What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
1–10 of 73 posts
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#2>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.
Any field which does not have foreign players has businesses sitting on their asses, treating customers like crap and not innovating at all.
A big example is supermarkets. Big bazar, Reliance, More, etc are all homegrown supermarkets but they offer little over regular mom and pop stores or medium sized local supermarkets. Their prices are not significantly low. The service is crap. They suck up more of your time because they don't have enough cashiers. They refuse to innovate by introducing self-checkouts. Nothing. It is as if they are waiting for someone like walmart to swoop in and capture all the market and teach them how it's done.
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#3This 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 complement of the set is poor enough to not be of consequence (India's median income is the lowest of the BRICS - ~ $600 per-capita).
India: you have bigger problems than the efficient milking of the population - you need to feed the cow first. Irony of ironies, the country is apparently a "socialist republic". It'd be interesting to know about the kind of "intellectuals" sucking off of the Indian state's (imaginably fat) tits - Chomsky mentions somewhere how post-modernism (the new religion in the humanities), rids a population of desperately needed leaders.
Others: No India is not going to beat China economically, nor will Africa. The former will probably produce enough clones and ship them your way for cheap (profit!); the latter will continue in ignominy as its land gets stolen from underneath.
(Update: Here come the downvotes!)
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#4This 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 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 from that... looking at your comment history, you seem to really hate India. Any particular reason?
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#5This 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 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 level as sub-saharan Africa is painful; to realize there are deep structural issues that will keep it that way is even more so. Hate, yes, for the fat maggots feeding on the dying corpses - but that too is a distraction, for it's not the maggots' fault.
Rhetorical devices of the form "ah, but that's the our only way towards progress", will not be answered to. I'm tired of worn narrative, you lot bombard me with.
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#6Earlier 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…
As always for these kinds of tirades: what's your proposed alternative?
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#7This 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 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
It's easier to think of India the way you think of EU: an aggregation of peoples and cultures under a political umbrella. As an example, sure many people in germany speak english, but would you really try to seriously gain entry into the german market without localizing into german?
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#8Earlier 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…
And yet if you could enter Germany with the same marketing you give to the UK... wouldn't you?
There's a lot of markets which get left out when a company expands to "the EU" - which often means Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and maybe one or two other countries.
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#9Earlier 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…
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.
Re: What I learned from the Chinese about our Indian online market
#10What’s with the weird scrolling on this site?