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Google to Invest $10B in India

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Re: Google to Invest $10B in India

#241

Post by mekoka »

screye wrote: post #199
amrrs wrote: post #3

There's been a recent surge in American companies investing in India primarily through Reliance Jio (owned by Mukhesh Ambani who's got a good connect with the current ruling Government). It's been spiking since the Anti-China sentiment led Buy and Use 'Made in India' cries. Government has even asked eCom Flipkart and Amazon to display Country of Origin for each product. With all these, This investment from Google see…

> Mukhesh Ambani who's got a good connect with the current ruling Government To be fair, Mukesh has got good connections everywhere. He is India's most powerful person. Amitabh and the Shahrukh (some of the world's richest actors, both half billionaires) both volunteered as servers at his daughters wedding as a show of appreciation. If a man can command the most powerful of his country to such level of willful subser…

> volunteered as servers at his daughters wedding as a show of appreciation.

> can command the most powerful of his country to such level of willful subservience

To me there's a disconnect between the two phrases. I don't think they were volunteering to humiliate themselves, but rather to show how close they were. Let's say hypothetically that Bill Gates had become really good pal with Jeff Bezos and that you went to an event that one of the two had organized and you saw the other serving the punch, would you say that he's being subservient?

Re: Google to Invest $10B in India

#242

Post by paulpan »

screye wrote: post #199
amrrs wrote: post #3

There's been a recent surge in American companies investing in India primarily through Reliance Jio (owned by Mukhesh Ambani who's got a good connect with the current ruling Government). It's been spiking since the Anti-China sentiment led Buy and Use 'Made in India' cries. Government has even asked eCom Flipkart and Amazon to display Country of Origin for each product. With all these, This investment from Google see…

> Mukhesh Ambani who's got a good connect with the current ruling Government To be fair, Mukesh has got good connections everywhere. He is India's most powerful person. Amitabh and the Shahrukh (some of the world's richest actors, both half billionaires) both volunteered as servers at his daughters wedding as a show of appreciation. If a man can command the most powerful of his country to such level of willful subser…

I'm not familiar with Mukhesh Ambani or his reputation, but sounds like he's India's version of China's Jack Ma? Jack Ma and Alibaba came to the forefront due in part to his connections to the Chinese government.

On the topic itself, it's unclear what Google's intentions are and how they could benefit from such an investment. $10B is not a big sum so is the purpose altruistic or as grease for other purposes?

Re: Google to Invest $10B in India

#244

Post by 236dev »

sunseb wrote: post #118

Why not invest in the US and the black community?

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. I feel the same way about h1b visas. I wish instead of importing cheap labor we spent extra money and trained people in the African American community that don't have as many opportunities.

Re: Google to Invest $10B in India

#245

Post by nsm »

questionfor wrote: post #212
kamaal wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well Indian customer is always a price conscious one though. Like it or not, we are that way. Remember those days people used to make pre agreed arrangements, and just make the communication acknowledgements though missed calls? So eventually if you want to be profitable and sell more services, you have to offer a good price. It's just the way it is. I even know people who look at fares and then decide if they want t…

> Remember those days people used to make pre agreed arrangements, and just make the communication acknowledgements though missed calls? Can you elaborate how did that work? I never heard about this method

Say you want to tell your mom once you safely reach school (via public transport). But you don't actually want to spend the money on a call or text (India did not have "unlimited text", at least when I was growing up there). So your mom and you agree on a protocol that "one missed call means I reached safely". Now you just call her and disconnect immediately. Message received.

Re: Google to Invest $10B in India

#246

Post by masalachai »

intended wrote: post #223
sbmthakur wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In those 'competive' days data prices were so high that most of the country couldn't afford it. And this was just because the existing companies had formed some sort of a 'cartel' and were not willing to part with profits[0]. All that changed when Jio entered the market. 0. https://www.counterview.net/2016/09/top-telecom-cartes-airte...

Those are not the competitive days, those are pretty much classic examples of the chilling effect on our market after the SC forcing a re-auction. An auction exposes market pricing information which was hidden before. In case people aren't aware, the Indian mobile sector was one of the cheapest and most pioneering markets of its time. People created the 0 cost phone call - farmers and mobile users could give a missed…

> In case people aren't aware, the Indian mobile sector was one of the cheapest and most pioneering markets of its time.

Not sure in what way you mean pioneering but it was definitely not the cheapest! Everything cost money. Text messages, phone calls, data, roaming between states, out-of-state phone calls. Everything. All this in addition to the cost of the cell phone itself - no bundled offers with phone like AT&T did with Apple in the US.

Furthermore, you could get away with a connection from private companies like Airtel and Vodafone if you lived in a big city. Rural coverage by these players was notoriously bad. The only substitute available was the one provided by the government itself - BSNL - which got a reputation of having the "best coverage".

All that changed dramatically when Reliance came up with a Rs.500 phone which included a connection with free unlimited calls between two Reliance phones. That was the beginning of true mass adoption of cell phones in India.

> People created the 0 cost phone call - farmers and mobile users could give a missed call to a number they heard on the radio, and then they would get a call back.

This is not an example of a model working well. This is an example of a workaround to mitigate high call costs.

Re: Google to Invest $10B in India

#247

Post by vinay_ys »

viklove wrote: post #214
derefr wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> volunteered as servers at his daughters wedding ... subservience I don't know about you, but when I hear "working as a server at a wedding attended by many powerful people", I don't think "subservience", I think "unique opportunity to make connections, and to potentially snoop insider information."

You must not know of Amitabh and the Shahrukh -- they're not some smalltime actors that need to get a leg up. This would be like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt offering to be servers at Jeff Bezos' daughters wedding. It's absurdly subservient.

Subservient isn't the right word I think. A lot of rich and famous attended the Ambani wedding events – Clinton, Huffington etc and a lot of celebrities from world over.

Beyonce did a show too. So did a lot of Bollywood celebrities. These celebrities do paid gigs at these ultra rich wedding parties.

https://www.wmagazine.com/story/isha-ambani-wedding-india-hi...

Re: Google to Invest $10B in India

#249

Post by eldaisfish »

buran77 wrote: post #237
eldaisfish wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>India's population is within 50 million of China but has double the growth rate. What on earth are you talking about? India's growth rate in the past decade is nowhere comparable to China's. Even if you argue that China cooks their books, you cannot discount the volume and value of trade that China does with numerous other countries. http://statisticstimes.com/economy/china-vs-india-economy.ph... >it still has a hug…

> India's population is within 50 million of China but has double the growth rate. The growth rate refers to the population.

thanks. i misread that and assumed that growth implied economic growth. My other point stands - India's market with any meaningful purchasing power is minuscule compared to China's.

Re: Google to Invest $10B in India

#250

Post by asenna »

intended wrote: post #221
enitihas wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, the prices are far lower than they were in those insanely competitive days.

True, yet recently I recall prices being raised and all firms moving in lock step. A classic signs of oligopolistic behavior. Further all 3 major firms are in massive debt, and after the SC interpretation of how they have to pay their dues, they are pretty much dead firms unless they get money. You can already see them creating new packages to target users who have more disposable income. I'd say make hay while the s…

I don't think Jio's game is to squeeze out revenue from the cheap data users. They've openly admitted to using Deep-packet Inspection techniques and I believe data harvesting is where the main long-term game looks to be for them.

If you're concerned about your privacy, it's usually known in India in the tech circles to stay away from Jio related products.

https://in.reuters.com/article/reliance-telecoms-jio/from-bi...

https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/reliance-jio-...

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