In favour of Smart Living — The future is today
Consumer appliances have been a great story of access over the last 50 years, going from market to market, bringing prosperity to households all across. By all conventional metrics, consumer durables have been a fabulous success story, evidenced by the behemoth brands who populate this segment. In going from one market to the next, however, the engines of growth for the entire industry — their products themselves, have hardly changed.
Here’s why that is interesting:
- The engines of growth for these industries have changed
- The products themselves haven’t
Let’s talk about these engines of growth with some history — in the 1970s, the Americans and the Europeans formed the bulk of the sales for consumer appliances. Today, as it should surprise no one, India is that engine for sales.
Appliances, designed for the affluent western household of the 70s, eventually became cheaper to produce, which was embraced by the mass in the western countries. Once the western markets were saturated, the products arrived in the increasingly urbanising, large markets of India, China and Southeast Asia where they started their growth journey again.
As products become cheaper to make, more people could access them, and brand and product marketing became about education and distribution.
But here’s the rub — these Products themselves, hardly changed. This was great when sales growth could come from increasing access. But this growth slows down, unless there is a technology and product to rethink, which is what all large markets are now starting to see. This is the classic Innovators’ Dilemma that Clayton Christensen writes about.
Concretely, while India has become one of the largest markets for home appliances, while the Indian buyer is spending $ 26 billion per year on these purchases, they are still buying products that are designed for the 1970s with technology from the 2000s.
At React we rethinking what a modern appliance is and making it for today’s large market — India.
The Indian consumer is strong but logically demanding
The modern Indian consumer has more disposable income earlier in life, making them willing to spend on the right products.
India is one of the fastest adopters of consumer technology in the world. Having leapfrogged to Smart Phones, 4G, Smart TVs and Smart Payments, the consumer durables market will see more tech driven growth over penetration driven growth.
Brands like OnePlus, Hyundai, Kia, boAt, Oppo, Vu, cult.fit and Dyson have all demonstrated that Indians are not shy of paying if the product is right for them.
What is right for the west or China might not be right for India out of the box. At React, we are building consumer appliances that are designed for the new India. The digital layer on React products are already learning behavior and preferences of our beta testers to make our products more suitable to their needs.
Home Appliances of the future can exist today
Home is where you are your best self, and the appliances of the future will make you and the people you live with the front and center of your journey and try their best to elevate daily experiences without getting in the way.
In the home of your future, appliances focus to LevelUp⤴️ your life. Appliances get you to where you want to be, no fuss.
- Imagine that you are taking a shower and the water temperature automatically sets itself for you — heating water for you while you focus on your shower thoughts.
2. You decide that you want to cook something today and the appliances around you will work to make that happen.
3. You think of wearing a great outfit today and your appliances will get the clothes of your choice cleaned and pressed for you.
4. You have the ability to choose what weather you want to be in your home today and the appliances adjust the temperature, humidity and PPM levels for you.
For this to become a reality, appliances need to be context aware — they need to know more about you and your environment, connected — bring high quality information build in the form of collective intelligence and need to have rich interfaces for crisper communication.
The technology to do all of this exists right now and React is building these products today.
The R1
The R1 is the first product from React’s ̶s̶t̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ compiler. It is a smart cooking appliance which makes eating great food easy by making cooking hassle-free.
Food is an integral part of our day, yet one of the most hated questions in households is “What should we eat today?”. Humans have a habit of finding a routine that helps them survive the day and sticking with it, like eating the same boring food. But, new doesn’t always have to mean scary because we were built to adapt after all. The R1 will LevelUp⤴ your life with a wide variety of food that will make every day a mini food exploration.
The smart home we all dream of is now finally becoming a reality and you can now experience it at yours.
Sign Up for the early access of the R1- https://linktr.ee/ReactLabs
