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The trials and tribulations of doing business in India

economist.com

51–58 of 58 posts

Re: The trials and tribulations of doing business in India

#51
post #10
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheapest smartphone start around 4000, while popular price point is 6-10000. No one sells it for 1000, one company promised it, but never launched.

Also, didnt the company Micromax I believe start to gain a big market there? I haven't followed much on it yet but I know them and a bunch of home grown brands have started taking over as well

Upon googling "micromax market share", the first article that comes up was written on March 16th, 2016 [1]. That shows a dwindling market share. Other articles share same opinion. Although, the company has funded a new campaign[2] and the new Canvas series of smartphones from them look promising while maintaining a low price point.

[1]: http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report-how-did-micromax-lose-n... [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c62z2bIZfC0

PS: Apart from a handful of friends who own Micromax phones, I have no interest in the company whatsoever.

Re: The trials and tribulations of doing business in India

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you conclude based on this article that you need to bribe everyone to do anything in India?

> you need to bribe everyone to do anything in India? Not everything, but almost everything that has to do with Government. I had to pay bribe even to get my Passport, driver's license and police clearance certificate.

I don't know what time period you are talking about, because I got all of those (except police clearance, I didn't need that) in the last 5 years and none of them required any bribes. There were inefficiencies and frustrating bureaucracy, but no bribing was necessary.

Re: The trials and tribulations of doing business in India

#53

Note that this is limited to Apple's direct sales business model (aka selling phones through its own stores). Apple are free to sell through other retailers like LG, Xiaomi, and several other retailers do. But they like to have total and absolute control over all aspects of their products. Unfortunately, in this case, they have come across someone else who likes to exercise pretty strong control over aspects of the e…

Exactly. Apple is used to having everyone roll-over and let them steamroll over local laws but that's not gonna happen here. The market is still open, they are selling products in millions.

Re: The trials and tribulations of doing business in India

#55
post #50
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a pretty long list of citations at the bottom of that paper and the sample of them that I could be bothered to check for an internet article were legit. If you have any arguments against the thesis of that paper other than ad hominem I'd love to hear them. I'm hardly a scholar of Indian history, I just did a bunch of reading during the two months I recently spent traveling the country from south to north. Tha…

Alright, I took the bait. I read through the paper and it seems it heavily depends on Vedas for some of it's arguments. So your point about not considering Vedas as credible evidence doesn't stand. The paper doesn't comment anything (at least conclusively) about the Indian nation. The paper is about caste system. Some of your queries might be answered here http://sankrant.org/2003/10/why-india-is-a-nation/

That's a shame. You didn't even read the link you were arguing the validity of until now? I still don't think you read it since you've just quoted the thesis but not referenced the notion that the idea even of "Hindu" identity just didn't exist, even though the people in the region shared many of the same texts. That's not the same as claiming that the belief systems didn't exist, or that they weren't widely similar, but that they weren't a cohesive unit.

The blog post you linked me to just reinforces my point about nationhood if you'd have been paying much attention to my posts instead of getting defensive about "Indian identity" or whatever.

Re: The trials and tribulations of doing business in India

#56
post #55
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, I took the bait. I read through the paper and it seems it heavily depends on Vedas for some of it's arguments. So your point about not considering Vedas as credible evidence doesn't stand. The paper doesn't comment anything (at least conclusively) about the Indian nation. The paper is about caste system. Some of your queries might be answered here http://sankrant.org/2003/10/why-india-is-a-nation/

That's a shame. You didn't even read the link you were arguing the validity of until now? I still don't think you read it since you've just quoted the thesis but not referenced the notion that the idea even of "Hindu" identity just didn't exist, even though the people in the region shared many of the same texts. That's not the same as claiming that the belief systems didn't exist, or that they weren't widely similar,…

I am an Indian, do I need to read a foreign paper to know about my own nation?

You are confusing two different topics, we are not discussing the concept "Hindu", we are discussing whether there was an entity "India". The paper you linked says nothing about that. I have told you how the concept of India is very old using the citations in your cited paper. The blog post I linked proves my point so I don't know what you are talking about.

What do I have to be defensive about? Do you think I have identity crisis because some random person on the internet has some beliefs? lol

Re: The trials and tribulations of doing business in India

#57

The article quotes the cheapest smartphones in stores as being ~1000 rupees. That's about ~15 USD at the retail level. How does one go about sourcing that sort of low end phone? If I could order 100 of almost any smartphone at that price I would be very excited.

Although it might not be to your standards, I've purchased a brand new smart phone for $12 off of Amazon.

How was that experience? Can I ask what sort of OS it was running? Did it have a camera?

Re: The trials and tribulations of doing business in India

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although it might not be to your standards, I've purchased a brand new smart phone for $12 off of Amazon.

How was that experience? Can I ask what sort of OS it was running? Did it have a camera?

It has worked well so far, as a device to test my Android apps on. It does have a camera.
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