale. The result is communication that feels generic, distant, and disconnected from the realities on the ground. It may be professionally produced, but it does not feel like it was made by someone who actually knows this market.

We avoid this trap by anchoring our India communications in local proof first. The starting point is always: what has actually happened here? What have our partners deployed? What outcomes have their customers experienced? The global narrative is then used to frame and elevate those local realities, not replace them.

We also invest heavily in listening before broadcasting. Understanding how the Indian smart infrastructure ecosystem actually operates its procurement processes, its trust dynamics, its informal credibility networks gives us the context to communicate in a way that feels genuinely relevant rather than globally polished and locally generic.

From your perspective, what makes India a strategic market right now?

India's strategic importance at this particular moment is tied directly to the scale and ambition of its national infrastructure agenda. The country has embarked on one of the most ambitious smart metering rollouts in the world, with hundreds of millions of meters earmarked for deployment under the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme and associated programmes. This is not a future roadmap it is already in active execution across multiple states.

For Wirepas, this convergence of policy ambition and ground-level implementation is exactly the environment in which our technology and our ecosystem approach can deliver the most meaningful impact. We are actively contributing to these large-scale programmes together with our local partners, which means India is not a prospective opportunity for us it is a current and growing one.

Other than the immediate infrastructure mandates, India's strategic importance is also about the trajectory it represents. The scale of what is being built today will require layers of connectivity, data infrastructure, and operational technology to manage and maintain effectively for decades to come. Brands and technology providers that establish strong ecosystem roots no that build credibility through participation rather than observation will be far better positioned to grow alongside that trajectory.

From a communications perspective, what makes India particularly exciting right now is that the narrative is still being written. The stories about how connectivity technology performs at scale in Indian infrastructure deployments are still being formed. That is a rare and valuable window, and we are committed to showing up meaningfully within it.

How do you see glocalisation evolving in the next 3 to 5 years? What are your 3 key principles?

The evolution of glocalisation over the next three to five years will be shaped significantly by how audiences are changing and by how the proliferation of AI-generated content is reshaping what authenticity actually means in communication.

My view is that glocalisation will move away from being primarily about adaptation and towards being fundamentally about authenticity. Audiences in markets like India are becoming more sophisticated and more discerning. They can sense when a brand is genuinely present and invested versus when it is operating on a template. The bar for what counts as locally relevant communication is going to rise considerably.

With that in mind, my three core principles for the road ahead are as follows.

First, lead with local proof over global messaging. The era of top-down brand narratives flowing from headquarters to regional markets is fading. What travels is what has been proven and validated where it matters — by real users, in real conditions, with real outcomes that speak for themselves.

Second, invest in ecosystems over individual brands. In complex B2B sectors especially, no single brand can build sufficient trust on its own. The companies that succeed will be those that cultivate strong, vocal communities of partners and customers who carry the brand's credibility in conversations the brand itself cannot access.

And third, commit to human storytelling over artificially polished content. As AI-generated communication becomes ubiquitous, the brands that stand out will be those that communicate with genuine human warmth, specificity, and honesty. Authenticity is fast becoming a genuine competitive advantage and that is only going to intensify.

How has your approach evolved across culturally diverse markets like India?

The most important evolution in our approach has been a shift from assuming that clarity of message equals effectiveness of message, to understanding that in culturally diverse markets, clarity is necessary but far from sufficient. You can have a perfectly articulated global narrative and still fail to earn the trust of a market if you have not built presence, demonstrated patience, and genuinely participated in the ecosystem on its own terms.

India specifically has taught us that the pace of trust-building is not something you can accelerate through investment or communications volume alone. It follows its own rhythm, shaped by the depth of your local relationships, the visibility of your actual deployments, and the consistency with which you show up over time. Brands that try to shortcut this process by front-loading marketing spend or manufacturing credibility through positioning alone tend to find that the market sees through it relatively quickly.

What we have learned is that clarity and consistency matter more than perfection of messaging. You do not need to say everything in exactly the right way from the very first interaction. What you need is to keep showing up, keep listening, keep participating in the ecosystem, and keep letting the proof accumulate organically. India rewards presence and patience in a way that, once you understand it, transforms from a frustrating constraint into a genuine competitive advantage because the credibility you build this way is very difficult for newcomers to quickly replicate.

What are the key leadership traits required to drive a glocal strategy today?

Driving an effective glocal strategy demands a particular combination of qualities that are not always rewarded in the way traditional corporate leadership tends to be structured which is part of why so many global organisations struggle to execute it well even when they intellectually understand what is needed.

Open-mindedness is the foundational trait, and I mean this in a very practical sense. It means being genuinely willing to question whether what worked in your home market or your most established market actually applies in a new context. It means resisting the pull of the existing playbook when local signals are telling you something different. In markets like India, where the rules of credibility, relationship-building, and decision-making are genuinely distinct, the leaders who succeed are those who arrive with curiosity rather than certainty.

Humility follows closely. Humility to listen not just to formal market research or structured feedback mechanisms, but to the informal signals: what ecosystem partners are actually saying in their everyday conversations, what is resonating and what is falling flat, where the brand is genuinely landing and where it is not. Glocal strategy requires the confidence to maintain a strong global identity while remaining genuinely open to being shaped by local realities in meaningful ways.

And finally, consistency perhaps the most underrated of the three. Trust is not built through brilliant moments; it is built through reliable presence sustained over time. Leaders who understand this are willing to commit to a market for the long term, to keep showing up even when results are gradual, and to build the kind of credibility that cannot be manufactured quickly. That patience, maintained consistently, is what ultimately creates durable brand equity in markets like India.