DOWN, BUT NOT OUT

The Internet economy of India

There must be something about the Indian internet business that defies logic with uncanny regularity. The Indian portal tales have sharper twists and smoother slopes than highways on the hills. And yet Inomy tells us that the Indian internet economy is worth $22 billion (swallow!) which by its own admission, “is a path that many serious research groups will fear to tread.”
Inomy.com, launched in 199, with the sole aim o tracking the internet economy in India felt that the web site alone could not take the message across to the netpreneurs (as Inomy calls them) and the net-savvy masses. So, it gave birth to The Inomy  Knowledge Book 2001-pages are elegantly laid out and the articles are relaxed in their approach-the first of its print editions, with more to be launched in the next six months to two years.
Through a series of articles on topics ranging from cyber laws, venture capital, B2B, e-CRM, e-commerce, ISPs, e-governance, bandwidth, and interviews with leading luminaries associatd with the internet economy-Kevin Kelly, George Colony, Patrick Hall and John Perely Barllow, to name a few-Inomyhas sought to drive home its contention that the internet betokens the arrival of an abundance economy in India (in the words of the editor-in-chief). The articles touch developments in the Asian markets, take umbrage at worldwide trends, and narrows down on the Indian web economy. A point not to be missed is the parallel that the authors draw, between the Indian market and other markets, to highlight the co-existence of dynamism and sluggishness in the market place.

India has a per capita bandwidth of 11.8 kpbs, which is about 1500 times less than that of the U.S., 500 times less than that of Japan and 400 times less than that of the U.K. Naresh Malhotra, managing director of Global Internet Ventures in his article ‘Bandwidth constraints in India’.

During these depressing times, what with the slowdown threatening to drown the India IT industry (the dot com market is already superannuated, according to skeptics), encouraging thoughts from a battery of impressive names including Pavan Duggal, supreme court lawyer and cyber law expert; Anurag Batra, CEO of exchange4mediacom; Sudhir Sethi, director of Walden International India; Sanjay Trehan, general manager-internet services, Hindustan Times; and Hemant Adarkar, director-technology, Ways Inc. come as a ray of hope and healing to the badly-battered Indian internet industry.

Don’t’ just build a web site, but build a vertical and just ensure that the vertical is in some way relate to the main business. – R. Sathyamurthy, chief netballer of www.tamil.com in his article on internet marketing and advertising.

Inomy offers some interesting numbers for budding net-businesses (and all the net skeptics) to crunch. Some 184 companies have invested in he internet economy in the year 2000 alone, amounting to Rs. 714,661 million, and 146 companies got venture capital funding, out of which only 34 per cent belonged to the B2C category, while 47 per cent belonged to the B2B segment. VCs have reportedly sunk in Rs. 118,889 million in the Indian internet market.
Through this book, Inomy takes the credit for keeping the spirits of the Indian netpreneurs up and vibrant. After all there is place and money for more, Inomy seems to say. Is there? Let’s wait and watch. – K. Sai Prasad.