The oldest were born in an India that was rapidly shrugging off the last vestiges of a socialist past and which already boasted a handful of satellite channels. The youngest are unaware of a past without mobile phones or the internet (they have always been around). By some estimates there are 120.47 million of the species right now, a number that will remain constant-it will go up marginally some years, and come down incrementally, some others-over the next 10 years (by 2016, there will be 116.19 million), a demographic feat that is already the envy of most other countries that are more grey than green. These are the tweens (short for in-betweens), children between the ages of eight and 12 that straddle the middle between infants, toddlers, pre-schoolers and early-schoolers who are almost entirely dependent on their parents and teenagers who would like to believe that they are not dependent on anyone. Over the past few years, that's a segment that has grown into a direct market of some Rs 20,000 crore, a market for everything from gaming consoles to books, apparel to cricket lessons, and burgers to beyblades.

TWEEN-MINDSETS: Children start defining themselves around the age of eight. They do this in terms of their parents, friends (gang, and peer pressure plays a part in their consumption habits), school, activities, and the like. They also become aware of brands at this age TWEEN-NUMBERS: The 45 million tweens in urban centres are the primary target for most marketers addressing the tween market. A substantial chunk of this number comes from double-income homes, and children from such homes are empowered early

That last, beyblades would seem to be an obsession. Fast spinning tops that are activated by pulling hard on an attached ripcord, beyblades are the weapon of choice for anime hero Tyson in Cartoon Network's popular show Toonami, and close to a million have been sold in India since their launch in May. In many ways, beyblades are the perfect example of the marketing-to-tweens phenomenon. The market for beyblades was created, and is being grown and sustained by television. The very definition of the segment itself was also a creation of advertising. As P.N. Vasanti, Director, Centre For Media Studies, points out, "The children's segment was the least tracked consumer category in the country and it was only after the arrival of television channels such as Cartoon Network that we started getting some quantitative and qualitative data on it." In hindsight, that seems logical: channels needed to study the segment closely to sell themselves to advertisers. Thus, tweens and the tween-market may have existed for a long time, but it was television that taught marketers to look at them as a segment.

Having done that, marketers have discovered several facets to tweens that makes them ideal targets for marketing exercises. "Tweens have more buying power than any other demographic under 21," says Vikram Nair, Assistant Vice President (Children's Department), Lifestyle, a retail chain. "(Children in) the 8-12 age group are seen as tomorrow's consumers and (the segment) is important to companies from the point of view of entry and brand awareness," adds R. Suresh, Deputy Managing Director, TNS India. Then, there's the thing about pester-power, tweens driving purchase decisions even in categories such as TVs and cars. "This is particularly relevant to a country such as India where parents may not have been exposed to things as much as their kids," says Zarina Mehta, Head (Programming), Hungama TV, a channel largely targeted at tweens.

In some ways, eight is the age when most children begin to define themselves, in terms of their parents, friends, school, activities, hobbies and the like. Marketers are hoping that by targeting tweens, they can get them to define themselves in terms of brands too.

While there may be 120 million tweens in India, the relevant audience for companies is smaller, 45 million, which is the number of children between the ages of eight and 12 that live in large cities and belong to households from the higher reaches of the sec (Socio Economic Classification). And there seems to be a direct correlation between tween-empowerment and nuclear families on one axis, and double-incomes on another. "Where both parents go to work the premise is that the child is grown up enough to manage alone," explains Chandrashekhar Bhat, Head (Department of Sociology), University of Hyderabad. And, the unspoken corollary goes, grown up enough to make purchase decisions and spend money.