Emerging middle class to expand by a billion people

US public relations firm Ogilvy & Mather identified 12 emerging markets that will be key to middle-class consumer growth over the next decade - showing a shift to South Asia as the epicenter of future middle-class growth, according to its new report released in Beijing on Tuesday.

The South Asian markets focus principally on India, but include Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Indonesia and the Philippines. The vast arc of future growth extends up to China, and to Egypt, Nigeria, Mexico and Brazil in the other direction.

In the next 10 years, these 12 markets will be the source of the next billion middle-class consumers, Ogilvy & Mather said. They will create a critical tipping point as the middle class moves from a minority to the majority of the local population in many of these markets.