17 Responses to “Avnish Bajaj says no to Web2.0 for India”

1. Vish on April 23rd, 2007 1:45 am

   Seems like he is limiting definition of web2.0 to just social networking.

2. Adil on April 23rd, 2007 2:17 am

   Hey Pranav,

   You are doing a great job! Keep up the good work. We will soon be launching a very exciting website and keep you posted.

   As for Vish, I suspect Avnish is right on the mark.

   Let me explain what Web 2.0 really is other the fancy colors and logos and mashups.

   Web 2.0 is taking off here in the United States because companies are launching competing products which someone is already doing on a large scale. The competing projects are enhanced greatly and add tremendous value to the industry. But most are failing due to any revenue projections. Nevertheless they are actually improving on already built industry and market.

   In India that is the not case yet. First the web 1.0 has to take off on massive scale. In order to achieve that, consumers have be to able to live on the internet. One hour of downtime here in the US is like a heart attack for most of us. I hope you understand what I mean.

   Again keep up the good work Pranav.

   Thanks

3. Vish on April 23rd, 2007 3:32 am

   Interesting take Adil. That is precisely the point. All the various internet services/apps need to feed off each other for takeoff growth( revenues or not). So the question whether soc. net.
   will take off or not in a big way is a rather limiting viewpoint.
   It may feed other internet services in a big way or it could grow
   on the back of other services (like for eg. seventymm.com as Avnish points out). All depends on the innovativeness of the startups.

   Because it is not just infrastructure hurdles (that will be overcome) but probably also the culture. On the other hand, if you _really_ want to discuss your personal life or whatever, you will.somehow.

4. adil on April 23rd, 2007 4:11 am

   Vish, I agree with your last paragraph. Culture does play a small role but if one was to discuss personal life they will. My fiancee is always sharing pictures with her cousins in india who are sitting a cafe and I keep on thinking to myself, whatever happened to privacy of personal life.

   Vish anyway to chat with you sometime? I am available on ymsngr if you are. my id is adill*420 without the *

   Thanks
   Adil

5. Kamla on April 23rd, 2007 9:49 am

   Thanks for this post.

   Yes, it is going to be difficult to get Web 2.0 going in India because of the limitation of broadband penetration and more importantly because of the quality of the broadband connection. Plus, it is cheaper to own a high end mobile phone and connect instantly than buy a laptop and connect to the broadband.

   Opportunites in mobile for consumers is going to be a huge area of growth…not necessarily just retail.

   As one CEOs that I interviewed put it what matters in India is that 10 percent of 1 billion is a huge number compared to 10 percent in the USA….and I think that is a key point to remember. In India if you can reach even 10 percent of the population there is a huge opportunity to grow.

   Kamla

6. pranav on April 23rd, 2007 12:57 pm

   Some very interesting comments.

   @Vish I agree - To a certain extent Avnish seems to be equating Web2.0 with social networking. Even if thats the case, the popularity of Orkut would offer a glimpse on how popular soc. networking is in India.

   @adil @kamla

   I guess the root of all misery is the infrastructure. If people have an always-on Internet connection, it would increase the consumption by Indian audience..This in turn would drive the demand for new online services. I think the potential for mobile is great — but I dont see it replacing the laptop anytime soon.

7. abey on April 25th, 2007 8:06 am

   This definition of web 2.0 as a social networking thing is too narrow. SocNet is but one visible sign of what is happening under the hood. The “info-structure” so to speak. Web 2.0 is actually the first step in an interface revolution that is going to transform the web as we know it. Irrespective of geography. That Tata Indicom is already offering 2Mbps is a precursor of things to come. Web 2.0 is also about the collapse of the traditional software boundary/website (read: APIs, Mashups etc). Avinash Bajaj is correct in his perception though he has screwed up the analysis. You cannot invest in something that is not there. India does not have a web 2.0 story. Yet. The likes of Infy and the tech titans are all solid software engineering shops but they don’t understand web 2.0. They are still booting up in OOP mode and staggering under the weight of obedience to SEI-CMM. You can’t expect a whale to dance like a dolphin now can you? To effectively use Web 2.0 you have to understand software. Not in didactic terms but as living extensions that plug into your everyday life. The convenience of instantaneous response, the centrality of anywhere, anytime access, integration to everything that is critical in your life. That is the direction Web 2.0 is pointing to. It’s not whether we in India will follow that route. It’s when.

   One more thing. On the infrastructure side we already have sufficient scale. We just need one bright spark to kick off the India wave!

8. pranav on April 25th, 2007 11:06 am

   Abey,

   I wouldnt expect Infy and the likes to understand Web2.0. They are after all in the IT services industry rather than consumer facing Internet market.

   Abt the infrastructure,I havent had first hand experience, but a lot of close friends tell me that broadband in India is still sub-par..often unreliable - not the ‘always on’ that one would expect of broadband

9. Kamla Bhatt Blog » Exclusive Interview: Alok Mittal on iYogi + Web 2.0 Debate on April 25th, 2007 1:11 pm

   [...] In case you missed it there is a a lively debate that started with D. Murali and C. Ramesh’s interview with Avnish Bajaj of Matrix Partners.  Check Startup Dunia and Content Sutra for a lively thread on the topic.I am waiting to get a response from Avnish about Web 2.0 and Social Networking. In the meantime, D. Murali informs me there is a second article on Avnish that should be published shortly in the Hindu Business Line. So, watch out for that. Technorati tags: Alok Mittal, iYogi, Web 2.0 in India, Avnish Bajaj, venture capital, social media No comments for Exclusive Interview: Alok Mittal on iYogi + Web 2.0 Debate » [...]

10. Cool Dude on April 26th, 2007 9:36 am

    Excellent thoughts. Core sector in India has much more potential than nascent concepts such as Web2.0

    Similar artical at another blog
    http://boldstep.blogspot.com/

11. Avnish Bajaj interview, part II « Startup Dunia - Indian startups and Entrepreneurship on May 1st, 2007 4:27 pm

    [...] In the first part of his interview with Hindu, Avnish Bajaj mentioned how Web2.0 is not currently a viable idea in the Indian market. In the second part of this interview, he talks about being a VC - what factors guide their investment decisions, what role they play in terms of investing in a company and what it takes to be hired to work for a VC firm. According to him, it is easier to work with an ‘A’ team but, like many in the field, he frets that finding such a team is tougher in India. “I believe there are a lot of ‘A’ opportunities to explore in India. [...]

12. Lucifer on July 17th, 2007 12:42 am

    @ Pranav,Abey,

    I beg to differ about your point “I wouldnt expect Infy and the likes to understand Web2.0. They are after all in the IT services industry rather than consumer facing Internet market. ” and to what Abey said earlier.

    I work for one of the IT “whales”, and contrary to your belief, we do work on projects apart from making banking solutions and the like. Web 2.0 is a big big part of a major research I am currently undertaking for a breakthrough venture of ours. A lot of our clients are companies who are part of the customer facing internet market. They need Web 2.0 and we need to understand that.

    True, India is far, far away from where western countries and western companies are when it comes to web 2.0 enabled offerings/ features/ interactivity / mindset etc., but its myopic to say that the whales have no clue. We are not a Bn$ + company for no reason.

13. pranav on July 17th, 2007 1:05 am

    @Lucifer,

    How much % of revenue and staff does Infy have dedicated to services & maintenance and the likes ? And how much towards Web 2.0 ? Lets face it - Infy is a services provider. There’s a possibility that Web 2.0 may a growing pie of the services industry…Still, I believe that maintenance and support will always be at the forefront for the next few years.

14. Lucifer on July 17th, 2007 6:41 am

    @ Pranav,
    “Still, I believe that maintenance and support will always be at the forefront for the next few years”

    I agree totally.

    But that was not my bone of contention. All I was saying was that its not like the behemoths like infy etc. are ignoring it completely or are totally clueless. The services/product portfolio is after all a function of customer demand. and customers are mostly American and european cos. (so its not like Indian firms specifically are lagging behind).

    the point I was making was that even the whales want to dance like dolphins. Its a slow move, but its steady and purposeful.

    Like it has been said earlier, infrastricture is, and will continue to be a problem in India for a while. I’m in bbay and suffer an hour or 2 of downtime a week at least. thats probably the best level of service ever heard of in India.

15. ajitesh on August 2nd, 2007 8:20 am

    Have we forgotten Orkut.com while talking all about Web 2.0, Social networking, talking about personal life, infrastructure and stuff like that?

    Are we limiting Indians to “Indians in India” or we are referring to “Indians around the globe”? I think we wont like to ignore that fact.

16. mwzd on August 18th, 2007 4:17 am

    I’m inclined to agree with Avinash on this. Listen to him, that guy is no flash in the pan developer for the web in India.

    When he formed baazee he was very clear that the ultimate goal would be to sell to ebay, not an easy thing to achieve, yet he did it.

    Even if socnet does take off in India, by limiting yourself to India or Indians how are you ever going to compete with the majors? Myspace/Orkut/Facebook etc all have a target audience, none limited by geography or ethinicity.

17. Swamyraj on October 16th, 2007 3:07 am

    Aha.. nice thoughts being shared on this subject, so let me lend some of mine.

    So firstly i completely agree with Avnish and Pranav.

    I’ll begin with picking up some interesting keywords. ‘distant reality’. When Avnish mentions that Web 2.0 is ‘distant reality’ it does not mean that Web 2.0 is not going to succeed its just that all the stake holders will have to work in collaboration, so its only matter of time that user acceptance will increase in India.

    For example social networking or other service providers based on web 2.0 concept will have to collaborate with ISPs so that they get better reach and ISPs in turn get their business expanding. So on a larger scale Reliance, the Airtels, Lenovos and media must do a good collaborative marketing to create awareness in consumers that … they should use Seventymm, bazee.com, bigadda, yatra.com.

    ‘Culture’.. now traditionally Indians are not used to selling news paper, burgers, subways at the age of 17,18..20. In US at young age they start selling some kind of product or service so they develop the PR or marketing skills quite naturally. So migrating from ’service-oriented’ to ‘product-oriented’ mind set will require some proactive measures, some radical changes in schooling, some openness in society.

    Having said that.. its really nice to see such initiative being taken… latest one being Storzz.com. i was actually feeling the need of such an initiative and voila i found it few days ago. SO ‘consumerism’ is set to change in India.. its just matter of time.