The future belongs to the users we never cared about. The ones who ferry documents, drive taxis and deliver our food. Why? Take a look below.
On the whole — the reach of apps like Zomato, Uber & Ola is falling. So is it for Twitter, LinkedIn & Free Charge.
If Uber & Ola are to continue to grow and proliferate in to the next generation of internet users they can’t serve them in the same way they’ve served us. They’ve got to lower the price point and introduce modes of transport better suited for the ‘common man’.
In that sense, Ola maybe better placed to step in to the Indian future than Uber? They’ve got Bikes, Auto Rickshaws and Shuttl services. I am not ignoring self-driving cars but despite technology leap frogging — it’s hard to imagine an autonomous vehicle navigating the by lanes of Chandni Chowk or anywhere in India for that matter.
Flipkart & SnapDeal are losing reach not because their use case isn’t relevant to the new to internet user. It just isn’t relevant right now. These people are not interested in professional networking either. So linkedIn is out.
They don’t need bite sized news — forget Inshorts. FlipBoard’s cool UI is not exciting to them. Hike is losing ground because it just makes more sense to on WhatsApp. As I said before — we are where our friends are.
As you’ll see in the next graph; India seems to be in the process of choosing its payment providers. FreeCharge is not one of them.
Don’t be too surprised by Amazons growth. Remember they were late to the e-com party so some of this growth is just a function of playing catch up.
PayTM may seem flat, but its ability to continue to maintain and marginally even increase its reach is quite phenomenal. Consider that its competitors now are household banking names and government sponsored apps like BHIM.
From Sunny Leone to Samajwadi.
India needs content. From music and video to news. This is the natural journey & progression of an internet user. We come in for Bollywood music & videos and finally evolve in to thinking human beings that are interested in learning more about the world around us.
The question is how to serve them? The battle in content apps is being fought amongst players whose ranks it is now hard to join.
Once these users move on from content — what will they need? Education & jobs are obvious plays.
Apps like TaskBucks and SquadRun offered (relatively) educated users a chance to make a living working off their smart phones. Can we build products that gainfully employ emerging India?
India’s demographic dividend could well turn in to a disaster unless its young population gets access to job opportunities. Technology & the once vaunted ‘shared economy’ still have a role to play.
Imagine the potential that ride sharing apps offer beyond the metros. It doesn’t have to be a car — could it be a bike or a cycle rickshaw? In outsourcing — can the distributed call center finally go main stream?
Of course you all intuitively knew this but now you can access data to understand where the users are going, what they want and how to serve them. Not just through vernacular/ regional language content plays but through real business models that solve real problems and make real money?
Thanks for your time,
Ashish
- Team KG
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You can reach me on ashish@kalagato.com
