Friday, March 21, 2014

WEB SPECIAL ......INTERNET REVOLUTION IS CHANGING INDIA



INTERNET REVOLUTION IS CHANGING INDIA

Be it for farmers or entrepreneurs, be it for learning or shopping, be it for the individual or the institution, the Internet is changing India like nothing else


    When people ask me about the biggest change that I see in India today, it is no doubt the internet revolution. Millions of consumers and businesses are benefiting from it and lives are betting better. When we look back at India a decade ago, the broadband penetration in India was very low and the internet experience was restricted to those living in larger cities. Since then, with the growth of the telecom industry, broadband penetration increased within India and the internet moved beyond offices and cyber cafes to individual homes. This quickly changed the way we communicated as we embraced new ways to do business online. Online platforms developed to include services that ranged from distance learning to e-commerce and a new generation of entrepreneurs emerged that changed the way we worked. Some of these achievements have been to create reliable
supply chains and systems in a country where few things work smoothly. For example, when Flipkart began six years ago, people were not comfortable shopping online, so we created solutions for every problem. We built our own warehouses and delivery teams. We accepted cash on delivery from customers reluctant to use credit cards. To stock 80% of the books printed in India, we had to deal with no fewer than 1,000 suppliers. We had to work hard to make sure suppliers and couriers do what they promise. What the internet is doing is that it provides equal opportunity to everybody and provide access to markets. For example, in Tamil Nadu there are clothing manufacturers who have used the internet as a force multiplier. They have created their own brands and are selling their merchandise on Flipkart, demonstrating the ability of the internet to transform traditional businesses. And we have to constantly innovate to keep up with the pace of how consumers use the internet in India. One example is the way mobile internet is changing the way we access information online. According to an industry study, the smartphone penetration is growing at over 150% year on year. And this is sure to rise as smartphones get cheaper. Infact, the next wave of internet expansion and resultant consumer behavior is expected to be driven by mobile and mobile commerce. This is because e-commerce sites are seeing a shift towards mobile, as consumers prefer to shop online from their mobiles instead of computers. According to a recent industry report, in India’s population of 1.28 billion, one out of six people have internet access and among these only 14% or 28 million users were making online purchases. This is expected to increase to 128.5 million by 2018 accounting for 23% of the online population. Mobile transactions have increased to 15% from 10% of the total online transactions. At Flipkart, one in every three new customers comes through mobile and this is increasing year on year. We are seeing a lot of growth in orders from non-metros cities via the mobile channel. Tier II and Tier III cities in the country are big for online retail because of an un-organised retail sector. This is also helping other sectors like agriculture. For example, the internet has been able to change the life of a farmer who can now decide which crop to plant, how to sell, which mandi to choose, and at what price to sell. I know of an entrepreneur start up in Bihar that has built a mobile app to help farmers remotely operate their tubewells. India’s big advantage is our young people, who are willing to do completely different things. They have grown up in the world of the mobile internet, and an India that holds a lot of promise in this mobile-internet boom: entrepreneurs brimming with ideas and customers hungry for change. As the internet changes India and the world in ways never seen before, it throws up challenges and opportunities.The internet is a great leveler providing more transparency and equal opportunity for everybody. It is also an excellent enabler of entrepreneurship. If you really want to be an entrepreneur, go ahead and give it a try. Back your intuition and balance it with hard work. Keep in mind that entrepreneurship is also dependent on the ecosystem. A successful entrepreneur will not work alone but draw from the strengths of his environment and the people he works with.
SACHIN BANSAL (The author is the Co-founder and CEO, Flipkart)

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