21–30 of 73 posts
>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…
Earlier 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…
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…
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.
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…
Earlier 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…
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…
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/similar.
A peripherally related question: is it worth translating your software into Dutch? 90% of the Netherlands speaks English and by having English you've also covered the UK. So it's probably not worth it.
Now lets compare the Netherlands to Maharashtra. The GDP of the Netherlands is $850B (16M people). The GDP of Maharashtra is about $400B (for 110M people). Half that GDP is just Mumbai (about 20M people) and Mumbai is disproportionately a place where English and Hindi work well.
If you are very forward thinking (10+ years), it might be worthwhile gambling that gaining a foothold in regional languages today might pay off when those regions grow. But that's a very long play.
Startups in India are mostly rich kids hanging out with other rich kids and thinking wow seems like there are so many people like us who needs online commerce and services and so must be great business opportunity.
I agree customer service and infrastructure is in very bad shape but one thing many would not like to talk or admit is 95% of population is simply not in any state to pay even very little for better infrastructure. E.g Indians whine about poor telecom services while average revenue per user is like $2 per month. So it is quite unlikely to upgrade infrastructure / services to decent level.
Any infrastructure which once made available, accessible to all without price discrimination will remain in bad shape for very long time.
Delhi seems to be doing good and the only hope I have is on that state. They are one of the smallest states but have the highest investing education among all states. That's the way to go. Nothing else will cure all this non sense going on.
Very interesting article, thank you... Gandhi used to say: "To give millions a knowledge of English is to enslave them" [1], because "We ignorantly adhere to their cast-off systems" based on education and status. That's so true. I am happy to see businessmen and businesswomen that are really starting to grasp the concept, without naming it. [1] http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/resources_gandhi.html
Once the regime inflates itself out of existence for the sake of all those suckling on taxes, revolution comes and all the nuts the squirrel accumulates now will flee him. Like Mao's murdering mobs, that can bring great destruction.
The horizon of the homo economicus, I fear, is not quite as far ahead as some of us, nor is the French revolution as far behind.
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…