Internet in India

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.

Now this one’s a cool ajax based site intended to help users track their debts and loans.
A startup not neccessarily in India but started by Indians in US, Buxfer.com, which is in Beta right now offers an awesome(gmail like) interface. Following functionality is available:

1. Buxfer home page:
* Your Net Balance, the sum of group balances and contact balances
* “News”, aka notifications
* The transaction-line-view of the five most recent transactions you have participated in

2. Report Transactions
Use the new transaction page to report a new transaction, either as a shared bill,
a lend or settle loan (also called ‘money transfer’), or a personal expense.After you press ‘Next Step’, Buxfer automatically suggests the groups that can be applied to the transaction.

3. Transaction Detail
Use the full transaction detail page to see the transaction details including the amounts paid, received, or spent by all the transaction participants, the amounts that the transaction participants owe or receive, the previous edits, and the comments posted to the transaction.

Contacts:
Use the manage contacts page to add new contacts, rename contacts, view contact balances, and view transactions with individual contacts.

Tags:
Use the tag details page to rename or delete a tag and to see the transaction history for a particular tag.

Groups:
Use the group details page to see the group description, group balances of the members, and a history of transactions posted to the group. There is also an option to filter group transactions based on which members participated.

Buxfer.com has been started by Amit Manjhi (he’s my batch mate from IITK, makes me feel proud of my Alma Mater), Ashwin Bharambe, and Shashank Pandit.

They have almost copied the gmail interface. The site looks professional, with nice layout and smooth interface, the site is better than most of the web 2.0 startups coming in India,which are backed by a huge venture fund and product managers with industry experience.

Here’s what they have to say about it:

Buxfer started as a small script one of us wrote about 3 years ago. As graduate students, having food almost always meant eating out with a bunch of fellow sufferers somewhere on Craig Street. With such a high rate of accumulating bills, our memories and scraps of paper were just not enough. So we wrote a small simple script to keep track of our debts. And boy, did we love it! Well, we thought maybe the others would find this useful too.

The homepage claims to be tracking “$416544.70 in 2178 transactions.” and yes, users can use the FaceBook account to log into the site.

I am not too sure who came first BillMonk.com or BuxFer.com, but feature wise BillMonk.com, offers more in terms of allowing to track borrowings of Books, DVD, CDs etc, but the interface of Buxfer.com is better.So, You already have some competition here!

I’ve been hearing whispers that Google will integrate their social network Orkut with the mobile social networking app they acquired last year, Dodgeball. While it’s not rocket science to make the connection between the two products (both are social networking), the reasons to join the two are becoming more compelling… via ReadWriteWeb

Well, if this could happen in Brazil, India would be the next. So, Yaari.com needs to make it’s mark before Google comes with it’s offering.

Somehow managed to get access to Yaari.com through a friend’s ID. So here is a screenshot depicting the very obvious features of any social networking site.

Unlike Fropper, this site is free. The obvious question is how does a free social networking site survive, online advertising?, no, Prerna Gupta - CEO yaari.com is smarter! (our absolute faith in this, forced us to think and led to some more research).

So here are the screenshots that strike the chord.

The revenue comes from sms, tie up with Mobile Carriers in India, get a part of money user spends on receiving an sms (the standard rate in India is approx Rs.5 per sms, and typically carrier would not mind giving a rupee to a partner) from web and cash in on the volumes.
Smart as it might seem, but again the “Idea” in itself isn’t at all original. Yaari.com appears to be inspired by SMS.ac (A San Diego based Social Networking company with a registered user base of over 50 million in over 180 countries - Source). Sms.ac has more features than yaari has, but then they are moving in the right direction. Alerts and SMS messaging itself would amount to a lot of revenues.

Seems, Yaari.com has come up with an indianized version of SMS.ac. But that’s what has been happening in the consumer internet market in India. SMS volumes in India are unbelievably high, Just to give us a hint

“60m sms messages were sent new year’s eve in India in 2005 -Source“

Claims

Market size of Rs. 58 crore, expected growth 50%
-Source

On a, all-India basis, about 30-50 people get married through Bharatmatrimony.com daily. These are counts based on people who inform us about it. Some of them don’t inform, so the count could actually be higher.
-Source

Market Share

TOP INTERNET GAINERS FOR THE YEAR 2005 E-matrimony:
Shaadi.com
Bharatmatrimony.com
timesmatri.com
jeevansathi.com
-Source
When it comes to matrimony sites, Bharatmatrimony and Shaadi have the highest preference among consumers and fight it out for the top position in that category. Shaadi.com and Bharatmatrimony.com are the two biggest websites in the online matrimonial space, each with 33 per cent user preference. They command an almost equal share of this classifieds vertical. Some 16 per cent of those who search for their significant others on the web head to Jeevansaathi.com. Interestingly, Jeevansaathi has entered the top three rung this year; last year, it did not even make it to the top five slots.
-Source

Recent Investments

Shaadi.com received funding in March’06 and now yahoo invests in BharatMatrimony.com
-Source

The Changing Direction - Assisted Internet

Well, majority of online consumer base at these matrimonial sites happens to be NRIs. The market seems immature to embrace online matrimony. The other problem is internet penetration, so setting up centers in cities helps, but the first issue remains.

An Interesting Revenue Model - iRishta

iRishta.com, the free matrimony site, has come up with a very innovative business model, using which they claim to create waves in the online matrimony market.

“We would make money by advertising our competitors.”

I am not aware of any particular business management term for this, I’d love to call it “parasitic existence“.

(How else would we survive?. The very fact that the last post on the blog is dated “June 12, 2006″, points to the dormancy of the site, or is it active?)

Opinion:
It would still take some time for this market to boom. The changing consumer mindset and social structure leading to more independent thinking would certainly help these sites cash in.

Quick Comments/Review(My personal opinion)
1. Shaadi.com - Good UI, very popular with NRIs, decent features with astrology and video club
2. BharatMatrimony - Just average UI, offers verified profiles, average number of Indian profiles
3. JeevanSathi - Below average UI, good number of Indian profiles, decent customer care.
4. iRishta - I’ve already written enough about this one