• The coming tech-led boom: from WSJ. “In January 2012, we sit again on the cusp of three grand technological transformations with the potential to rival that of the past century. All find their epicenters in America: big data, smart manufacturing and the wireless revolution.”
• Top Tech Trends: from IEEE Spectrum. “Prediction of the tech that will make news this year.”
• The e-commerce revolution is all about you: from Techcrunch. “With the increasing mountains of data at digital retailers’ fingertips, ecommerce is about to get even more personal.”
• 2009 India Election Analysis: I came across this a few days ago. Very interesting points highlighted by Christopher Jaffrelot and Gilles Verniers. “Evidence from the results themselves show that…the process of fragmentation of the party system and the electorate is still progressing, Indian voters having opted for regional and local players more than they ever did before.”
• Unravelling India: An op-ed (Part 1) in the Business Standard on India’s economic scenario. ” How badly will this political paralysis hurt the economy’s immediate prospects? What’s the best way of tackling the endemic corruption? And is India’s long-term growth story still intact?”

The combination of open publishing platforms and operator-enabled micro-billing can transform the MVAS space in India by creating entrepreneurs everywhere – just like Apple’s AppStore did globally. This is what will drive the local content industry and create services relevant in our daily lives.

There is an exciting new world ahead of us. India’s mobile data revolution has largely bypassed the local industry. With some big thinking from the operators and RBI to simplify the mobile micro-payments, we could see a huge flourish of ideas and innovation. Will 2012 see this happen?

Since RBI has put very onerous conditions and not differentiated small payments from large, the banking and mobile wallets route looks unlikely to gain wide transaction in the near future. That leaves the operator route. Operators should  come up with a revenue share where the majority of what the user pays goes to the content and service providers, and payments should be made every month. This will create the necessary incentive for an entire industry of entrepreneurs to kickstart the Indian i-mode revolution.

The market is large. There are 100+ million mobile users in India who could easily pay Rs 50-100 each month for a wide range of data services. This is a market worth Rs 6,000-12,000 crore ($1.2-2.4 billion) annually. Operators would tend to make their money from increased data usage and the transaction fees, while the content and service providers would now also be able to get larger shares.

Continued tomorrow.

To answer these questions, it is instructive to look at what happened in Japan’s mobile space in 1999. That was when NTT Docomo, the largest mobile operator, launched i-mode. It did three things: opened up its platform to all software or content entities from a service creation point of view, standaridsed the pricing of each service to 300 yen a month, and shared 91% of this revenue with the service provider.

In other words, what NTT Docomo did was keep the data traffic revenue and 9% of the monthly service revenue. IN a few months, the service ecosystem had exploded to tens of thousands and i-mode’s user base grow to millions. It was a win-win for everyone.

If mobile operators in India can get their actions right, India too can see a similar explosion of mobile data innovation in the coming years.

Continued tomorrow.

The challenge in this emerging world is that of monetisation.  The only option for content creators is that of advertising. The other option – subscriber pays – has been a non-starter in India for two reasons: the operator revenue shares and closed platforms make it hard for content creators to make money by billing through the operator, and the mobile payments options through the banking network are so regulated and cumbersome to make them almost unusable for small payments.

What is clear, though, is that users are moving from one world of value-added services to another. Ringtones, wallpapers, CRBT and the ilk are being pushed to the background as a new set of services and needs comes to the fore. A next-generation of mobile value-added services awaits us.

Continued tomorrow.

In India today, there are an estimated 100 million people who already use the mobile Internet. This is an extrapolation from the datapoint provided by Vodafone that it has 32 million people using the mobile Internet. Airtel would probably have a similar number, and other operators put together would add an equal number.

The PC internet in India has about 80-100 million users, according to recent surveys and estimates. While there is some overlap between the PC and mobile Internet users, it would be fair to say that the Internet in India now has about 120+ million unique users – about 10% of the population. Going ahead, this user base should rise even faster.

Continued tomorrow.

Being part of this movement to help transform India is what I propose to do going ahead. We cannot sit by silently and watch the extraction and exploitation continue. It is only when some among us start getting outraged at what we see happening that the wheels will be set in motion. But this has to be done in a planned way. One has to bring the inventiveness and energy of a startup to this process. There is one path to success, and that needs to be figured out.

When we look back at India since the 1930s, it is a tale of missed opportunities. There are many occasions when we could have taken a turn for the better, but poor decisions by our leaders failed us repeatedly. Some were plain stupid, others were motivated. We cannot afford the luxury of time any more. There are too many futures at stake now – our futures.

The good news is that India can be transformed. And we can make this happen during our lifetimes to bequeath to the next generation a country they can genuinely be proud of. As citizens of India, some of us need to step forward to lead this effort.

• The rise and fall of personal computing: A fascinating graph from asymco.
• Making Customer Segmentation Deliver: from strategy+business. “As the ability to gather sophisticated data grows, here’s a four-step process for making segmentation drive improved performance.”
• Customers, Competition and Cost: A Knowledge@Wharton interview with Sam’s Club CEO Brian Cornell on the Essential ‘Cs’ of Leadership.
• India at 60: by Shankkar Aiyar. “The Republic has failed its people on both justice and equality, on delivering the basic standards of humanity.”
• The Future of Cars: from Technology Review. “Cars are soon going to be the new smart hubs of entertainment and utility.”

2011 will be remembered as the year that the government started cracking down and limiting the freedom of speech on the Internet. Perhaps shaken by the success of the India Against Corruption mobilisation via mobile and social media, the government fought back by cracking down on social media, TV channels and SMS. 2012 will see various court battles to determine whether India sees censorship in the China model, as one of the judged hinted.

India’s mobilisation and politics can also be changed via the coming rise in digital users. IAC was a good showcase of what can be possible. Given the large base of urban Middle India and the tools that they have to now organise, there is no reason for this segment to continue to stay apathetic to social and civic issues relevant to the future of the country.

Last Word

So, even as India’s Internet comes of age finally, our government, digital infrastructure  and regulation hold our usage back. I hope that 2012 sees these obstacles go. But given past experience, I am not optimistic. And yet, we as consumers will find our own paths to make the digital world an even greater part of our life.

Digital media options are proliferating. Marketers now talk of paid, owned and earned media. Paid media is the search and display ads that companies run. Owned media is the properties that are created – for example, Facebook pages and mobile apps. Earned media is the multiplier effect from users spreading the word on their own through social media and other mechanisms.

There is mobile marketing with all the various options – SMS, voice, mobile Internet and apps. There is also social media. Email marketing is also growing rapidly in India. What is perhaps lacking is more innovation in how all of these options can be better integrated together.  For example, TV advertising could include opt-in options to drive permission marketing to the mobile.

As digital marketing options proliferate and ever greater percentages of the budgets shift, companies will demand even greater accountability of their spends. So, analytics will emerge as a by-product of the process with even sharper targeting of users. There is so much information that we are leaving in trails on the Internet and sharing that the world of microtargeting is now becoming a reality.