District Metrics (DM) helps you to unravel the potential household consumers in India at a disaggregated level. The service brings you, in a single platform, demographics, purchasing power or income and economic activity for – districts & towns enabling you to locate the markets of your choice. The reliable data and robust estimates in DM are powered with querying tools, supported by dynamic map-views that enable marketers identify and locate market geographies and households that can be prioritised.

DM provides a unique feature in the interactive maps that facilitates the users to juxtapose their own internal data-sets like sales, distributors etc along with the DM data on the map. The feature empowers the users and helps in ease of decision making. DM is completely secure, and your internal data will not be available to us or any third party. You can seamlessly view a map-display with the meshing of the internal data along with the DM data for market geographies and households.

Demographics – Census 2011

DM provides Census 2011 data for all the districts - urban & rural in India. The census 2011 data is also available for 534 towns. Apart from the districts and towns, the Census 2011 data is also available at a ward level for all the towns with a population of more than one million. There are 53 towns with million plus population. These are popularly called million plus towns. The data sets also provide the projections for the population and number of households in a district – urban & rural as well as the towns. The projected estimates are updated twice in a year.

Estimates of households’ Purchasing Power (Household Incomes)

DM provides estimates of Purchasing power of households across all the districts – urban & rural as well for 534 towns. The purchasing power estimates are computed based on the data released by Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

The estimations also provide the distribution of income by households in income classes for all the districts – rural & urban as well as 534 towns. The estimates are available for January 2015 and the estimates for September 2015 will be available by early January 2016. The estimates are updated twice a year.

Business activity - Index of Economic Activity (IEA) in a district

The Economic activity in a region is a reflection of the origination and source of incomes for the households. RBI releases data pertaining to the value of the economic activity in a district. The data is released across 15 categories of economic activity. This data released by RBI is used to construct the measure – Index of Economic Activity (IEA) to enable users to gauge and understand the importance of a business activity in a region. The IEA is a relative index. A district's IEA for a chosen business activity indicates its share in the business compared to all-India total for that business. Hence, the IEA value for a particular Economic Activity in a district will give the strength of the activity in that district compared to All India.

The IEA is updated once in year. Currently, the IEA is available for March 2015.

Robustness of the Estimates of Purchasing Power & Index of Economic Activity (IEA)

A study to test the robustness of the estimates was done for an automobile manufacturer. The robustness of the purchasing power estimates were tested with the number of two-wheeler dealerships of a particular brand in the towns of Tamil Nadu. Except, the large metro Chennai, there was a high rank co-relation of the purchasing power estimates of a town in Tamil Nadu with the number of dealerships in that town.

A study to test the robustness of IEA values was conducted. The study was to understand that, for the districts in Tamil Nadu, which economic activity has a high correlation with the two wheeler dealerships. The Retail Trade index and the Composite index had the highest rank co-relation with the district having highest automobile dealerships.

Rank Correlation between Purchasing power estimates and the number of Two-wheeler dealerships in the towns of Tamil Nadu

Interactive Maps

Users can view any output generated from the query on the map. Akara uses Open source tools for building the application to dynamically interact with the maps, yet, ensure that the data displayed on the map is not subsumed by the map provider. Currently, the data is displayed on the most commonly used maps.

Extensive Querying facility

DM provides extensive querying facilities for the users to identify and locate geographies based on the filter conditions provided by them. Users can execute queries on Census, Purchasing power and IEA. The query facility is available across the data-sets enabling users to generate outputs based on a combination of parameters across Census, Purchasing power and IEA. Users can view the contiguous districts for a given district. The facility is available for any query based outputs generated by the users.

All query outputs and charts can be exported to a spreadsheet or users can generate a map.

Juxtapose your own data

DM provides an interface by which any user can upload their own data at a district or town level. The users’ data will be juxtaposed along with the DM data so that the users can view both the data-sets on the map.

This facilitates the user to have a geographical insight of areas where the company is leading/trailing the market and take action. It can also reflect the level of geographical correlation with other important parameters provided in DM, and drive further focused analysis of own data as well as targeting field studies in specific geographies

The users’ data presented on the map in DM is completely secure, and not accessible to any third party or Akara.

Scoring & Dashboard

Dashboard section provides a snapshot view of a district, relative to other districts in terms of some of the key socio-economic parameters, namely:

• Urbanisation rate
• Rural female literacy rate
• Per household purchasing power
• No. of Economic activities in the district for which the district ranks within top 100 in India
• Growth rate of Purchasing power (6 months forecast – currently estimated for March 2016)
• Growth rate of Economic activity (6 months forecast) – currently estimated for March 2016
• Volatility of Purchasing power growth (reflects risk factor for the growth rate of Purchasing power)
• Volatility of Economic activity (reflects risk factor for the growth rate of economic activity)

The score of each district is presented as a spider graph which indicates the relative strengths/weaknesses of a district in a snapshot.