Mumbai's Chawls Know What Cannes Forgot

Brand purpose has become a punching bag at Cannes Lions 2026 — Byron Sharp, Mark Ritson, and Unilever's global CMO all took swings at the concept from different angles. But the real argument isn't about purpose. It's about proximity.

The chawl — Mumbai's dense, communal housing structure — ran on radical proximity. Shared walls, shared water taps, shared gossip. Brands that grew inside that ecosystem didn't need a mission statement. They needed daily relevance, word-of-mouth credibility, and a reason to show up tomorrow.

That is the model most Indian founders actually operate inside, whether they know it or not. Tight communities, high trust transfer, short feedback loops. The problem is that Cannes teaches a different game — broadcast thinking dressed up in the language of culture.

When Priyanka Chopra Jonas attends the *other* Cannes and ET Shark Awards publishes a 2026 shortlist, what both signal is that Indian creative and commercial ambition is accelerating. The attention is real. The risk is importing frameworks that don't fit the terrain.

The chawl model scales better than it looks. Local density, reputation compounding, community endorsement — these are structural advantages that survive algorithm changes. The founders who figure out how to build for tight networks first, then expand outward, will outlast the ones chasing reach before resonance.