GMIC: The Next Wave of Mobile
GMIC1
Shown above: (From Left) Sachin Bansal, Naveen Tewari and Vikram Chaddha
Global Mobile Internet Conference, Bangalore has started in India. Mobile is here, and mobile is here to stay. The thought leaders are bullish about Mobile Internet revolutionising India. The conference started with a panel discussion on How Mobile Has Made India Global with industry experts Sachin Bansal, CEO, Flipkart, Naveen Tewari, CEO, InMobi and Vikram Chandra, Group CEO & Executive Director, NDTV. Below are the excerpts.
How Mobile Has Made India Global with Industry Experts
Vikram Chandra- Unlike Korea and US the extent of broadband penetration is not high in India. Most of the people experience Internet on mobile first, what is causing this growth?
Sachin Bansal- Mobile computing scenario is changing very fast. The cost of Internet is coming down in India, and it is going to be more cheaper. These days techology doesn’t have a barrier. Earlier it used to take years to cross borders, that has changed now. Additionally, there are a lot of funds available for startups in the mobile internet space.The cost of development of a mobile app business has come down. That’s also adding to the growth of Mobile Internet’
Naveen Tewari – In China, there has been a new wave over last 3 years, where developers have taken capital and though about what the world is looking at. The same is going to happen in India. Look at the Mars mission, the scale we have achieved at such effective cost is noteworthy. The same is going to happen for mobile apps now.
Vikram Chadha – Do you see a lot of products and platforms coming in India which can be taken global?
Naveen Tewari – 10 years ago no product would come out of India, because we were not users of those products. That has changed big time. The ability for us to look at global scale is definitely there.
Vikram Chadha – The Prime Minister is asking Indians to buy mobiles made in India. But where is the technology for it?
Naveen Tewari – It is for us to parallely solve this problem by ourselves or import it. The money we will spend in importing it, we can give that to developers in the country to make that technology in house.
Vikram Chadha – If you are the Prime Minister of India, what would you say to the Indians living in US?
Sachin Bansal – If I am the PM, I would say that this is the right time to come to India. The real opportunity is here, create your Silicon Valley here.
Naveen Tewari – Yes, India is saying the era now and this is going to go on for the next 5-10 years.
Sachin Bansal – The good part is that the picture in India is getting better day by day. Today is better than yesterday, the pace of improvement is accelerating.
Vikram Chadha – So the message is ‘Make in India, come back to India’
Shown above: Naveen Tewari
Following the discussion, Naveen Tewari takes the stage, to talk about the Next Wave of Mobile. He talked about how mobile has drastically changed different sectors in the country.
Look at the ticket booking process, which has changed in past 2-3 years. Online mobile payments have changed, they are seemless now. The information is on the fingertips, educational apps are getting really high quality of content.
Mobile is changing healthcare across the globe. High quality doctors can’t be at multiple places, but mobile is changing that. It is making them accessible remotely.
Another sector that is changing is banking. Banks will go away in the next 5 years if they don’t change themselves with technology.
Shown above: Alex Qian Haitao. Managing Director, Mobogenie India
Mobogenie India’s managing director Alex Qian Haitao took the stage to talk about The future of Mobile application marketplace in India.
Alex discussed the roadblocks that the mobile marketplaces are currently having, with the major three being 1. The user is being neglected, 2. Limited UI capabilities 3. Low technological absorptive capacity.
Following this he shared the success formula of Chinese Internet companies (appstores) i.e. the final product consists of two components – Functions (App download, App research etc.) and usability (UI)
Shown Above: Rajesh Sawhney and Kunal Bahl
Rajesh Sawhney, Founder, GSF Accelerator and Kunal Bahl, Founder & CEO, Snapdeal took the stage to discuss the subject of India – The New Pioneer in M-commerce. Below are the keypoints from this fireside conversation.
Kunal Bahl shared that the number of mobile users of Snapdeal is growing, he said “2 years back, 5% of the transactions were done through mobile and now that has risen to 50%”
When Rajesh Sawhney asked Snapdeal’s founder what did he think about acquiring a company, Kunal replied that it was important to know what does one want, and consider the variables involved – head count, logistics partners etc. before going ahead with one.
“Fulfilling the task of being among the 3-4 leading e-commerce companies, 3-4 years down the line involves a lot more concentration” said Kunal “Snapdeal’s current priority is distribution”
Rajesh Sawhney raised the question that since there are still issues in payments, till when will CoD continue, to this Kunal Bahl answered “85% of consumer spends in India is cash, online it is 60%. CoD is going to decrease by just 5% in the coming year. And it will continue to dominate.”
A member of from audience made a statement that ‘e-commerce is taking away the joy of shopping socially by providing festive offers. Kunal Bahl said “Consumers buy only where they find value for their money. Kids in India still take permission from their parents to shop on and offline. People can sit together on a laptop and browse products online. The only thing technology is changing is the pattern of buying and not the happiness.”
Shown above: Kshitij Marwah (On left) and Vishal Gondal (On right)
To discuss the hot topic of wearables Kshitij Marwah, MIT Media Lab/Harvard Medical School and Vishal Gondal, Founder & CEO at GOQii Inc, took the stage. Right at the beginning of the session Ksitij Marwah took out his Google Glass and put it on. The duo expressed that mobile is not new, mobile is old, it is the era of wearables.
Vishal Gondal - All big companies are into building advance sensors, to increase the use cases for mobile and wearables. But all these devices lack common sense. A wearable detecting a heart attack is no good if it can’t get a doctor at the right time. Once this common sense is included in the devices, they will perform amazingly.
Continue reading here: Flipkart's Big Billion V/s Snapdeal's Routine Offer: Customer De-Acquisition?
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