Month: October 2009

This week’s links:

• Inside the App Economy: from Business Week.  “Beyond the goofy games is a world of useful programs that’s making fortunes and changing the rules of business.”
• CK Prahalad Interview: from Knowledge@Wharton, on the bottom of the pyramid. “How has Prahalad’s book — a revised, fifth-anniversary edition of which has just been published — affected the behavior of companies and the well-being of consumers in the years since its publication?”
• The next Four Billion: by Tomi Ahonen. “There are 480 million newspapers printed daily; 800 million automobiles registered on the planet; 1.1 billion personal computers including all desktops, laptops, notebooks and netbooks; 1.2 billion fixed landine phones; 1.4 billion internet users; 1.5 billion TV sets; 1.7 billion unique holders of a credit card of any type; and 2.1 billion unique holders of a banking account of any kind. But 4 billion mobile phone subscriptions.”
• What Startups are Really Like: by Paul Graham.
• Google redefines Disruption — The Less-than-Free Business Model: by Bill Gurley. “Google will pay you to use their mobile OS. I like to call this the “less than free” business model. This is a remarkable card to play.”

About three-and-a-half- years ago, I had thought 3G was a year away. Amazingly, that is true even as of today!

In India, 3G with its promise of higher speeds and more efficient spectrum utilisation should have been rolled out ages ago. But individual greed was put ahead of national good — it is hard for people in power to make money through auctions!

3G services are already available via BSNL and MTNL, and through the EV-DO services that the CDMA operators have launched. 3G will help with better and cheaper voice, and richer and more varied data services. Each of us will discover our own killer app for the thicker pipes that will be now available. So, it should create interesting opportunities for mobile content and software companies, and give a big boost to the mobile Internet in India.

But, the reality is with we should have been auctioning spectrum for 4G/LTE now. In telecom, we cannot afford to stay a generation behind.

Monday: Voice Competition

By now, we should have seen a few real Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) in India, and not just the single pseudo MVNO in the form of Virgin Mobile. MVNOs don’t set up their own network – they piggyback on an existing operator’s network. They do, however, create their own brand and go-to-market strategy, and also own the customer relationship.

India’s cheap voice tariffs don’t leave much room for arbitrage. So, the play may be more on the distribution side – for example, Future Group may use its retail network to sell voice minutes just like it sells tens of thousands of other products. They will make a small margin and get an entry into a vertical without having to invest in spectrum.

The real action will come when Data MVNOs start coming to the fore — on the lines of what Amazon has done with the Kindle in the US.

Tomorrow: 3G

As part of my Interop keynote, I discussed five disruptions that we are going to see going ahead in the mobile industry in India. A single slide doesn’t necessarily do justice, so I thought I would elaborate on each of the five themes: MNP, MVNO, 3G, Voice Competition and VAS Competition.

Mobile Number Portability (MNP)

MNP is likely to be rolled out sometime in the next few months. It will allow people to switch operators and retain their mobile number.

Today, one of the mental blocks many people have against switching to new operators is that they would need to get a new mobile number, and then would come the perceived pain of notifying everyone in their address book of the new number. So, they stay put.

Now, that status quo is about to change. Will people switch? I think there will be some switching which will happen from Vodafone and Airtel to some of the other operators. Initially, operators will primarily try and compete on voice plans. The real opportunity, though, is to attract high ARPU customers with compelling data services — and I don’t see that happening yet. Operators still don’t have the mindset to think about anything other than voice!

Tomorrow: MVNO

I will be speaking on Digital Business Models at the Insight event next week, organised by the Loyola Institute of Business Administration. My session is on “Revisiting the Digital Strategy: Internet, Mobile and Social Media Marketing.” The audience will be primarily B-school students.

I plan to look at the topic from two angles:

• for start-ups / companies who are already in the digital space and what they need to do (eg. consider a strategy that includes both Net and mobile, and focuses on multi-monetisation), and
• for businesses on what mix they need to look at acquire new customers and build deeper relationships with existing customers.

Watching and following Cricket is part of the lives of most of us in India. It is pretty much the only sport that we tend to bother about.

Of late, however, I get the feeling that interest is starting to wane – in me, and others. Maybe it is the surfeit of all sorts of cricket with all varieties of times, maybe its just me growing older, maybe it is the lacklustre performance by the Indian team, maybe it is the disappearing star value of the players.

There was a time  when a cricket match was looked forward to with great anticipation, and especially the Tests. Now, there is a sense of deja vu in the matches. Australia and India started an ODI series — so what.

Anyone else get the same feeling?

PS: Just saw this cover story in OPEN magazine!

I wrote this a year ago:

In recent times, cloud computing has become a more fashionable way to refer to the ASP (application service provider) business. In India, given the lack of legacy in terms of IT deployment that exists in many SMEs, there is a powerful opportunity to get them to leapfrog to using services from the cloud which are also mobile-enabled from day one.

Another way to think of this is as an “Enterprise IT Operator” offering a wide array of services. Here are some that I can think of:

• Computing
  • Desktop Network Computer
• Connectivity / Communications
  • DSL
  • Fixed-Mobile Convergence
• Server Infra and Apps
  • OS, Desktop Apps
  • Collaboration Apps / Document Sharing
  • Business Apps: Accounting / CRM •
• Cloud Services
  • VPN; Backup
  • Remote Desktops (Windows / Linux)
  • Video Conferencing
• Mobilising Apps
  • Email, CRM, SFA… -Integration of Mobility into Business Processes (eg. Email2SMS, Alerts)
• Mobile Marketing
  • Mobile Presence
  • Ads, Leads, Transactions
• AppStore (for ISVs)

This week’s links:

• What’s holding India Back: from Business Week. “Business is battling farmers over land, putting $98 billion in investments—and an industrial revolution—on hold.”
• India’s Demographic Moment: by Nandan Nilekani (in strategy+business). “It’s clear that if a country’s colleges and schools are in good health and if a significant proportion of the population is graduating from them, the prospects of economic growth are promising. When conditions are right, large numbers of young workers can drive a nation’s growth to remarkable levels. This theory is known as the “demographic dividend,” a phrase coined by demographer David Bloom.”
• Kill Your Darlings: from Forbes. “It’s not about the good ideas you have–but the ones that you kill.”
• Wisdom from Scott Cook: by Will Price. On The Power of Word-of-Mouth, Be Where the Customers Are, How Do you Create WOM.
• Mary Meeker Internet Trends presentation: At Web 2.0 Summit, via TechCrunch.

On the way back from Rajasthan by train, I woke up just as the train (Aravali Express) pulled in to Ahmedabad a few minutes behind schedule at 10:15 pm. I got down from the upper berth and walked out on the platform. And as I looked around, I was transported back in time to when I was in my early teens.

Ahmedabad station was a station I knew well then – this was where we could change from the broad gauge Bombay line to the metre gauge train that would us through part of Gujarat and into Rajasthan. We could spend a couple hours at the station on each leg of our journey. And it was a journey I did with my parents and sister once a year.

My father had set up a marble factory in Abu Road and later an edible oil factory in Sheoganj (near Falna). During the late 1970s and early 1980s, we would make an obligatory annual week-long trip to Rajasthan by train. I could accompany my father to some of the marble mines, and we would mix in some temple visits also.

Now, of course the metre gauge has also become broad gauge, so the Ahmedabad interchange has been eliminated.

For about 15 minutes that night, I wandered around the platform re-living childhood memories, and marveling at the ecosystem at the platform that was so alive with food stalls and passengers.

The irony is that these problems have for the most part been self-inflicted because we have allowed our rulers to systemically siphon away money. As Atanu Dey put it, “India is poor because India is corrupt.”

Rajasthan and its people are part of the other India we like to call ‘Bharat.’ We give it a different name because we want to distance ourselves from it. Traveling through some of the small towns and villages, I could not help but look at the horrific sanitation situation. I should have become immune to it after all these years, but that Bharat is still part of our country – and we cannot give up expecting better so easily.

We have been horribly wrong in the 60 years since Independence. Many of us who should be aware of the situation have removed ourselves from the realities of the country and created a happy cocoon around us. We have the resources to bring about a transformation of our nation, but it cannot be done with the class of people who get us in there.

India needs a revolution from us, its people. We haven’t yet reached that turning point yet, but some of us will reach it soon. And we will decide enough is enough. We will start taking our country back from our rulers. Then, we can start building India right, and claim to be truly an Independent democratic nation.