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What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market

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Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market

#51

Post by pakhibagai »

ocean3 wrote: post #25
user5994461 wrote: post #16

If you look at the internet users per country: http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users-by-country/ India has 462M people who can access internet at home, among 1326M inhabitants. That is a less lot than what one would think at first. Given that most companies reading HN are americans and some europeans. That brings the question of should we bother for the Indian market (early or at all)? Cultural barriers + L…

Those numbers would grow as most users move to smart phones. Mobile would be their Internet enabled device.English would still be common language. Millions are using WhatsApp typing in Hinglish, kannglish etc(typing in local language kb is cumbersome)

Not quite - Swalekh is a local language + English keypad app with native and phonetic modes. You can type a Kannada word in English and have it translated to Kannada script. It also ensures you don't mis-spell and has a low footprint on mobile phones.

Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market

#52

Post by otabdeveloper »

gajjanag wrote: post #19
snovv_crash wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn't India always been like that though, with the caste system? Nobody writes epics about the person who dug Arjuna's toilets, and so we see the past through rose-coloured lenses.

Nobody has written epics about anyone digging someone else's toilets as far as I know. This is not unique to the Mahabharatha or other Indian epics. As for the caste system, yes, it has had a lot of evils. But then almost all populations around the world have some notion of "class" that is loosely defined, with its own set of evils. I fail to see how this is unique to India, see for instance the topic of ghettos in m…

> we never see an orc perspective or pov

Offtopic, but this is false. There's a whole chapter of orcish perspective at the end of book IV.

Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market

#53

Post by geodel »

pakhibagai wrote: post #50
geodel wrote: post #27

With 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…

How would you make it primary? It would take a lot more resources to have services in multiple languages and resource are the big issue in first place.

From the article you linked:

> Apart from the language issue, the inability to apply knowledge to concepts is another reason why students fail.

I know it would be speculation but I think these kids were already below average when admitted.

Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market

#54

Post by user5994461 »

captn3m0 wrote: post #18
user5994461 wrote: post #16

If you look at the internet users per country: http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users-by-country/ India has 462M people who can access internet at home, among 1326M inhabitants. That is a less lot than what one would think at first. Given that most companies reading HN are americans and some europeans. That brings the question of should we bother for the Indian market (early or at all)? Cultural barriers + L…

There are some issues with that claim (462M): http://www.medianama.com/2013/07/223-calling-the-bluff-on-in... .

The page I gave is for July 2016. It states that a "user" is someone who have access internet at home, at anytime of the day. No matter what device is used.

Your page is old and complaining that the number of 485M given in 2012-2013 was overinflated. That seems about right given that the last numbers are still a bit under that by now.

On a different topic. Ut looks like only 10-20% of connections are wired (e.g. broadband). The rest is wireless (probably mobile data)

That seems important to know if going for that market. (red: target phone, bad bandwidth, bad latency.)

Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market

#55

Post by markdown »

pakhibagai wrote: post #45
jagtesh wrote: post #20

Excellent 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

> very language lost erodes identities, stories, and diversity.

But they're lost because they've outlived their usefulness. Language is about communication. A language with which you can only communicate with a tiny minority of the humans on the planet is nowhere near as useful as a global one.

I'm not sure how I feel about linguists and historians who want to preserve a language in place. This gives them joy, but handicaps the children who have to allocate limited resources to learning a language that is pretty much useless outside of their villages or districts. You basically handicap children who were already born into poverty just so you can say you preserved a language.

Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market

#56

Post by markdown »

FraaJad wrote: post #24
xyzzy4 wrote: post #13

A lot of people in India can write in Hindi or English, but not the local language. They don't bother to learn how. For example my fiancée is a native Telugu speaker but she can't write a word in it. There's also a very significant amount of people who can't read or write in any language. It would make using the Internet very difficult.

Hindi is a local language. Those who can't write/read their own mother tongue are the product of the aforementioned linguistic apartheid where the city bred kids (I am one) attend a CBSE/ICSE curriculum that actively discourage non-Hindi/English languages.

> Those who can't write/read their own mother tongue are the product of the aforementioned linguistic apartheid

You have two options:

a. Teach them a language they can use almost anywhere on the planet. A language that documents most of the planets knowledge.

b. Teach them a language they can use in their geographical district and almost nowhere else.

The powers that they'd be better served by (a). You might think (b) would have been a better choice, but implying that (a) is akin to apartheid is ridiculous.

If I'm forced to use the word "apartheid" to label one of those, I'd point to (b). To teach the poor of india a language that handicaps them compared to humans of the planet who take path (a) is to limit their opportunities and keep them "in their place" in their little geographic corner of the world.

Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market

#57

Post by nindalf »

markdown wrote: post #55
pakhibagai wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

> very language lost erodes identities, stories, and diversity. But they're lost because they've outlived their usefulness. Language is about communication. A language with which you can only communicate with a tiny minority of the humans on the planet is nowhere near as useful as a global one. I'm not sure how I feel about linguists and historians who want to preserve a language in place. This gives them joy, but ha…

You're not wrong about the economic utility of certain languages. However, every language lost is a tragedy. This obituary explains it better than I could.

Marie Smith, last speaker of the Eyak language. http://www.economist.com/node/10640514

Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market

#58

Post by selimthegrim »

ittekimasu wrote: post #33
selimthegrim wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So for those countries that weren't historic centers, their optimal fate is to put up with a comprador boot in their face, forever?

Strawman. Actually I have greater hopes for Africa, considering that nothing on the likes of, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decolonising_the_Mind has emerged out of the sub-continent. Edit: This has an excerpt, http://swaraj.org/ngugi.htm

I suppose the names Eqbal Ahmed and Tariq Ali mean nothing to you?

Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market

#59

Post by ittekimasu »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #36
ittekimasu wrote: post #3

This 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 a socialist republic? I'm not sure where you're getting that from. Sure, there's tons of subsidies for the poor, but that's necessary in a country as large and poor as India. Re: language. There's plenty of strong linguistic identity in the south, East and West of India. The north has a weaker cultural identity, but the rest take great pride in their language and culture.

From its constitution.

Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market

#60

Post by ittekimasu »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #42
ittekimasu wrote: post #3

This 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?

Hmm. In India, education, laws, governance, pretty much every sphere of power, last I looked, is run in English, for the English (vestiges).

China, like most nations, may aspire towards Western nations, but K-pop/Internet/TV inspired fads are no match for such awesome structures enforces under the threat of violence.

As outsiders, it's likely to be difficult to appreciate this - I recommend Naipaul (although he tends to believe colonization was some godsend).

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