It should be fairly easy. Your friendly neighbourhood kirana store owner knows exactly what your needs are; your database is in his head. He knows whether you are creditworthy, whether you have upgraded your soap brand; how many family members you have and their eating habits. I want this incredible personalised service to be combined with the efficiencies of mass production.

The industrial system, as we know it, has been morphing for some time. Now, it may have reached an inflection point. Ubiquitous connectivity (4 billion Indians will be connected by 2012 for the first time in history); digitisation, convergence of technology and industry boundaries (is your face cream an FMCG product or a pharma product?), and the emergence of social networks have collectively put a turbo charge on this transformation. The costs are dropping so dramatically that today the poorest people can afford digital communication.

Look at the focus of the young on Web sites such as MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and others. It suggests that a whole new generation of consumers will grow up expecting to be treated as unique individuals, and they will have the skills and the propensity to engage in a marketplace defined by N=1.

Image: A man watches a clip on the popular video-sharing website YouTube | Photograph: AFP/Getty Images