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MY PERCEPTION AND ANALYSIS ABOUT THE INTERNET IN INDIA - by G. Kennedi

CACHE - A brief history

Internet in India is believed to be an innovation that bridged the gap of 100 years with countries like the US and the Europe, termed as the technological gurus. Its advent in India in the mid 1990s really didn’t bother the market as there was only one emperor providing the Internet service the ‘VSNL’, at of course an exorbitant price making it yet another luxurious entity. The net users were minimal in India, and any dot company launched during that toddling period targeted only the NRIs (non-residential Indians) who felt the need to know about the latest happenings in India and also a way to exhibit their love to the people they had left behind.

Only media companies, who had a sound backing of the brick-and-mortar-company to its rescue, took a plunge in the new medium of communication. Firstly it was expressindia.com, one of the first dot com companies unleashed by the media barons the Goenkas who had the tag of the Indian Express to pull traffic to its site. Secondly it was the ad agency rediffusion, who came up with a website called rediff.com with features exclusively targeted to Indian teenagers. The virtual ground of battle was all set to see a new beginning, when one fine morning the dictator VSNL got up with revolutionary idea of privatising the ISP. Satyam computers, who already had made their presence felt through their computer solutions, were the first to step ahead to take the challenge to become the first private Internet access provider with intelligent schemes at affordable prices making an average man to think about having net access at his home.

Then it was the portal of Satyam, www.satyamonline.com that came into the foray and the electrifying news of it buying India World, comprising of Khel, bawarchi et al, for Rs500 crore. The news shook the country and all those who really thought had a unique idea that would transform into quick money. Venture capitalists approached these young entrepreneurs with open hands, and financed any ideas that they thought would grow into a golden egg-laying duck. The boom lasted for a couple of months and as expected the bubble burst with many eating the mud and leaving a few big brands on the edge of collapse.

SYNTAX ERROR – What probably went wrong?

Firstly to understand the reason for the dot com’s failure in India, you need to understand the country and its countrymen. It might sound vague but it is the ultimate truth that is going to decide the future of any dot com company and also the internet as a whole.

According to the census 60 per cent of the population still lies under poverty line. Forget about them. The rest of the 40 per cent could really make to a major number. Out of them 10 per cent really are the rich people who really won’t mind splurging the money on the latest gadgets to keep pace with the modern age. But to succeed in the Indian market you need to collect the mass of middle class under one umbrella who has the real potential. It is a well-known fact that in India majority of the people who come to the net fall under the age group of 15 to 30, out of which 80 per cent come to check their mail and to chat, and rest come for educational purposes.

In this scenario splurging money on feature like news and live web casts would really prove fatal when there is this medium of TV and radio predominant in India that is much cheaper and less troublesome.

And talking about e-commerce portals, building it spending crores and crores of money without making a note of the fact that only 3 per cent of the Indians possess Credit Cards, and only very few of them possessing it do come to the internet and again a very few of them do really come out of the hitch to make a online purchase.

According to a BBC research it is not only the product that attracts people, it is also the crowd and the visual effect of the real products and feel of it that makes a person to make the final purchase. So, precisely if the dot com sells only those products that are easily available at the nearest store, and only to those who have a Credit Card then probably it is going to be a failure.

One of the examples of dot coms that failed in e-commerce

www.jaldi.com - It is estimated that this portal that sold home appliances at a fascinating rate spent some 18 crores on advertising and made a total revenue of just Rs80 lakh. What probably went wrong is that they really missed the above facts and were henpecked in making quick money.

THE SUCCESS STORY OF YAHOO

Getting into the Internet arena as a search engine, which would find all the related sites depending upon the word typed in the search box, YAHOO has come a long way. YAHOO did understand the 2 major crowd pullers, one the e-mail and the second, chat. I hope that even today most of the page views for YAHOO come through e-mail. And after this it was YAHOO messenger that created a new addiction in all the offices that had round-the-clock net connections.

At present there is none to beat YAHOO as far as community building and the simplicity to use the website are concerned. But what could make YAHOO become a hit in India is something that needs serious considerations.

REGIONALISING YAHOO!

There is nothing powerful than regionalising the services. Whether it is a TV channel or the print medium people tend to like more about the events that takes place near them or those that affect them directly. And also as far as shopping is concerned they tend to buy from their nearest shop as it guarantees the after-sale services.

To flourish on the Internet YAHOO needs to get into conventional business too.

· Offline promotions do play a major role in making the people know about what the Internet has to offer. This simply doesn’t mean to splurge money on the hoardings and painting the buses.

· Some intelligent investments and tie-ups that would solve both the purposes, getting top of the mind and also increasing the users.

· Contests undoubtedly bring in floods of users, but at present there seems to be very few contests on YAHOO. Corporate contests can be run on YAHOO to get benefited both ways.

· Today the Internet is flooded with static huge contents in spite of the fact that people never come to read on the net they just scan. And the Internet has never been used to its full potential using its unique point the Interactivity.

· The more you add interactive features the more will u get hits and more the page views and more the money.

· Change the payment mode apart from payment through credit cards.

· For gifts opening a franchise outlet would really work out, even if there were few companies who failed in carrying out this successfully.

· A one-to-one personalised feature can be added depending upon the age, demography, and educational background of a browser.

· Steps to increase the Netizens and making the people to come to the Internet will be an ideal decision. Tying up with local cyber cafes and with some ISPs can do this.

Personalised contents specific to a browser can be provided like educational content to students, romantic stuff to the teenagers and family topics to the household people. The more you personalise the more you tend to keep the browsers happy.