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Tag: India Digital Summit 2012

  • Among other things, the India Digital Summit finds that currently the platforms are too digital to be efficient and new addition to digital innovations does not necessarily help the existing businesses to grow.

    Digital Summit: The new wave of mobile and social – are we strong enough for it?

    By Akash Raha

     

    The Sixth India Digital Summit hosted by IAMAI and Ministry of Information & Technology got underway in Delhi on January 18, 2012. The two-day summit will host a wide array of discussions and debates along with award ceremony, commemorating those who have done well in this field.

     

    Power Panel 2: Mobile VAS: What’s New?

    The post lunch session discussed and deliberated on the topic, ‘Mobile VAS: What’s new?’ The panelists for this session were Mr Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder, Chairman & MD, one97; Jay Seth, President & CEO, Air2Web India – a Velti company and Kunal Bajaj, Partner & Director, Analysys Mason India. Vishwanath aluuri, founder, Chairman & CEO, IMI Mobile was moderating the session.

     

    He panel debated how new technologies are coming in the market each day and how it brings newer mediums, newer devices and newer services. Each and every day technological innovations are pushed to new extremities and it gives the consumer a whole lot of options. But are these newer innovations helping the existing businesses to grow or are they hurting it?

     

    According to Mr Bajaj, technological innovations are constantly helping the business to grow. However, Mr Sharma was not of the same opinion. He said that currently the platforms are too digital to be efficient and new addition to digital innovations does not necessarily help the existing business to grow.  He gave the example of piracy which is constantly on the rise with the rise of technological innovations.

     

    Talking about mobile applications Mr Bajaj said that the future will be that of paid applications and more investment has to be made in the knowledge of how can people be made to pay. Mr Sharma too said that currently there are over 100 million people spending approximately Rs 30/- on mobile apps, which makes future even more heartening.  Mr Seth pointed out that the essence of it all remains in the fact that the end consumer is happy. An application is going to do what it is meant for and it should make a consumer happy,yet from a business perspective a profitable business model has to be made out of it.

     

    Power Panel 3: Social Entertainment: the merger of Content, social media and video platform.

    In the current times movie, television experience and social media all work hand in hand. Movie producers and TV shows are posting tweets and encouraging an immediate social relationship among viewers. Kicking off the discussion the moderator, Mr Neeraj Roy, Managing director & CEO, Hungama Digital pointed out how in the last 2-3 years all the newer devices that are coming in the market have internet connectivity. According to sources, he explained, by the year 2015 10 billion people will be connected to the internet, and not only through their phones and tablets but through cars, television nd other home appliances. In all of these, one thing remains constant which is a screen. At such a situation, the content provider is threatened as the system is so dynamic and yet is excited and sees the development as an opportunity. In a year and a half India will jump from 3G to 4G and sky will be the limit for content provider, seller and receiver.

     

    Vivek  Bhargava, Founder Communicate2 gave the example of Kolaveri di which became viral. It essentially shows the reach of the digital. Internet has become a mass medium and video consumption trends have become as such. The only option is that brands have to evolve now with changing times.

     

    Rahul Saighal, CMO, Aircel said “There are three important elements – content, social and video (behind which it there is broadband) and all of these are hugely disruptive force. Sale of internet TV in 2012 was 10 percent of the market share in US… the numbers in 2012 is set to rise at 50 percent. And with growth, the era of mass customization will be reached. He went on to say that the concepts of time has changed too…Time is now internet specific time (IST) rather than Indian Standard Time.

     

    George John, Director Marketing, Warner Bros India explained how WB has actually thought about the future and taken steps to provide content anytime and anyplace. 9 O clock is no longer prime time, rather, you can choose for yourself when your prime time is going to be in future. To be specific about social media, it is an interactive activity… The question is, is it possible to make it more interactive and entertaining is what will drive the industry forward.  Mr Saighal said that “The future of content is that you create content for a psychographic and allow the audience to engage and  share the content and make it successful.”

     

    Power Panel 4: eCommerce in India: Today and Tomorrow

    Online buying habits have recently picked up in India and is growing at a very fast pace. It has taken us from the high street markets to the iStreet markets and has changed the way retail industry and buying in India. A power panel deliberated on this issue and on what is the way forward for the ecommerce business in India.

     

    While Harish Bahl, Founder & Group CEO, The Smile Group moderated the session other panel members who participated in the discussions were Muralikrishnan B, Country Manager – India & Philippines, eBay; Sundeep Malhotra, CEO, Homeshop18; Binny Bansal, Co-founder  & COO, Flipkart and Vinay Gupta,Founder & CEO, Via.com.

     

    Mr Bansal maded the initial comment and said that one should forget about profitability to start of with as it is all about market share and the consumer. Mr Bahl further added that the ecommerce business has just started in India and we have to start our business thinking about the end customer. Their needs are very simple; we deliver to them what they ask for. Mr Malhotra said that currently we are not strong enough to reach a consolidation and right now we need to engage and build on customers.

     

    When asked how to build a lifetime of customers, Mr Malhotra said that “For a lifetime of customers one has to spend a lifetime in a business.” What is important in the current scheme of things is the frequency and not the basket size of the buy. We are too new in the business to even think about profitability and yet, one have to maintain a fine balance in our business to sustain it. Mr Muralikrishnan said that the fundamentals are imp to be built on. One has to build on consumers and engage with them but not through push marketing, but not spam marketing. There is a need for more research and understanding on the customers buying habits which would eventually help the ecommerce business to sustain, be profitable and serve the customers better.

     

    The panel members were of the unanimous opinion that ecommerce is a potential big industry in the times to come, and yet, comparison with western markets is unfair as it is still relatively new. The ecommerce industry is going to be the next big thing, considering the rising real estate prices too. The idea, as one of the panelist said, is to make “Malls within shops.”

     

  • 'Preparing for 300 Million Internet Users', the India Digital Summit tackled some relevant questions about the new wave of media and the way it is used, which is not just approaching but upon us.

    Digital Summit: Is Digital a monster for brands?

    By Shruti Pushkarna

     

    The 6th India Digital Summit 2012, organized by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) opened to a packed hall in the capital on Wednesday. This year the theme being, ‘Preparing for 300 Million Internet Users’, the conference was launched with the objective of looking at two critical aspects, first, the need to develop the infrastructure for increasing the user base; the second, to plan businesses in a way to be able to deal with the 300 million user market.

     

    A series of exciting sessions kept the Delhi audience busy on Day 1 of the IAMAI Digital Summit, which was later followed by the 2nd India Digital Awards ceremony at the India Habitat Centre.

     

    Digital Media: The Big Picture

    The session moderator, Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Google India, divided the discussion into the following areas, a discussion on where digital media stands today, the need to explore digital medium as a branding medium, mobile, videos & social media and vernacular on the web. What followed was an enriching exchange of views between all panelists on each of the areas stemming from the overall topic, digital media.

     

    The panelists included, Ms Mariam Mathew, COO, Manorama Online, Mr Upen Rai, Director, Times Internet, Mr Natesh Mani, President- Commercial & Consumer Business, Sify, and Dippak Khurama, Founder & CEO, Vserv Digital.

     

    Mr Anandan started with an interesting observation that although “online advertising has crossed 1500 cr but it’s still only 5 percent of the entire advertising pie.” Sharing a similar view, Mr Upen Rai, Director, Times Internet also agreed that the story so far in terms of how digital has surfaced in all these years upto 2011 is although a good story but not as exciting as it should have been. He attributed over -excitement in the industry over building this medium, the hype around the words ‘interactive’ and ‘RoI’, as the main reasons for digital not taking off in a manner it should have. He said, “In the excitement of building this medium, we’ve actually built a monster- a monster for brands.”

     

    While all panelists agreed with Google’s Managing Director, Mr Rajan Anandan when he noted that digital has well been established as a performance medium, they all agreed with how important it is at this stage to explore how can the medium be established as a brand building medium. Ms Mariam Mathew of Manorama Online said, “…the answer to whether you can use internet for brand building is a definite yes, but the consumer group will have to be treated as a totally different TG who needs to be engaged in a peculiar way. ”

     

    Talking about mobile, Dippak Khurana of Vserv Digital said that the pace at which the mobile space has grown in India is five times more than the pace at which the internet space grew in India. The numbers are promising but again the flipside remains the fact that how many people, how many agencies within the industry have a mobile head? There are not enough people talking about it, not enough people who are convincing the rest of them of the benefits of mobile advertising. Adding on to Mr Khurana’s view, Mr Upen Rai of Times Internet said, “…still the brands don’t know what to expect and what to do with mobile. A step forward needs to be taken where one needs to demonstrate the benefits of mobile.”

     

    Adding on, Mr. Natesh Mani of Sify offered solutions like transaction based ads, local search based ads etc for popularizing mobile advertising.

     

    Talking about video and social Mr Mani asserted that going forward there will hardly be any brands without social media strategies integrated within. Social media, he said, “…allows you to engage with the consumers much more as compared to an offline medium.”

     

    Ms Mathew termed social media as a “marketer’s dream” but she also noted, “unfortunately advertisers have not fully realised the worth of this medium.” Mr Rai also agreed with other panelists on how well social media works for ‘engagement’ but as for an ‘advertising destination’, no certain answers emerged from the discussion.

     

    Video again is an emerging medium, but the problem of streaming and bandwidth will have to be addressed before taking it to the next level.

     

    Next series of views were exchanged on ‘vernacular in web’ and how most internet really is ‘english internet’. Ms Mariam Mathew of Manormala Online asserted that regional audience is a far more dedicated audience and works much more in terms of engagement levels than compared to a more generic English audience. Mr Upen Rai supported her view but had to admit that the exact opposite was true in terms of commercials. He said, “…these sites (vernacular) have the highest engagement but pathetic monetization.”

     

    The session concluded with each panelist sharing their respective forecasts for the domain, and Mr Rajan Anandan of Google India concluding with a hope that ” …we’ve have an open and free internet.”

     

    Broadband for Masses

    This session was chaired by Mr Sanjeev Bhikchandani, Founder & Executive Chairman, Info Edge who invited Mr Ajit Balakrishnan, Founder, Chairman & CEO, Rediff.com to share his views on the topic. The discussion focused on how to take broadband to the masses, considering the fact that only 8 to 10 million people have unconstrained access to internet in India.

     

    Mr. Balakrishnan said, “A small westernized group of around 10 million people is creating all the dialogue and everyone else is listening. This is what worries me.” The few reasons he cited were posing as hindrances in the reach of broadband to the masses included, high pricing and the problem of perception. He also added that the broadband model needs to be treated differently from the mobile model in terms of RoI. He said, “Broadband investment is exactly the opposite of how cellular investment works- it is not as speedy and quick in terms of results.”

     

    Mr. Sanjeev Bhikchandani echoed Mr. Balakrishnan’s views on the need to build an infractructure to take broadband to the masses. But he also expressed a worry in terms of generating ample locally relevant content for these users. But Mr. Balakrishnan seemed rather unmoved by the concern, as he believed, ” the problem of content will be side-stepped in India, as the focus will shift to video.”

     

    Plenary Session: Mobile Internet

    The session had a keynote address by Mr Dilip Modi, Managing Director, Spice Global, and was chaired by Mr Dhruv Shringi, Vice Chairman- IAMAI & Cofounder, Yatra.com.

     

    Mr Dilip Modi spoke about the success story of mobile telephony and how and why has it grown the way it has over the years. The main point to note in his presentation was, as and when the tariff per minute (in mobile usage) was reduced, it led to dramatic growth in terms of usage. So what the industry needs to look at for increasing the consumer base, is to regulate the cost of access and the cost of device. He urged the businesses to, “look for innovation models to bring down the cost of device without compromising on the quality of the user experience.”

     

    Mr Dhruv Shringi made an interesting point, that there is enough critical mass in the market to start looking at, but there is a need to look at it as a separate model from the existing ones. He concluded the session by agreeing with the point made by Mr Modi, ” …for the number of users to go up, the three components have to be looked at collectively- cost of device, cost of accessibilty and the cost of services.”