Completely agree. I am supremely confident that given the size of the market and the pace at which it is changing it is a great place to start a company. Also somewhat curious as to why lot of people are being so skeptical about it.
116 karma · joined February 3, 2011
>>The fact that Indian consumers have woken up so late to it re-emphasizes that Indians resist technological intervention
Maybe I see things wrong but I don't think Indians resist technology. Its that the technology got here late. Also, its just that it is a different market and different factors at play here.
>>Cash on Delivery has a lot of issues. I won't elaborate but, customers refuse the sale later on (impulse buy regrets), delayed booking of revenue, costs around collecting and cash reconciliation.
So do other modes of payments. There will always be customers who will want to get a refund. As I said am not entirely sure what the best solution is for non-physical transactions.
>>Indian Businesses and consumers don't pay for Technology Products.
This a blanket statement. Maybe the types of businesses we interact with are very different. From my experience a lot of them are ready to pay well if they see the benefits.
>>If they want to pay, they don't have mechanisms to pay you online. Umm, this is false. There are lots of ways to pay online. IRCTC does this on a decent scale.
All that being said, I agree it can be hard doing business but I don't believe it is any harder than doing it anywhere else. Every market has its set of advantages and disadvantages, but one needs to focus on what can be done instead of obsessing over what cannot be done.
I looked at your site and like the idea. I am sure you must have tried this but have you tried making up deals with IT companies where you do the tax filings for all the people in the company for a bulk rate. A lot of companies do this since the guys collect the documents from the office saving the employees time and your pricing is very reasonable. Also, they are the ones who'd be more likely to understand and pay for this.
Cheers
1. Pricing. The cost of most software is comparable to its cost in U.S. A windows 7 professional edition costs around 8000 bucks, which I think is pretty high. I am sure most people would gladly pay if they thought it was reasonable. Same with books.
2. Convenience. Most people are wary of using their credit cards or debit cards online. For physical goods, there is Cash On Delivery which is working out pretty well for a lot of companies. Not sure what the alternative is for software thought.
For example, look at Flipkart. They are killing it.
Also could not make much out of the article.
My instinct wants to me to join the startup but I am a little hesitant to miss out on having Amazon on my resume and the opportunity to get to SV, since it has been echoed many times here that SV is the best place to be if you want to start on your own.
But your post has given me, if I can say so, courage to just go with the first option.
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}>The issue is an insane attitude towards money and business, and in our case we have adopted it through idolizing Silicon Valley types Thats is the standard attitude in any business driven community. The stock trading firms are the same all over the world. I'd bet that the silicon valley idols are much much better than any other role models I have seen.
>Ironically when he fails the community will congratulate him because in this industry failure for some crazy reason is good. What I understand is that failure is acceptable there. This is the reason people can do things that otherwise would not be possible and is crucial to its culture.
>Mark Zuckerberg and any other Silicon Valley douche-bag you can think of are the worst role-models for kids because they teach kids bad habits. I don't seem to have learnt any bad habits from them. I don't know of any douche-bags but I do know of a lot of people I look up to who are from SV.
>What happened to the real entrepreneurs? Remember those guys? Yes, The guys that built real businesses and not money burning doomsday devices! I miss those guys… because you could always learn a lot from them. Is there a strict definition of entrepreneurs? and by some rule the guys at SV are not entrepreneurs. I'd like to hear that.