AOL India Portal – Train kabki nikal padi re bawa…

As I sipped my morning coffee, I read about the launch of AOL’s India specific portal. Email, messenger, mobile services, video and of course news are some of the services offered by the portal. City specific guides for major metros are also available. Considering that they just launched yesterday, I wont pass any judgement about the portal. But, there is definitely nothing on the portal to evoke oohs and aahs from the audience.

Content, design, localization aside – I’m still trying to figure out the point in launching so late into the Indian portal market. As if we dont already have a mature portal market.

Ok, so they want a share of the pie. But what kind of ammunition do they have to offer ? AOL email, instant messaging ?

AOL email -

Why and what incentive would a user have to use AOL email ? The Indian Internet audience already has email accounts with numerous providers. Morever, the features of AOL email that are being hyped – unlimited storage, effective safety and spam blocking systems and mobile services – are already offered by other providers. Changing your email address is like relocating to a new city – too much hassle, too many people to be notified, lot of effort and time. One would avoid it unless absolutely necessary.
The last entrant into this market – GMail – was successfully only because of the way in which it was marketed. By releasing a limited supply of GMail invites, the demand soared up and GMail ended up getting marketed virally.

AOL messaging -

Yahoo messenger and Gtalk are most widely used by the Indian audience. I dont think AOL messenger talks to Yahoo messenger (correct me if I’m wrong). So, the incentive for me to migrate to AOL messenger would be if all my friends migrate to AOL too – which is unlikely to happen.

Besides the above, I believe the bigger obstacle that AOL would face is about brand perception. It has been my observation that Indians do not tend to have an affinity towards the AOL brand (I base this on personal observations from friends and family here in the US who had prior access to AOL). It is along the same rationale of why Indians in the US prefer a Toyota or a Honda – brand perception by a community. Feel free to provide your input whether you agree or disagree with me here.

A couple of interesting tidbits from AOL’s launch:

• “With our cool and innovative features that are quite new to Indian online community, we will definitely be in the top three in the next three years” – via BS. Mr. Ponnapa – would you kindly point me to these supposedly innovative features that are new to the Indian online community ?

• “If Yahoo! had the first-mover advantage, we have the second-mover advantage.“. Again, Yahoo is not the only portal you will be competing with. Lets see how AOL India leverages the advantage of being a late-entrant in Indian market…After all, AOL saw its lead and first mover advantage in the US market wither away

• One question that plagued many at the event was the timing of AOL’s entry in the Indian market. AOL has been in India since 2002, informed Ron Grant, when it set up its Bangalore Service Center. According to him the time was great for AOL’s entry. via AlooTehie. Mr Grant, in case you misunderstood the question – it isnt referring to the presence of AOL’s call center or offshore development center since 2002. It was supposed to imply AOL’s entry into the portal market in India.

I believe the biggest strength of AOL India would lie in that fact that it has access to the huge Time Warner content repository – a goldmine in today’s age.

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Comments

2 Responses to “AOL India Portal – Train kabki nikal padi re bawa…”

1. Harpreet Kaur Dhami says:

   March 30, 2008 at 9:53 am

   Very nice to know that aol has been launched in India to match International standards in I.T.