Am on my way back to LA…in transit in London, the only place I would willingly be in transit at. Nice to be here, if only for a day.
The India trip was short, a bit too short, but so are the requirements of business and life. The languid, month-long-vacation days are over, for now. As always, I’m amazed every time I go to India now: some things are changing so fast, yet a lot of things haven’t changed at all in the last 25 years. So is the contradiction called India.
The idea of India, (as Sunil Khilnani called it in a book five year ago), at least as far as how other countries perceive it now, is the technology back office and the next great consumer market of the world. And that is becoming true in front of our eyes in ways so profound that it is hard to describe and even comprehend. Technology is such a leveler here, and is bringing so many economic changes that it is a shame that we in U.S. can only boast about how iPod changed our lives.
Ask the farmers of India who are using simple voice technology (well, cellphones) to cut out the middleman (and yes, it is always a man here) out of the agricultural selling and procurement process. People are getting informed, and for once, can take informed decisions about their livelihood. This is the real revolution here, not just the metro-big-cities based outsourcing that we all hear and read about in the media in U.S. and Europe.
The time to invest in India, if you are interested, is now. Both on general technology level, and more specifically in mobile and online media (in that order) here. What we consider content (entertainment and news oriented) in U.S. is not necessarily what will work here. Informational services which help people make decisions and cut out the middleman…that is where the huge opportunity lies. Anyway, I can go on and on, but make a trip here if you want to get the real feel of the changes here.
Back to our vain world…
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