Gurgaon Business Owners – It’s time for the truth.
The 4 Things That Make India’s Online Business Market Unique
In KPCB’s 2015 Internet Trends Report, India has been identified as the fastest growing market for digital businesses based on the number of new users. If you’re a company that is serious about conducting your business online, you can’t afford to overlook the Indian market anymore. Several international giants like Amazon, Twitter and WhatsApp have found tremendous success in India.
If you’re looking to enter the fledgling Indian market, here are a few things you should know beforehand.
- What works in the West may not work in India.
India is a massively diverse nation and its business market is no different. You might have a revenue model and a business plan that has worked in different countries, but India presents a unique challenge.
For starters, there is an incredible amount of competition in the online business sphere already. If you’re going to throw your hat into the ring, you better make sure you bring your A-game. Secondly, while the startup scene in India is improving rapidly, a lion’s share of the market is still controlled by larger entities. You also have to consider that getting permissions and setting up infrastructure in India takes longer than it might elsewhere. That’s just a reality that you’ll have to deal with.
New entrants would be well-advised to enter into some sort of a partnership with already established entities to help smooth things through during the initial phases. Once you’ve carved out your foothold, you can use the reach that this larger entity provides for branching into different areas of the market.
- Apps aren’t nearly as commonplace in India.
In 2014, a staggering 41% of total e-commerce transactions in India happened from mobile devices. That being said, Indian users still prefer to use websites over apps to buy their goods and services. More recently, companies like Flipkart and Myntra have moved to an app-only model to get a better handle on the demand generated by the marketplace. One of the most important reasons for this switch is that apps provide you the option to deliver push notifications, which have been proven to be over 8 times as effective as emails.
This doesn’t mean that you should rush into an app-only model the moment you enter the Indian market. Less than 10% of Indian citizens have access to smartphones, so you’ll be alienating a majority of your audience if you go that route. Instead, make sure you have an equally enjoyable user experience on your app and your website. Just be prepared to make the leap to app-only, since estimates suggest that nearly the entire adult population in India will own a smartphone within the next four years.