Tuesday, August 08, 2006

From problem of too few to problem of plenty…

During the dot com 'golden era' between 1998- 2000, India had less than 5 million Internet users and around 50 million phone users. There were various kinds of sites looking at chasing eyeballs to selling various products. Such was optimism at that time that business plans were almost an after thought. Main objective of an Internet business was getting VC funding. Not surprisingly, most of them folded up in the infamous Dot-com bust.

Cut to 2006, the situation seems to have reversed, this is the era of Internet 2.0 in India. There are 30-40 million Internet users and more than 150 million telephone users (More than 100 million are mobile phone users). Internet firms have matured, many online business models have got established. Dotcoms seem destined for a good run in their second coming. However, multiple players have cropped up in most of the spaces. Sample partial list of players in different spaces:

With Online advertising also growing at 100% y-o-y, even eyeball chasing models besides commerce generating models have begun making sense when we compare it with the Internet 1.0 era.

Several players operating in the same spaces will surely lead to expansion and development of the market. This however triggers a key question-will all of them survive? I feel that over the next couple of years we will witness consolidation with only the top 3-4 players in each vertical surviving & more importantly thriving.

The key for survival and growth will be differentiated offering, better user experience and more importantly deep pockets leading to sustenance power.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Agreed. It is interesting to see how internet business models will follow the classical economic models. I would also like to add that success would also depend on how well can media converge. Do you see this happening soon?

Anurag Gupta said...

I believe there is a fair amount of convergence already happening in media. The convergence quantum will only increase with passage of time!

Anonymous said...

Nice summary of various players in different horizontal.
Although Samachar.com is a great name and web location, they are more of news aggregator and does not compare with other players in the same space.
In RealEstate, Sulekha network's persquareyard.com deserves a mention.

Amit Mehta said...

Interesting post... nice summary of relevant websites. This industry is only poised to grow. The question that haunts me is whether real estate can ever be bought online?

I have my doubts on this one.

I read an article In The Financial Express which gives a fair idea of the trends to come...

The synergies are only going to expand with time...

Here's the link:

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Online-property-deals-gain-ground/226685/