>We do not have enough respect for our Indian consumers.
Stopped reading just about here. If this is what you China taught you, my guess is you are good at making up lessons.
What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
41–50 of 73 posts
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#42This so easily glosses over the linguistic apartheid in India (other African countries incl.), that it's shocking. See my previous interactions with the WASP imitations; I gather there are enough of them in India to form markets as large as Japan (oth. unicorns like Flipkart wouldn't survive). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12116787 A language without economic value dies eventually. It's likely that the complem…
> The former will probably produce enough clones
Like China does or better than it?
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#43Here are some counter examples to the cynical uproar, I have specifically chosen examples of entrepreneurship born in India (against ones re-imported from the US and elsewhere) Successful companies that created products for the local market. All examples are from TamilNadu a southern Indian state. More such examples exist all over India. Such examples are not possible without having consumer interest at heart, Indian…
Great picks. But notice how these are specifically in the FMCG domain. ParleG- an 8 cent biscuit out of India is the world's highest selling biscuit.
The article IMHO talks more of the mainstream digital Internet businesses which largely ignore the 200M non-english speaking people on the "Indian Internet".
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#44>We do not have enough respect for our Indian consumers. This is clearly visible. You can take any area of business and you would find bad customer service everywhere. The very few cases where customers are being treated a bit better would fall into one of 2 categories: 1. The company is a foreign multinational. 2. The company is Indian, operating in an area of business which has foreign multinational competition. An…
And then there is a 3rd category of companies: Startups that do well and get complacent post funding.
Case in point: Furlenco
On supermarkets only 1 player seems to get it right as of now - Hypercity. Maybe Amazon will kill it in the next 5-10 years
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#45Excellent analysis. > Access to higher education in India is available only in English ... this creates a general differentiation, an unwritten apartheid. I couldn't agree more. Have always felt this without being able to fully articulate what it was until now. I've always felt having so many languages has hurt India more. I can validate that Chinese people in the west can still think about heading back to China and…
"I've always felt having so many languages has hurt India more." - why?
Many languages are dying in India and that's just sad - every language lost erodes identities, stories, and diversity.
However, more and more people are moving to 'link languages' like Hindi, Tamil, Bengali etc. The challenge is to ensure all local language users are treated equal in India
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#46This so easily glosses over the linguistic apartheid in India (other African countries incl.), that it's shocking. See my previous interactions with the WASP imitations; I gather there are enough of them in India to form markets as large as Japan (oth. unicorns like Flipkart wouldn't survive). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12116787 A language without economic value dies eventually. It's likely that the complem…
> India: you have bigger problems than the efficient milking of the population - you need to feed the cow first.
Absolutely disagree. Some data-points in this regard: - Rural FMCG share is already greater than Urban. - While rural markets grew by 16%, urban did 12%. - For many like Dabur India, 50 per cent of their domestic sales comes from rural markets.
> No India is not going to beat China economically, nor will Africa.
I wonder why you'd think that monetisation via Internet is the only thing that adds value to a society. In developing nations, Internet trickles democracy down like nothing else. The kind of equality and voice that the Internet gives, is especially required for people who don't have a high SEC category.
Another important pillar of long term economic growth to a nation is- productivity growth. Internet inclusion drives that.
http://www.ibef.org/industry/indian-rural-market.aspx http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/with-urba... http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/fmcg-firm...
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#47Here are some counter examples to the cynical uproar, I have specifically chosen examples of entrepreneurship born in India (against ones re-imported from the US and elsewhere) Successful companies that created products for the local market. All examples are from TamilNadu a southern Indian state. More such examples exist all over India. Such examples are not possible without having consumer interest at heart, Indian…
Yes, the Unilevers and the P&Gs of the world did a great job at understanding India and customizing their products. (And then Baba Ramdev came along with Patanjali!)
Incidentally was on a call with the CEO of Scripbox today who mentioned that he had to innovate his KYC/documentation process for the Indian market as people wanted the convenience of having it picked up vs. couriering it themselves.
However, getting back to the point - very few companies other than the FMCG space cater to non-English speaking/ local language users in India. Localization is key to India, but for some reason largely overlooked as of now.
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
While you are correct, those states are not small. The number of native speakers for top five major languages as of 2001 are: Hindi (and dialects) 422 mil Bengali 83 mil Telugu 74 mil Marathi 72 mil Tamil 61 mil These are not insignificant populations. If you add in Bengali speakers in Bangladesh, the total hits 189 mil. It's easier to think of India the way you think of EU: an aggregation of peoples and cultures und…
This is of course true. But generally speaking, most of the folks who speak these languages but don't speak Hindi also don't have much money and may not even have internet. In Maharashtra, virtually every middle class person speaks English and Hindi in addition to Marathi. Auto drivers or street vendors will speak only Hindi and Marathi. Of the people I've encountered who don't speak Hindi, most were cooks/maids/simi…
> But generally speaking, most of the folks who speak these languages but don't speak Hindi also don't have much money and may not even have internet.
About a 100M people in India know English out of a population of 1.3 Billion. It is only the MNC service sector wherein know-english-have-money holds true. The larger chunk of India's income is generated by people who do not know English or Hindi(~800 Million people fall into this bucket).
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing is - every state in India has its own language, more-or-less. Either you can translate into every single language at extreme cost, or you can use either Hindi or English. Of the two, English is likely slightly wider-spoken these days. India doesn't have a language which you can be guaranteed nearly everyone will speak. English is the closest thing for the classes that are being targeted for ecommerce. Aside…
As someone who studies culture (as you can tell), my hate is reserved for the neo-colonial entities and the bourgeoisie they cultivate to stay in power. If you call such entities by the names the kakistocracies christen, then yes, I hate most states in the global south. India, like China, however was a historic center (天竺 - heaven axis they called it) unlike most in the global south. To see it brought to the same lev…
Granted that India has structural issues. Which country doesn't?
A good look at the American presidential election 2016 tells us all.
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#50With very low per capita income in India I think language issue is secondary. Even if customer service were better and native languages supported on internet based startups there would not be much opportunities or growth. To put things in perspective it is 5-7% of top income people who come under 'middle class' in India. Startups in India are mostly rich kids hanging out with other rich kids and thinking wow seems li…
"With very low per capita income in India I think language issue is secondary"
Flip that around for a while. If the language issue was made primary, you could literally speak any language and have access to quality education and higher-paying jobs.
Just read an article yesterday that said that 60 students were expelled from the IITs - one of the major reasons being that they could not cope with English as the medium of instruction: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/educat...