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Yes I know, things have been slow at iLeher for some time. As Vivek pointed out earlier, the team members have been busy individually in their own stuff. Anyways,`I wanted to assure our audience that we are not fading away. The Internet activity in Indian space is as buzzing as ever. I was catching up on my reading and came across a couple of interesting thought-provoking posts by industry experts.

Darpan Munjal has this great post on ecommerce in India, where he talks about what are the gaps that need to be filled and what it might take to create a successful business in online commerce. I completely agree with him on all the points, and believe that starting an eCommerce venture is going to be much more challenging in India. It involves proving the audience about the value of online shopping, which of course can only happen if some one can execute on the points that the post talks about - not an easy ask. I have my own personal doubts on whether we have the critical online mass for that in India right now. But that doesn’t mean that now is not the right time to venture into ecommerce. I am sure there exists a model that will fit the Indian market and to get that model right, now is probably the best time to start, falter, learn, evolve and get the early mover advantage. What are your thoughts? When will we see an Amazon in India?

Anurag Gupta ponders on the much talked about web 2.0 brands in India. Whether Indian firms can compete with the global biggies. Do we have the resources, talent, mindset to come up with offerings that can pull users and make money. All I have to say on this is that web2.0 is just fancy term for a combination of some web technologies and business models that leverage the power of community. If there is a compelling online service that solves a problem or adds value (e.g. travel, matri, job sites) or even just lot of fun (e.g. orkut) to customers’ online experience, we can do just as good a job as any global biggie. Now whether a new site can start making money or not is a different question. If you ask me, if its pure advertising based model, I’d not bet my money on it today, but online advertising market is surely evolving. On the other hand, this presents an opportunity to invent new business models to leverage the online traffic maybe by adding subscription based premium services, sending leads to transaction oriented sites such as ticketing, online shopping etc.

On a side note, do you think Reliance Entertainment is worth $3 billion ?!