Reaching-half-a-billion Indians

Saurabh Pandey, Director-Vertical Sales, Ibibo Web (Ibibo.com)
Ten years back we would not have imagined selling six million PCs and a couple of million laptops every year, so quickly. About 40 million people now fly by domestic airlines every year and about 30 odd million people use credit cards in the country.

This sounds good, and more than that it boosts the ego of an average Indian, whose country was known as poor and underdeveloped till a couple of decades back.

What if I say that the opportunity for having an installed PC (personal computer) base is at least 500 million (as compared to about 30 odd million now) in the next five years or 100 million PCs to be sold every year? And in the same breath I also say that the opportunity of internet usage should be 500 million users every year for the next five years!

My thinking is that the real potential of India has not been realised and that the business models for India need to be disruptive for every business (and not just Technology business) that operates in India!

I have been inspired by C K Prahlad’s ‘Bottom of Pyramid’ in writing this article, but even before I read CKP, I had always thought that we are not looking at the big picture as Indian Marketers or MNCs in India.

To achieve this ambitious goal of selling to half a billion people in India - we need to understand who they are. And my friends, they are people who have very little or no purchasing power!

About 516 million labourers in India (most of them on daily wages, and a large percentage may include people who earn less than $1 per day); at least 40 million students in India (secondary, senior secondary and colleges / universities).

Then there are about 80 million senior citizens in India. And we are not even talking about people who earn between Rs 50,000 and Rs 2 lakh a year.

Now that we understand the broad level segmentation, let’s take a look at their core needs and how we can build an ecosystem of utilities powered by technology.

By doing this we will help these segments achieve their own goals more efficiently and economically and in due course will achieve our own objectives.

So, the six core needs that cut across these segments are Education, Employment, Banking, Health, Travel and Communication. What if we build a one-box that services all these core needs in a customised way for different segments?

For instance, let’s take the example of the most challenging segment: The Daily Wager/Labour Work Force.

A daily wager, needs to find jobs, needs to register in a Rojgar Guarantee Yojna, needs to transfer money to his family back in village, needs a place to keep his earnings, travel back to his village once a year, be prepared for medical emergency and needs to talk to his wife and parents once every week.

So our one-box is a PC that has advanced touch and speech user interface and allows users to

• register for Rojgar Guarantee Scheme;
• register in the employment exchange and check their status through SMS or biometric touch;
• deposit cash and transfer money to a local post office or let’s say to a local western union; and
• call anywhere in the world.

The One-Box gets attached to a Bank at the backend, hence the Bank now has an opportunity to divert hundreds of millions of Rupees worth of unorganised savings to its leverage. What’s more the Bank can now do micro-Lending and the person also gets a default life insurance.

One Box is connected to the local hospital and the person can be treated free and a history is maintained. One can also book train ticket through an advanced interactive speech and touch interface. And he can pay with the attached bank account.

Now the daily wager doesn’t need to know English or know how to use a computer. He operates with speech and touch. Also the kiosk should be multi-oriented so that at one given time about 2-4 people can use the same.



Source: www.umbrellakiosk.blogspot.com

And the best part is the One-Box helps the daily wager find a job, save, invest and transfer his money. It also gives his family a life insurance and helps him talk and travel easily.

If this One Box can be fitted in a mobile phone with the use of GPS technology the person can be tagged and in situation of natural disaster or if the person is absconding he can be identified, tracked and traced.

Now where do we install this One-Box? We need to tie up with Banks, local authorities, hospitals and the One-Boxes can be installed at any of these locations.

Another way could be to give Free of Cost a mobile phone with One Box features to every person who registers at the Rojgar Guarantee Yojna or is being employed by let’s say a Big Farm Owner. The mobile phone acts as a smart card and hence governments’ objective of Smart Card enabling is also achieved.

Governments subsidises the handsets. The vendor (it could be HP, Google, Microsoft or Nokia) gets the money from the Government and immediately installs 100 million such Kiosks or Handsets. And the end user achieves his goals efficiently and scales up in life.

The big idea is clear, but as you can see, this requires:

• A clear vision and direction at the top;
• Commitment to invest money, resource and time over long term; • Commitment to strategic alliances in building this eco-system with alliance partners;
• Commitment to service and upgrade this eco-system; and
• Build localised business models for specific segments and specific geographies.



Source: CK Prahlad and Stuart L Hart: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

It’s imperative to build an ecosystem of products and create an opportunity for people to become more efficient and raise themselves in the value chain, apart from localisation of content and distribution to achieve the objective of reaching out to the next half of a billion people in India.

Oracle has already started a somewhat similar initiative with schools in India, through its Think.com endeavour. Microsoft also followed with Project Siksha.

The time has come when we just cannot think about 6 or 10 million PCs sold every year, we cannot say that we will not lend as banks because delinquencies are huge, and we cannot say that we are satisfied with 35 or 50 million internet users.

We have tapped the top 50 million Indians; it’s time to look at the next 500 million!

[Sources: CIA Factbook, The Hindu, Indian Express, CK Prahlad and Stuart L. Hart: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, UNICEF, NDTV.com, umbrellakiosk.blogspot.com]