- The number of Internet Users depending on whom you believe is somewhere in the range of 30 - 100M. Quite a large range, but noone really knows for sure.
- The inflection point for the Internet is about 80M based on learnings from China. This number was thrown around at a couple of different sessions. This is when the Internet becomes an attractive medium for advertisers. Internet usage is still in its early days in India. In the next 18 - 24 months, it is expected that India will reach the inflection point.
- Access to the Internet via the mobile will also continue to grow - again we expect the mass numbers to be in the next few years as we have better browsers, Querty keypads and cheaper phones.
- Only the #1 and #2 sites will be profitable in a specific category or horizontal sites. Niches / Verticals are the way to go.
- Reliance stated that ZAPAK has 4M registered users and is doing over $2M USD in advertising. Advertising is picking up on the Internet. The overall rate of advertising in India is growing at 18%. The growth of Internet advertising is double or triple this number.
- Growth of BB users will happen via mobile (ie. 3G or wimax) - it is highly unlikely that this will be the landline phenomena that we are used to in the US. Although, the IT minister did promise that in the next couple of years that the Internet connectivity will be available at the village level.
- There was some concern about the content on the Internet. Currently there is no killer application. It is thought that Entertainment will be the key driver not E-commerce. There was a lot of debate about local language content being one of the key drivers of growth. Currently, there is not enough compelling content for the masses.
- In terms of areas of investment, it seems that education sector and the favorites web2.0/KPOs was mentioned many many times. Sequoia invested $18M or so in TutorVista and still feels that there is tremendous headroom in this sector. Also, according to Educomp (the market leader) - that the market is fragmented with no player with more than 2% market share. Growth in population, usage of technology and the fact that usually education is recession proof will provide many new areas of growth.
- Another areas rasing eyebrows is what is know referred to as the CtoG and the GtoC sector. Big brother is everywhere and the Internet will be no exception. There will be lots of opportunity in the Government to Consumer segment.
- Raising VC financing will be tough. It will be a must-have to have a product and a well defined revenue model. It will be the survival of the best and brightest.
And on a totally unrelated note, India is now the 5th largest market for Louis Vuitton Goods after #1 -Japan, and #2 - France. It just goes to show that there are plenty of people that can afford Luxury goods. From this I can only extrapolate - that there are plenty of people at the top of the pyramid avialing of services such as the Internet .. but know how to get to those at the bottom of the pyramid.
1 comment:
The internet population in India is quite high and is on the verge of a major breakthrough. Internet is going to be a great medium for Education- bot primary, secondary and professional education. Currently lots of Universities and colleges in the US are offering undergraduate online courses. If strict biometric standards are implemented, there is no limit to the utility of the internet. People can work from home, have meetings online. Working from home will be a rule rather than an exception and online identities are going to be order of the day. The technology is there. It just needs the top Management of companies who are mostly from the previous Generation to realise the potential and move away from the regular way of doing business from a brick and mortar setup. Everything can be done online, this will give more objectivity in the work place too.
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