The INR 12-lakh crore opportunity brands are missing

There is a myth that persons with disabilities (PwDs) cannot afford products and do not have adequate purchasing power.

But data from EnAble India, a Bengaluru-based organisation working towards empowering PwDs, indicates that this demographic – a roughly 150 million strong consumer base – could have spending power of more than INR 12 lakh crore. That’s a significant market opportunity waiting to be tapped.

Yet brands and advertisers continue to dance around the periphery without actually engaging this cohort.

“Brands often miss the simplest truth: persons with disabilities are not a niche audience. They are a vibrant consumer segment with aspirations, preferences and spending power,” said Dipesh Sutariya, chairman and managing director, EnAble India. “When businesses design with accessibility in mind, they don’t just include more people, they gain new customers.”

Except that they’re often invisible in the brief. As a polio-stricken individual, Anuraag Khandelwal, chief creative officer, 82.5 Communications, has experienced this first-hand. He told Campaign. “Most teams don’t research PwD consumers, don’t test with them, and don’t measure the ROI of accessibility, so the segment looks ‘niche’ when it’s anything but,” he shared.

Today, Khandelwal brings this own personal experience as a PWD person while having creative conversations with brands, espeically those eager to communicate their committment to representation and equity. One example of this was the Franklin Templeton 'Change the Soch' campaign, earlier this year, which adopted an unconventional approach of overlaying a man's voice on a woman's speech to demonstrate that the same advice sounds more credible when delivered in a masculine tone.

Shifting the conversation from awareness to inclusion

One reason why PwDs are often excluded when creative briefs are discussed, is the way these individuals are portrayed. In 2023, while addressing advertising’s role in changing perceptions, Anjali Krishnan, head of media, Mondelez, noted that most advertising often bordered on the ‘pity party’ space when trying to promote inclusivity. “[But] Inclusivity should be naturally woven into communication, not forced”, she had said, “The key is normalisation rather than explicitly showcasing diversity.”

 

 

 

 

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Khandelwal agrees. “When was the last time you saw an SUV ad with a PwD stepping out confidently? Or a condom ad with a PwD as the lead? Why not? That’s not edgy - it’s normal life. Tokenism needs to be called out,” he emphasised.

Unfortunately, ads catering to the differently-abled often fall into three buckets: topical posts around token days such as International Day of Persons with Disabilities (December 3); ads that seek to raise awareness but border on pity, or ads that portray this community in a ‘do-gooder’ or ‘superhuman’ light. The conversation seems to be stuck on awareness, not inclusion. This could be due to the lack of lived experience in the room, with few PwD voices in creative, on the client side, or on production sets.

Another factor, Arpan Bhattacharyya, executive director, head of creative, copy (South), Lowe Lintas, said, is the fear of appearing gimmicky. “It’s possible that we [ad agencies] think casting the differently abled or crafting communication focusing on them could be seen as gimmicky or trying too hard to make an emotional connection, trying to gain unnecessary sympathy, or maybe even being flippant about their problems,” he shared.

That’s one of the things Lowe was careful to steer away from when designing ‘The Purple Economy’ campaign for EnAble India. “It was very refreshing when the folks at Enable India told us right off the bat that they didn’t want ‘sad violins in the background’. We were also very clear that we were talking to the business world,” he said. 

 

 

 

 

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So, instead of playing on empathy, they focused on cold, hard economics.They used everyday realism and subtle humour to highlight how inaccessible design still excludes millions of ready, willing consumers from basic shopping and dining experiences and how bridging the design gap could help businesses unlock a new revenue stream.

Bridging the design gap

Marketing to the differently abled today is mostly lip service, said Pawan Sarda, chief growth officer at The House of Abhinandan Lodha. “When brands feature them, it’s usually to trigger emotion rather than to genuinely empower.”

If brands genuinely want to be part of the conversation, Sarda said, they need to do more than just “include”. They need to create relevant solutions that enable the differently abled before building narratives.

When Future Group hosted a string of activations for the 2019 International Day of Persons with Disability, such as Quiet Hour for autistic people or inviting a visually-impaired chef to participate in their YouTube cooking series, Sarda, who was group CMO at the time, said they spent almost two years building the right infrastructure.

“From providing wheelchairs to having dedicated cash tills and clear navigation across the store, the priority was to make the experience truly accessible on the shop floor before taking the thought into advertising,” he said. “And when we did, we approached it just like we would for any other customer. That added more brand love than any campaign we had ever done.”

Apple. too, managed to walk this talk with its latest 'I'm not remarkable' ad film. While subtly referencing to its products and services for this community, the campaign veers away from seeking sympathy or glorifying overcoming challenges, underpining that accessibility isn’t a halo; but a requirement.  

Hyundai unlocked a similar brand love with their ‘Samarth’ (capable) initiative, which aims to create a more accessible world for people with disabilities through inclusive infrastructure and assistive technology. Since November 2023, the company has distributed over 300 assistive devices through a partnership between HMIF and Samarthanam Trust for Disabled. They have also launched four swivel seat accessories to help passengers with disabilities enter and exit vehicles safely.

“With Samarth by Hyundai, we had always been very clear that we don’t want to show inclusivity as a charity, but as a duty of each citizen to create a world that is accessible to all,” said Virat Khullar, associate vice-president and vertical head, marketing at Hyundai Motor India Limited. To this end, they recently organised an expo, bringing together 25 assistive tech startups with real-world solutions.

Manufacturing unlocks the DEI benefit

Part of this inclusivity also includes absorbing PWD into the workforce, looking beyond their physical challenges. Earlier this year, PTI reported that Indian companies were ramping up hiring of PwDs, with a noticeable 30-40% rise on job postings for PwDs in the corporate sector.

However, The Marching Sheep PwD Inclusion Index 2025 found that despite years of dialogue, advocacy and policy reform, PwDs make up less than 1% of corporate India’s workforce. Those employed are often found in offices or white-collar roles and rarely on factory floors because it is harder to reconfigure infrastructure and workflows to make these complex, high-volume operations accessible.

However, in the past five years, Godrej Consumer Products Ltd (GCPL), Nestlé, Tata Motors, and Nivea, have added hearing-impaired PwDs to their ranks, demonstrating significant gains in productivity, retention, and shop-floor discipline. What they did right: small cohorts, rejigged only the assembly lines where these PwDs would be working, taught direct line managers ISL, and sensitised all employees to upgraded safety protocols.

What these companies have strategically understood is that when they involve this community, they build stronger for society at large. In ‘Work That Includes- India’s first Employability Toolkit’, launched by GCPL and Atypical Advantage recently, factory leaders observed that inclusive hiring helped “professionalise” shop-floor management, encouraging clearer communication, standardised safety protocols, and more structured training.

“Pager alarms, sign language videos, and clearer signage actually made things better for everyone. People were more alert and worked more confidently. It didn’t just help PwDs, it improved safety for the whole team,” noted a Nestlé representative.

PwDs and LGBTQIA together form 6% of GCPL’s inclusive manufacturing units in Malanpur and Chengalpattu and 25-30% of their consumer panels for new products.

Preetham Sunkavalli, DGM, marketing, GCPL, cited how one visually-impaired person on a consumer panel helped them identify a “party fragrance” purely by smell and not by colour or packaging. “It’s a bit of a stereotype that visually-impaired folks have a heightened sense of smell. But they do rely on that sense much more, which gives them a richer vocabulary when it comes to dissecting scents and common associations,” he said. For example, somebody who isn’t visually-impaired might associate a yellow-coloured fragrance with a citrusy scent; whereas a visually-impaired person might pick up notes of sandalwood or daffodils.

Leaning into India’s ‘Purple Economy’

The hospitality industry has been at the forefront of driving this change with hotel chains like Lemon Tree Hotels and Indian Hotel Corporation Ltd structuring hiring programs where these individuals are employed in customer-facing roles, like food and beverage positions. Even restaurant chains like Echoes Cafe and Mitti Cafe are run almost entirely by deaf, mute, or otherwise disabled staff. 

These initiatives, while encouraging, are marginal. There is a long way to go when it comes to making the world more inclusive for PwDs and with the way some US companies have begun to roll back on their DEI initiatives, there are fears that this community could be marginalised once more.

Some MNCs are seeing pressure from their global counterparts to restructure teams or rename initiatives, while another non-profit I know in the disability space has had to crowdsource funding this year to cover some USAID shortfall, shared Sandhya Ramesh, general manager - Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI), Godrej Consumer Products. “What is heartening, however is how very core sectors in India, such as manufacturing, BFSI, are now standing up [to meet that shortfall],” she said. “Secondly, ESG disclosures have put enough impetus through investors/boards that organisations are now more holistic.”

The differently abled are one of India’s most overlooked consumer groups and while steps are being taken to bring them out of the periphery, the needle won’t move until businesses actively strive to bridge the design gap with inclusive design.

That starts with having the right voices at the table. Whether that’s differently abled on the factory floor, in market research rooms or during campaign pitches, brands need to make sure this cohort is well-represented internally before targeting them as a consumer base.  

Advertising also has a key role to play in ensuring that the narratives around disability drive change, rather than putting PwDs on a pedestal or seeing them as charity.