Wine and mobile: India's best business venture

By agencies   |   Saturday, 12 August 2006, 10:32 IST
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NEW DELHI: Wining and dinning seems to have cast a charm on the growing middle class of India as importing fine wine is deemed as the next best thing to happen to emerging business ventures. With the middle-class sector contributing to the highest section in India?s population, this business idea may not seem too bad for global entrepreneurs as the tastes of the country's fast-growing middle class for a bottle of Chardonnay has found itself a place in one of the '12 best new business opportunities in the world' compiled by a Fortune group magazine. Envisaging a growth of nearly ten-folds in the wine sector, the Business 2.0 magazine, a part of global media giant CNN-Time Warner Group, also mentioned another growing segment in India as an apt business opportunity; creating an advertising network for the country's mobile content developers. Neddless to say, the mobile industry in India has witnessed success in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years. Though India's mobile content market is booming with the customer toll expecting to jump up 71 percent this year to $130 million, it nevertheless lacks an ad network to help invent all of those page views. Needing an initial investment of $100,000 to half-a-million dollars, the business idea of creating an ad network for the mobile content market may seems risky in comparison with the wine import business accounting to less than $100,000. Though India has already transformed into a chief destination for importing the United States, Australian, and other wine labels, the magazine also mentioned that the stringent regulations over investments across international borders could stand in the way of a successful venture and be the biggest entry barrier for Americans interested in starting a business overseas. But with the duties and excise taxes on imported wine being slashed considerably over the past two years, the magazine also went on to mention that many countries are now relaxing their rules and the wine boom would largely bypass the domestic brands, as the country is too hot for serious viticulture. Also one does not need an import license and anyone can bring wine from abroad into a warehouse bonded by the nation's customs office. Citing the example of startup Mads, the magazine used this three-person startup as an example for mobile ad networking. Founded by Ashu Mathura in Amsterdam, with an investment of about $100,000, the company focuses on writing software that collects ads and serves them on mobile Web pages. It buys ad space from content publishers such as ringtone sites, mobile game firms and then sells that space to advertisers. Remodeling homes for China's burgeoning middle class, flipping mining claims in Bolivia, export of the planet's next great wines - from Greece, export of gourmet coffee from Rwanda, have been quoted by the magazine as few other great business venture ideas.