I had posted a tweetstream at India Internet Day #iday on online media. Thought I would take it and put it up here as I think some of the insights are worth capturing for all the founders looking at this space now.
The post brings out key points brought out by founders of Octro, Pratilipi, Railyatri and Sharechat, moderated by Satyan Gajwani of Times Internet.
Market overview
Satyan Gajwani at Times Internet: 3GB+ RAM devices ramping — from 16% to 21% of traffic in past 6 months. 4G has cannibalized wifi. Design tactics: be more explicit with new users (e.g. icons with text), small economic incentives have big impact, voice typing is key.
User behaviour insights
Manish Rathi at Railyatri: Internal migration is a bigger phenomenon in India than most other countries. Understand whether your user is a migrant or not, very different behaviours.
Saurabh Aggarwal at Octro: Lots of differences in user behavior between and within states. Gujaratis love to bet and pay for digital goods in games. They love teenpatti more than than other community in India.
Ranjeet Pratap Singh at Pratilipi: Most of north India loves pulp fiction (thrillers etc.) — what you see at railway book stores. Bengal loves books on relationships/friendships/society. Tamil Nadu is crazy about science fiction.
Farid Ahsan at Sharechat: Similarities between different states: Tamil Nadu, northern Kerala, Punjab usage is similar. Why? similar age groups (=> similar pop cultures), higher female %age of users (=> more respectful content/commenting activity).
Acquiring users
Farid Ahsan at Sharechat: Key to distribution for #next300million is “love thy user.” Create user delight and growth-hack word-of-mouth because most of distribution will come through in-person word of mouth.
Manish Rathi at Railyatri: Another method to get to #next300million: 2–3 newspapers in most homes (1 national, 1–2 local). Marketing through local language newspapers works, give them a story associated with their town.
New use-cases
New ideas for #next300million: vernacular fin-tech, access at village level (to finance, health, education etc.), simplifed online payments.
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