Trademark Strategy for Vernacular-First Brands: Navigating India's Multilingual Mark Space

Introduction India’s approach to branding has become different. A decade back, the rule was to start in English and then localize. Now, brands starting D2C or regional first take the opposite route, choosing a Hindi name, a Devanagari-Roman combination logo, or even building the mark to be flexible with scripts from the beginning. While this may be seen as only a marketing decision, it places the brand firmly within an area that remains largely unaddressed in India’s trademark law, the...