Identity 2.0

Chances are , you have not heard about this service. Call it Trust 2.0 or Identity 2.0 , the central theme here is verification - in this case of a person or her work. It may yet turn out to be a killer theme globally as well as in the Indian context.

Indians are definitely not alone in fudging resumes , as this NY Times article shows. I feel more credit card fraud probably happens in US/UK than in India , and some recent call center cases gained much more adverse publicity courtesy the anti-outsourcing brigade.

There are some startups out there building job referral sites, that is , akin to LinkedIn, you could refer someone you know for a job opening. I think this is not a fool proof solution for the majority. And here is why.

The number of white collar jobs in IT/ITES companies in India is a fraction of the number of students graduating each year in different fields. An even smaller fraction is the number of students deemed "employable". Sure, there are lot of smart kids coming out of colleges. But given our demographics, the "also-rans" are huge in number. This leads to competition , but mostly at the entry level. Once you cross the threshold into an MNC or an Infy/Wipro/TCS/likes and bag a handful of years as experience, its pretty much your world for the taking.

If you don't know what I am talking about, go visit the open walk-in for a big software company in Bangalore. Someone I know almost got killed in a stampede during one such walk-in.

Job consultants have been around in India for a long enough time. But most of these smaller shops have a really bad reputation for screening quality freshers. Their screening process is as transparent as a wall, inside jobs are common, and test administration is closer to a farce. No wonder IT/ITES companies discover fudged resumes and poor communicators down the line.

The pressing need ,or shall we say opportunity,therefore, is of an identity verification cum selection company, targeted mainly at freshers in IT/ITES and having the following three attributes : 1) Inviolability 2) Transparency 3) Flexibility. Doas any such company exist in India?

India and the Internet

While browsing aimlessly, I stumbled upon this piece of data at http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm. You might already know some of these figures , but being a DI freak, I made some interesting observations-

* There is a strong correlation between internet penetration and economic development. Japan, SouthKorea,Singapore,Taiwan and South Korea at the highest tier; Bangladesh,Myanmar,Nepal and some central Asian countries at the lowest tier; while China,Indonesia,Phillipines and Thailand form the bulk of the middle tier. India, with 3.5% penetration, is still way way closer to the lower tier than the middle tier.

What is mind-boggling, for me at least, is that this correlation holds even when you look at figures from Europe ; with Nordic countries leading the pack followed by western europe and then central and eastern europe.

* Pakistan, India's never-to-be forgotten neighbor, increased penetration by a staggering 9000% over 2000-2007. Even though it started off with a small base, this is a stupendous achievement nonetheless and something India could look at. I personally think for too long the IT mandarins in the Indian government(both union and state) have focused on aspects like outsourcing and FDI without looking at domestic penetration as a critical component.

* Broadband penetration in India is around 0.1% but is growing the fastest(about 20% per month). No prizes for guessing if this growth is primarily urban or rural. Why do MTNL and BSNL ,both public sector companies, continue to the most dominant broadband ISP's? My answer- existing infrastructure and right of way. Can we have a fairer playing field please? 256 Kbps isn't exactly the fastest, I could do with 2-4 times more. I want to live my SecondLife minus the display hiccups and work from home.

* Worldwide, urbanization and Internet penetration are correlated. Countries of Western and northern Europe and US are more than 80% urban and penetration is close to 70%. I think this makes sense , with the much higher urban population density a good incentive for ISP's , especially broadband. With more than 50% of India's population continuing to be rural by 2025, more than 500 million rural people would live on the other side of the digital divide. Maybe Intel is right- WiMax is the way to go in India. After all, who is going to lay DSL cables in 0.5 million villages with fewer than 10,000 residents each?

*Add the fact that 40% of India is below 15 years of age, you get a closer picture of who you are designing your website for.

Next up , I will look at the split of young,urban internet users across different segments.

Do It Online - The Indian way

What do www.seventymm.com , www.compareindia.com and www.hungrybangalore.com have in common?

These are all internet ventures targeted at the Indian consumer albeit none of them is an online shopping site ( remember the baazee wannabes?). Indians just don't like to shop online, partly because there aren't a whole lot of really good (read cheap) deals available. Moreover , buying something more expensive or long lasting than an FMCG tends to be a see-touch-feel collective family shopping exercise for the vast majority who are "just" able to afford the widest TV, the hottest (literally) microwave or the tallest hatchback. This is the biggest reason Dell has not been able to make a dent in the Indian PC market. Note how even the advertisements position these goods for the whole family. This is the reality of a developing country with a growing,family oriented, middle class.

Does this make internet ventures obsolete? Far from it. Each of the three companies I listed above , I suspect , understand the psyche of the internet savvy Indian consumer. They address real needs - searching and renting a movie title for your movie buff daughter , comparing brands of washing machines for your mom(sorry, barring exceptions, this is a decision that moms make in most Indian households. Call me sexist if you will.) or ordering late night dinner from a restaurant 10 km away. None of these ventures claim to be substitues of real shopping , rather each provides a service where either a) Brick & Mortar mom-pop stores are unreliable,non-existent or unorganized , like movie rentals and food delivery or b) the website is just a precursor, like compareindia, to the actual shopping. Note the common theme is that the stakes for the consumer are minimal if the product- a movie rental or a family dinner- turns out to be lower than expected quality. And no one ever lost anything by visiting a comparison only site. The same lower stakes will make customers fickle- don't expect them to stick if your services ( delivery time for dinner , for example) are not of the best quality every time.

There are others , online bus ticketing (www.redbus.in) and comparing real estate ( www.magicbricks.com) , which are taking a similar approach and are worth a dekko.