I definitely agree with the above sentiment, that if you’re looking to make it big on the internet, content based advertising targetted to Indian audiences is not what you’re looking for. No wonder VCs are financing only retail orientated online businesses.

Regards
Arjun Sandhu

for an interesting read about this general idea. look at our analysis on madhouse.

http://ileher.com/2007/01/09/online-dvd-rental-behind-the-curtains-with-madhouse/

The reason I feel, why we are not seeing a burst of activity in the Web 2 point o’ sphere at the moment in India, is because we don’t have the base services which others in the U.S build off of.
You can’t get directions of Google Maps here (though mapmyindia is a very refreshing sight), hardly anyone is familiar with sites like flickr, reddit, digg, google calendar, etc.

With hardly anyone, I mean the general masses and not the early adopters …

If you compare India, with a place like Silicon Valley, where you can expect everyone to know what digg or flickr is, you start thinking on the lines of - “what can I do next”.

Back here, by the time you come to a “next” idea, its already been implemented elsewhere …

Once the general mass comes to accept and use such other 2.0 services, it will become easier building off them and making cooler apps.
So, I’m guessing, we’ll have to either wait till the masses get a touch savvier or we’ll have to do something to push it ourselves …

Please pardon me if I am talking gibberish, just in my twilight zone right now …
Just wanted to get these random musings off my chest …

- Saurabh

Thanks for your insights here. I think we all agree that copying idea from Western market is not going to work in India. We need to invent our own models to make interesting offering for Indian audience - mobile play definitely being one of them.

Madhur

Good analysis. A few alternate thoughts on this:
1. Maybe our web 2.0 sites do not generate the kind of numbers that attract the mass media advertiser. But if there is a well defined demography which promises to be a very targetted market, relevant advertisers will still pay larger money to reach out to this (smaller) market.

2. 8 million users of a target profile is pretty interesting, I would believe. There are many postings here and at other places that have talked about making a 1 mn x Rs. 500 (give or take a few) marketplace (and how that could be a great business idea). If you have a target profile of 8 mn from which you need to get this 1 mn, its not a bad place to start at.

3. Current sites that take up the ad dollars, are doing so, mostly, for want of good competition. Where is the real value offering to an Internet user in India?? No, seriously, most times, all I am seeing is an easy replication of an internationally accepted model, without a serious effort to understand how India is different. I cannot over emphasise the need to give true value to your user.
That does not come, I am afraid, by simply replicating a netflix or a youtube or a facebook, here.
- ours is not such an isolated society model, where we spend weekends alone at home, making our microwave popcorn and seeing a rental video. We have our karwa chauths and our thread ceremonies to attend, and our religious discourses to go to, or our cousin’s brother-in-law’s wedding to attend, or of course, our joint families are there to keep us busy. Is video rental a really great model for India?
- when the amateur home video concept never came to India (I have not heard of an Indian TV equivalent of the best home videos show here), how many of us will have our videos to feed to a youtube equivalent??
- our kids are not looking for virtual support systems (usually). They are free to go around and mingle with their friends, call the friends over home, visit their friends, hang out at Cafe Coffee Day, etc. Is there a serious need for a Facebook equivalent? Will it get rampant usage, if it happened here?

Ok, things are changing, and our social and cultural context will be different in a few years. But my point is that we need to think out of the box, and see what can and will work here in India, instead of just looking outside and trying to adapt a model here.

And I have no doubt whatsoever, that if we focus differently, we will find many (not one, but many) applications that we can fit into the specific context of India. And THOSE will fly.

Being in the e-commerce field, I recognise, for example, that in our society, catalog shopping never really happened. Due to which reason, we are not quite accustomed to shopping for a product by just looking at its picture. That makes the challenge for e-commerce harder. Does that stop me from thinking about e-retail? No, but when we enter the Indian market now, we have a different strategy in place, which (hopefully) will be relevant to the context here.

I guess, newer models will emerge and some of what we extrapolate right now, may not quite pan out that way, because of new factors that we do not even know or see today, coming into the equation, over the next 1-3 years.

- Sanjay

My opinion is that India is not yet ready for Web 2.0. Why??

1. The net penetration is poor. Speed needed for some successful models are yet to be acheived in India.
2. Online transactions are yet to be accepted by the general masses.
3. Most of the net users on the networking scene want quantity rather than quality. They want to see a bunch of chicks on the network. Local startups cannot acheive this critical mass. Orkut has it already.
4. Ad spending will increase only when the right customer segment could be targetted and thats not happening.

Mobile content is the one to look out for. Its not as strictly regulated as in other countries. Still open for quality. You will see some new ventures coming in very soon. One that I know of is preparing its launch after success in Europe.

All the best !

Did you see Rediff Q&A ?

http://qna.rediff.com

kamal