Internet in India

New Delhi, India will host the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ 31st International Public Meeting from 10-15 February 2008.

“Growth of Internet activity in India is extraordinary so it’s fitting that the ICANN community is gathering there to discuss major Internet issues like internationalized domain names and new generic top-level domains,” said Paul Levins, ICANN’s Executive Officer and Vice President - Corporate Affairs. - Source
That’s interesting, after china reporting very high volumes in domain name registrations, India is predicted to be the next. For those who do not know world’s fastest growing domain name registrar and hosting company ResellerClub is a business owned by an Indian Company Directi.

So should be expect registrars shifting there focus to co.in and .in domain names?

More individual awareness would be required for this business to take off in India.

Click here to preregister for the event. 

Shopping for something on the internet today I noticed Google Checkout and decided to give it a try (you know how anything from Google gets a geek’s adrenalin rushing), but to my utter disbelief and amazement I noticed that Google does not have India in the listed countries (check here), it has service for countries like Lao People’s Democratic Republic and our good old neighbors Bangladesh and Sri Lanka but not India!!!! and surprisingly they do not even offer this service for China, Brazil and Russia.. well guys give me a break!!!!!! if I believe all the world’s economist then BRIC are supposed to be the fast movers and dropping 4 of these countries from a e-commerce product could be a suicide. I think guys @ Google are not reading the newspapers or their subscription has expired.

I am sure Google has some good reasons (probably legal) for not introducing it for a country like India or China, but I am sure interested in knowing the reason. I was definitely not pleased to see that and would like to here from others about their thoughts.

There has been whole lot of advances in this space since we last reported about it.

More players have entered into this space since then. Madhouse, Moviemart to name a few.

Madhouse has been a phone based rental service operating in Chandigarh (based out of Delhi ) for past one and half year and have now gone online with services extended to Delhi/NCR. Moviemart also confirms the market for Online DVD Rentals by moving its 100% offline store to online rentals. The trends in this space are quite positive as some earlier entrants (www.cinesprite.com, www.seventymm.com) are becoming aggressive in marketing, have improved their service levels, have gone for second round of funding etc.

Just to comment on Cinesprite, they are leading the pack as far as Delhi/NCR is concerned and currently promise a large range of titles and very good service levels. I asked for a title and they added it to their collection in a short span of time.

It is definitely becoming one sticky service with switching barriers coming from the movie collection, pricing and other website related features. I haven’t tried others (as I mentioned, it’s a bit sticky) but recommend others to try out Cinesprite.

Since I started using the service a couple of months ago I feel that online DVD rentals hold a definite advantage over the local DVD rental shops. I can search for the available titles, The quality of DVD’s are better, can maintain a queue of DVD’s that I want to watch, return it as per my schedule, no extra charges for keeping it one more day and moreover can request a DVD if it is not available in the collection. The only drawback I find is that they would only provide titles that are legally available in India unlike the local DVD rental shops.

As far as the competition amongst the online DVD rental companies is concerned I think it will all boil down to who has more titles, better deals, better DVD quality, timely deliveries and pickup (quality of service) and better promotional and marketing campaigns.

Challenges - mindset of people (as we last reported it) is difficult to crack and we would love to hear about this from one of the online DVD rental company. These companies surely have been successful in gaining some momentum by breaking such mindsets (or it is the adventurous lot of people - who jump to try out any new service that starts). It will be great to see and to imagine the growth these guys can have if they are successful in delivering on this front.

That’s neither a promo for some Pop show, nor it’s anything related to cricket. That’s IndiMix’06 from Microsoft India.

IndiMIX ’06 – It is testimony to the promise of effective Web experiences; it is the point of inflexion; it is the demonstration of the genesis of creativity and innovation; it is The Next Web Now. –Source

It would be interesting to see what microsoft has to showcase this time. Looks more of a move to attract the Indian youth towards “Live.com” than just another showcasing event.

Don’t be surprised if you see Anil Kumble’s name amongst the various entrepreneurs and technology evangelists, for Anil Kumble happens to be the director of StumpVision a software product development company.

Anyways, if you are impressed by Microsoft’s recent products like Atlas, Live, or you really like Mandira as a host, grab a registration here.

In the previous post, we had a good discussion about the scarcity of online deals for Indian Market, then came the point as to why the e-commerce isn’t picking up. To analyze this let’s first have a look at the reasons behind success of e-commerce in the US market. Books and Consumer durables (mostly electronics) are possibly the highest sold amongst the various goods sold online in US. Beyond any doubt, the user buying something online loses the shopping experience and has to wait for atleast a couple of days to get the goods delivered. So, there has to be a motivation and a strong reason which would attract the consumers to shop online.

Major factors that attract people to buy goods online are -

1. Convenience
2. Deals and discounts
3. Availability
4. Variety

Now let’s have a look at the most popular indian e-stores, and analyze what they have to offer against each of the above parameters.

Convenience - It is much more convenient and is also cited as the top reason in many surveys
Shopping online is all about convenience. Granted that you miss on the entire shopping experience consisting of going out, having snacks and idle talk, but even the die-hard shoppers will sometimes want to buy from their chair. But with convenience comes a risk, that the item will not be exactly same as described on the net, or may be defective. This is a big concern even in the US, and with our daily dose of indifference to customers, it would be really really hard to return any item once it is delivered. So you might save yourself a lot of hassle by taking a look before buying, it also identifies you with the dealer.

Deals and Discounts - Online shopping allows you to look for deals at all stores, local and remote
Be it greed or immensely low volumes posing a challenge to sustainability, Indian e-stores are charging higher than what you would get in the store neraby. To give you a few examples,
Nokia N72 at Ebay.in - Rs. 15,999.00 + 149.00 for shipping
Nokia N72 at FabMall - INR 16399 + INR 45 for shipping

And it is easily available at around INR 15500 at any of the stores in Gurgaon, so why would some one pay higher and then wait for a week to get the “media computer” delivered before one can try his hands on it?

Books, the nearby book shop easily gives a discount of 10-20% on any books and that’s the discount these stores offer.

Now, let’s have a look at the prices for a gift basket as described on FabMall, have a look at the satrangi diyas at FabMall, which cost Rs. 816 ! Even if the prices are genuine then the atleast needs to offer a product detail to justify it’s cost. Agreed the customer base is mostly NRI with deep pockets but does that mean that we have the liberty to fool them at our own will?

It’s not difficult to find more such examples and you would be surprised that the price listed on individual brands site like www.lgezbuy.com is also greater than what you could get at the store. Compare this with the US and you immediately see the difference. The comparison with store prices is easily available at sites like shopping.cnet.com and it is easily demonstrated that the online prices are almost always less than the store price. Sometimes the online stores even guarantee that there prices are less than any store.

Availability - people buy goods online which are otherwise not available in the nearby stores
With the advent of shopping malls in metropolitan cities, there is hardly anything available on any of these e-stores that you cannot find in a store nearby. Contrasting with the US, the malls are usually quite some distance away from residential areas and it could easily take you a couple of hours to do one purchase.

Variety - Users get a chance to compare price and features at the e-stores, enables better decisions
I tried comparing my favourite Nokia N72 with other phones, but the feature seems to be missing. When I compared the automatic washing machine models on www.lgezbuy.com, I found the comparison to be irrelevant. As you see below, the same feature is shown at two places. The information about Tub Clean/Silent modes is just plain wrong and it is present in WF-8014 HN. The comparison at other sites is no better.

The bottomline
It is not all about shopper’s mindset that we often attribute as a reason for slow growth of e-commerce, it is more about lack of understanding of customer requirements by these e-stores. Agreed, that the modern consumer is willing to pay extra for value adds and enhanced experience but then what’s the value add that the e-stores in india have to offer?

It’s good that the Union Cabinet today approved amendments to the Information Technology Act, 2000, aimed at checking information theft and online fraud.

But I don’t think that it covers online privacy. On an average I receive 5 sales calls daily and 20 marketing sms messages, some originating from the service provider itself and many from unknown senders and “affiliates” from sites I gave my number to.

We need strong laws to prevent data sharing and selling by the companies in India. With mobile social networking on its boom in India, one needs to be extra cautious while submitting your number at these sites, as you might as well be inviting more spam sms messages to your phone.

Have a look at this clause in the “Privacy” statement of one of the sites:

“We may provide information to service providers to help us bring you the services we offer. Specifically, we may use third parties to facilitate our business, such as to send email solicitations. In connection with these offerings and business operations, our service providers may have access to your personal information for use in connection with these business activities.”

We reserve the right to change our privacy policy at any time. If we do this, we will post the changes to this policy on this page and will indicate at the top of this page the policy’s effective date. We therefore encourage you to refer to this policy on an ongoing basis so that you understand our current privacy policy.

I do not understand the exact legal implication as such, but simply put it means that the owners of the website would be free to change there privacy policy so “keep checking” and they could as well use your personal information to “facilitate” their business (sell this data to advertisers???).

Is there a way to ensure that this data does not get shared (read sold) with telemarketers?

India certainly needs some amendments to online privacy laws as well.