If you haven’t read the article here it is: Web 2.0 not for India

Here are the reasons why I don’t agree with Avi:

1. The first flaw; the argument assumes that Internet access location/ease of use is the only factor that determines community building – I think there is no single factor that plays into determining whether a community forms or not – I don’t want to document all factors that make a community work or not but people accessing Internet from café’s is certainly not the only “one”. The argument also assumes that product building will always precede community building while the second most popular website in India Orkut (a real web 2.0 business: based on alexa ranking) has no real product but a huge cult like fan following.

2. The second flaw in the argument is that it assumes that all web 2.0 innovations are created equal and it is possible to lump them together or even define them in a singular whole. Business model wise, functionality wise, scenario wise MySpace, Orkut, Zillow etc. are NOT created equal – Avi’s argument seems to lump all types of communities together – I doubt if MySpace and YourStreet (both web 2.0 sites) have much in common and furthermore it is even possible to compare them.

3. The third flaw in the argument is around generalizing the Indian market – the argument assumes that the Indian market is simple enough to be categorized as a single whole. The argument assumes that the top 2% of the Indian households that have Internet access which translates into about 10 million individuals (a set with the highest discretionary income in India - look at my earlier post about HNI, Indian Yuppies etc. on this) – is not a significant enough market to build a business around. I disagree - look at the steady and stable success of the Indian travel sites MakeMyTrip, ClearTrip etc.

4. The fourth flaw in the argument is around the assumption that the state of the Internet market will remain the same even for the short term and now would not be a great time to begin entry into the market. Clearly if this comes true “free broadband in India by 2009″ there is not a better time to invest in a web 2.0 business then now – I clearly see real estate as a top category for this.

5. The fifth flaw in the argument is in assuming that the Web 2.0 revolution in India will be the same as the one that happened in the US. Web 2.0, which firstly cannot even be reasonably defined, might take on a whole new context in India fueled by the creative energies of the Indian entrepreneur. Already I see interesting spins on how web 2.0 is being transformed by businesses such as vflyer etc.

There you go - I am certainly sticking on to see Web 2.0 transform India.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 at 3:01 am and is filed under Indian Real Estate, Indian Yuppie, Real Estate Boom India, Indian Real Estate 2.0, India Web 2.0, Indian Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.