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Doing it the Indian Way
There is no denying the fact that web 2.0 took off in India on the wings of
social networking. One fine day, there came Orkut and suddenly everyone wanted
to be on it. And that changed the way the Indian web was to look in the coming
years.
Although not Indian, the Orkut phenomenon has thrown up some insightful
observations. Besides breaking the geographical barrier, it also, for the first
time, allowed people sharing the same passions and mentality come together on a
platform. And it also demonstrated the point that people move where networks do.
The gradual transition and sudden movement from Orkut to Facebook is privy to
the fact the people move where their networks move. Says Pare, Movement from
one network to another is also very seamless. India is the perfect example of
this where people started moving from Orkut to Facebook. This phenomenon is
also a sign of maturing user base. According to Sony Joy, COO and co-founder,
Mobshare, Style factor defines the web. What happened was that gradually
Facebook started to be perceived as more stylish than Orkut.
If we look at the global scenario in social networking, almost each country
has its own local social networking platform, which is mostly bigger, or almost
as big as the global players. The prime characteristic of this local network is
that it has a certain regional and demographic flavor attached to it, and thats
what makes it more popular in its home country. There is Friendster in Malaysia
and Indonesia, PerfSpot in Iran and Vietnam, 51.Com in China, Bebo.com in
Ireland and New-Zealand and Vkontakte.Ru in Russia.
However, something to pay heed to here before we get too optimistic is that
language is the single most important factor that binds the people with these
sites. And given the number of local languages in India, there might be a
problem for a single player to capture the imagination of the country with the
local flavor offerings. Says Pare of Bigadda, I think, apart from the language
factor, a similar phenomenon will take place in the Indian marketplace as well.
In BigAdda atleast, we are seeing a good traction in demographic adoption:
around 48-50% of our users are from the top eight metros and the rest 50% are
from tier-2 down cities, he notes.
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How We Did It |
| The debate on what web 2.0
actually is refuses to die, even though Tim OReillythe man who
popularized, if not coined the phrasehas finally given a concise
definition: Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry
caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand
the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this:
Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more
people use them. However, all of us
know by and large what it means through examples: collaboration, user
participation, user generated content. We have not joined the debate. We
have not tried to redefine web 2.0 per se.
On the other hand, we have defined a set of
guiding rules for ourselves and used them as filters before getting to
subjective selection of the applications/companies. Our rules may seem a
little restricting to a few, but then that is the only way you can arrive at
a definite shortlist. The attempt is to make transparent as precisely as
possible what we mean by web 2.0, Indian and start-ups. Hot is, of course,
the subjective part. But how we proceeded will give you an idea of how we
created the final list.
| About Indianweb2.com
Indianweb2.com is a weblog that aims to
provide Internet users latest online products, websites and web 2.0
driven Internet tools and technologiesalready running as well as newly
launchedthat are making an impact in the Internet realm and bringing
more interactivity and participation for online users. |
Guiding Principles
- We have used the generally agreed
attributes of web 2.0 collaboration, user participation, rating, UGC, etc,
to create the first shortlist of companies. We have taken the
applications/websites that make it possible directly and indirectly. So
while a social networking site may do it directly, the creator of a
collaborative tool may do it a little more indirectly, by enabling
collaboration.
- We have excluded applications/companies
where collaboration/user participation (or helping in that) is not the
raison d tre of existence. In other words, where collaboration/user
participation is a (sometimes very important) offering of the company but
if one takes that away, the companys business will not be significantly
affected. For example, most of the photo printing sites such as zoomin,
picsquare and itasveer do have provisions for storing and sharing photos,
but they do not really compete on that. They compete on traditional
service industry parameters: time of delivery, quality of print,
innovative product offerings, and last but not the least, pricing. If one
of them is doing better than the other it is because it is superior in
these parameters and not necessarily because there are more users
registered in that site.
- We have taken only the companies
headquartered out of India. After all, it is an Indian list. While that
itself is a no-brainer, we had to exclude impressive applications like
Slideshare, which is promoted by Indians, has a significant development in
India but is headquartered in California.
- Start-up means any company that has become
operational on or after January 1, 2007. Some of these companieslike one
of the biggest names in our list, BigAddamay have actually technically
started earlier, but have become operational after January 2007.
- We have taken the application and not the
company behind it to decide whether it is a start-up. So BigAdda,
DesiMartini and Tell-A-Friend are start-ups even though they are owned by
some established businesses.
How we Proceeded
As mentioned above, we created a super list of applications/companies,
to start with. Indianweb2.com, a start-up based in Gurgaon, which tracks
Indian start-ups, was our primary source for creating a long-list of
probables. The Dataquest editorial team working on the research, Mehak
Chawla and Shikha Das, added to that list, by doing more secondary research.
Both of them as well as Vardaan Tiwari, founder of Indianweb2.com
independently created lists of their choices, based on the guiding
principles mentioned above. We tallied them together, did further research
to get more clarity on some information, spoke to companies directly
wherever required, and created the final list.
The Categories
We have divided the entire list of 25 companies into five categories.
They are as follows
- Social Networking: These are
general and niche social networking sites that offer their users an array
of applications to collaborate and participate. The desi facebooks and
orkuts. Examples include BigAdda, DesiMartini, and Ibibo.
- Communities: The model of
communities are the same as social networking applications except that
they are centered around a single cause/interest and hence have more depth
of content and usually meant for more than just socializing. Examples
include Uhooro and Commonfloor in our list
- Tools: These are the cold-blooded
software makers for making the collaboration happen. They may or may not
directly offer their services to the crowd, but their tools help other
companies/websites to enable participation and collaboration. Examples in
our list include Tell-A-Friend, Metaaso Mermaid and DimDim
- Rating/UGC-centered Sites:
Technically not very different from communities, these are however more
about user rating than about depth of participation. Unlike the
communities, these are more democratic and driven by quantity, unlike the
communities where quality of contribution matters. Typically centered
around products (such as gadgets) or even entertainment (music), these are
the equivalents of box office indicators in the web 2.0 while the
communities are more about critics choice. Very often, they have thin
distinction lines between themselves and communities and often they grow
into each other. Examples include Burrp TV. For us, this was the toughest
area to shortlist companies.
- Mobile Applications: Well, they
should ideally fall into any of the above four categories as well. But
looking at the potential mobiles have in India, we have identified them as
a separate category. Examples include Mobshare and Kwippy.
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In fact, although names like Desimartini and BigAdda are very recognizable in
the Indian space, they were not the starting points of web 2.0 social networking
in India. Says Mayank Dhingra, co-founder, Kwippy, When Orkut and Facebook
started expanding in India, there applications requirements shot up. Thats how
Indian developers came into the picture. The Indian networking sites started
much later, the applications entered first.
Adds Joy, Ventures like Zoho and 37Signals were pioneers in hosted
solutions. Freedom (in web 2.0) came much later with collaboration tools. So
while its generally agreed upon that the desi social networking arrived very
late, there is no disputing the point that the market wasnt ready earlier. As
Gupta notes, A big part of evolving is also being able to see the benefits of
it. Joy contributes to that by saying, Evolution of every tech eventually
depends on its monetizing capability. The model has to be financially feasible.
And as far as the revenue models go, we still have got sand underneath our
feet. We are currently on the appetizing model. That eventually has to change.
And the realization is setting in more than ever in the recession times where ad
spends of companies have gone down drastically. We have to move to the
transaction model sooner than later. And like all changes, this one will also
take time to settle in, given the price sensitive nation that we are. Page(s) 1 2 3
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