This week’s links:
One of my favourite books (and movie series) is “Lord of the Rings.” And so, I can think of no better way to end this series than with three quotes from the movie that I feel epitomise my thinking and life.
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Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.
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To bear a ring of power is to be alone.
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Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.
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Wish you all a Wonderful 2011.
On the Personal front, there are three things I want to do: continue my travels so that my learning and deep thinking continues, continue my writing because this is where I clarify my own thought, and further deepen my study of India’s past and understand what the future can be because it is that dream that we need to bring alive in the coming years.
All of this will mean making good use of Time. That is one resource we cannot change. I will also need to ensure we set up good teams of people both in NetCore and on the Political front so we can amplify what we do and make things happen faster. These are personal challenges for me!
At home, Abhishek will be 6 years in April. He will transition from Higher KG to First standard in July. His school hours will increase by an additional two hours daily. And hopefully, he will learn to read rather than stick to doing pattern recognition on words! Abhishek has much more of his life now. Bhavana and I have helped put his foundation together, and he now needs to build on that. I like to explore new things with him, and I hope to do more of that in the year. The one hour we get every morning from 6-7 am is something I treasure.
Continued tomorrow.
On the Political front, 2011 will be about two primary objectives: public education and mobilisation. People in India need to understand that things are not going well, and there is an alternate future that can be crafted – and which will not be created by those who are responsible for ensuring that India has still stayed poor more than 60 years after Independence.
We in India need to understand the poverty is not our birthright, and that is the result of flawed economic policies. India may have become politically free in 1947, but all we did was transition to a new Raj. There needs to be a drive for complete economic freedom, and that will not happen with the current set of rulers we have.
A narrative needs to be created around this theme, so it can be explained to people in a language and context they understood. This public education component will then get people to ask what is it that they can do. And that is where we need to come together with community organisations that get people together. Middle India, which for long has ignored the events in the country, has to become a platform for India’s political change. It has to now come together to deliver India’s Real Independence.
That is the movement that I wish to drive.
Continued tomorrow.
In NetCore, we have two clear priorities: to ensure that we maintain the momentum in the high growth enterprise segment, and to build a strong consumer business.
The enterprise mailing and mobility business is now about execution. We have the products and solutions that companies want. We need to reach them and ensure we deliver on the promises we make. This is a business than can maintain a 50% growth rate for the next few years. But it is not a done deal – it will require relentless, Tendulkar-like focus that we continue to succeed in this market. At the same time, we also need to see what other solutions we can create in these two categories by talking to our customers and understanding their digital, real-time communications needs. So, a different year, and a different set of challenges!
On the consumer side, we need to grow OneIndia’s traffic and the ad revenues. As more Indians get on the Internet, they will want to access information in their own languages – and we need to be there for them. This business now is about growing Audiences and increasing Monetisation. The MyToday marketplace has to work on simplifying payments so that we can easily convert impulse to cash. Many other industries have solved this problem, and we need to apply learnings from them into the digital retail sphere.
So, plenty of work to do, but there is a good foundation for us to build on.
Continued tomorrow.
Every year is different. Every year brings with it its own set of ups and downs. Many times, during sad moments, we ask why it is happening to us. The corollary to that is that we never do so in happy moments. Over the years, I have learnt to take the ups and downs, the happy and sad moments, in my stride.
The early years of being an entrepreneur in India in the 1990s were very difficult. That is where I learnt to recognise and accept failure. In some ways, it also taught me to experiment and try innovating – because more than anything else, it is the fear of failure that prevents us from trying something new and different.
Through the years, I have now learnt not to worry about failure. As I tell people, in my entrepreneurial life, I have probably failed with 15 ideas that I have tried to create. A few have succeeded, and that is what the world sees. But these successes were built on the failures that I learnt to accept and build upon.
And so it will be with 2011. There are many fresh ideas I have both in NetCore and on the Political front. Some will succeed, but some will fail. It will be for me to apply the lessons I have learnt through the past two decades and create something India and I can be proud.
Continued tomorrow.
I wrote this a couple years ago, but it is only now starting to happen!
The Indian mobile industry is about to face four key disruptions in 2009:
- New Operators will launch services
- Mobile Number Portability will get rolled out in phases across circles
- 3G licences will be given out and first services will commence
- MVNOs will be allowed
Put it all together, and a new landscape starts to emerge. Even though the incumbent operators are very powerful, these disruptions will be unsettling to all of them.
I look at India’s 325 million user base (and going to 600 million in 3 years) not as a single market, but as comprising two — a Red Market, and a Blue Market. The Red Market is the competition-filled urban battlegrounds (top 40-odd cities in India), which would account for about 100-150 million subscribers. The Blue Market is the rest of India — a potential market of upto a billion subscribers, of whom only 15-20% have actually got a mobile phone.
The Red Market subscribers got a phone in the first decade of India’s wireless rollout between 1995-2005. They have been using Voice and P2P SMS for between 3 and 13 years. They now want to do much more with their phone – and their time is now coming. The Blue Market subscribers need a phone because that’s their only form of connectivity to the outside world — it is Voice Access that matters more to them than anything else.
Incumbent Operators in India are now focused on the Blue Market – and are not doing much about the Red Market. Their belief is that the Red Market has been conquered, and all future growth is only going to come in the Blue Market. This is where they are wrong.
The four disruptions that we just outlined are Game-Changers. The action (and value) going ahead in India will be not in Voice but Data and VAS (Value-Added Services) in India’s most valuable Red Market.
This week’s links:
On the personal front, if there is one thing that permeated the year, it was my International Travel. I don’t think I have made more trips than I did this year. And I had not intended it to be like that!
The first trip was to Japan in January to better understand their mobile landscape. The second trip was in April to give a keynote at the Mobile Marketing Association event in Singapore. The third trip was a vacation in June-July in Hong Kong and China (Shenzhen and Shanghai). The fourth trip was in September to Washington to attend Gov 2.0. And finally, this Think Week Trip.
All the trips were nicely spaced out. All were about a week in length. These trips help me take some time off from daily work and help put things in perspective. They gave me time to think and read. They help me see new things and meet different people who can help augment mental models. For me, one of the best parts of the trip is always the long international flight. With no beeping phones and emails to worry about, one gets chunky time 10 kilometres above Earth that is hard to get in a gadget and interruption-filled world below!
So, that was about 2010. Now, on to 2011.
Continued next week.
Besides NetCore, I spend about 20% of my time on politics. It is not politics as one knows it – it is on the periphery and with a goal of bringing policy change to India in the coming years. I have written about my association with Friends of BJP earlier. That is one track that has grown through the year. We are at the early stages of building a national platform for Middle India.
I have been meeting with many people across India during my travels. I have also been reading extensively on India’s political history. As I was telling a friend last week, I am approaching the political landscape with how one would do a start-up. There are three things that one needs to look at with that mindset. First, one has to grab half-chances and create openings which others think are not possible. Second, one has to think hard about the goal and the path to get there – there is one path that leads to big success, and many others that lead to nowhere. Third, one has to have an optimistic mindset which makes one see good in all that happens.
The meetings, readings and mindset have helped me put together a good plan for what needs to now be done. So, 2010 was more about educating myself, while 2011 will need to be about educating others.
Continued tomorrow.
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