Saturday, September 01, 2007

Micro businesses and Web 2.0 as I see in India

I was looking at the trends of Micro Businesses across the globe (a Micro Business, simple definition is a business consisting of max five employees and largely caters to local market. It is smaller than Home Business), I came across a staggering list of small businesses - perhaps micro startups already leveraging web 2.0 in India. My observation could be slightly skewed as I relied largely on internet and there could be businesses in other geographic regions not linked to internet...but nevertheless....

Let me give you some samples:

1. Event manager on Mobile - nothing new, eh? Well sample this. While the general apps like this cater for events such as Meetups, Class Reunions, Dating etc, this is for largely indian events such as weddings, traditional 1st year birthdays, house warming ceremonies etc. I think innovations like these are very important and caters to the local market and has a great opportunity to grow. Wasn't Bharatmatrimony a big success? These event managers are installable on mobiles (I'm not sure which OS) and cater to address book, invitations, tracking of invitees, specific preferences, profiling, notifications.............etc.

2. The second one I noticed was this one. This was Video resumes on your mobile. Well, lazy (busy?) interviewers like me would love it. All that my recruiter has to do is upload these screened video resumes on to a calendar that I use and that is automatically downloaded onto my mobile using either push or pull mechanism. So, I just play the resume on my way to the interviewing venue and i not only get the usual details in a CV but can notice communication, presentation, body language etc upfront even before I meet the candidate. There is nothing specific here for India but I have a reason for this. 80-90% of hiring happens in India now for atleast IT companies!

3. Public examinations tutorials and quizzes on mobile for GATE, IIT JEE, CAT, UGC... and it's not just the lessons and tests, but these include wikis, chat rooms, social networking...I guess how much you can extend these functionalities is really up to one's imagination. Here was a real need by aspiring students, a real opportunity and a real market since almost every student aspiring for higher studies has a mobile handset.

In some ways, everybody wants to be listened to (translates the need to write a blog), commented upon and get a chance to improve or fine tune. I think Web 2.0 helps this need so much saying 'let's collaborate, your feedback is as important as mine' and this is a way shift from 'I know, I speak, you listen' of the older 'article writing ways'. Asians (Indians and South Koreans) blog the most or contribute to other blogs as per various studies.

I dread the day when pokemon web2.0 sites are installable on mobile and I really dread that day when kids will shift from the humble telephone to the mobile social networking site to discuss which pokemon has a fire attack and which one has a laser attack! Until then...all web 2.0 is welcome :-)