India follows China as world's fastest growing brand

Excerpts from India Business Hour on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show »

Amidst all the uncertainty and volatile macro environment, here's some good news. India has emerged as the world's second fastest growing brand with only China to beat. CNBC-TV18's Pavni Mittal brings the results of Brand Finance's latest global report.

Among all the political chaos and policy uncertainty, the Finance Minster Pranab Mukherjee announced that the FDI in retail would be on hold now, but none of these seem to have dented brand India's image too much.

According to Brand Finance's ''Nation Brand 100 Report'' in 2011, India emerged as the second fastest growing brand in the world with its brand value increasing 31% to USD 1.26 trillion.

Overall, India is ranked ninth in the top 100 ahead of Britain and Italy in terms of brand equity and beating china in terms of appeal.

M Unni Krishnan, Global Strategy Director of Brand Finance said, "India has a very strong reputational capital, which exceeds that of china, but in terms of output measures, it is possibly still a bit lagging. The conversion of the soft capital into hard capital is what India needs to look at."

The US continues to be the top brand despite its brand value declining by USD 500 billion. China is the fastest growing brand at third position.

Weighed down by credit downgrades, euro zone debt crisis jitters and aftermath of the Japanese earthquake, the brand value of the G7 nations in total dipped by a whopping USD 1.43 trillion, which is almost the gain made by BRIC nations of USD 1.43 trillion. BRIC nations saw their brand value grow by 40.4% to nearly USD 6 trillion.

In fact, emerging markets as a whole outpaced the best performing European states. Malaysia, South Korea and Mexico are all up, but the biggest surprise gainer is Estonia - the birthplace of Skype - emerging as the third fastest growing brand.

The developing world's brand value seems to be winning in terms of innovation and attracting investor interest. But then again, there are still lessons left to learn.

India might have emerged as one of the leaders of the pack, but experts believe that if it does not learn from the falling brand values of USA and Europe, the dream of becoming a influential power will be short-lived.