The other day I’d misplaced my keys. Instead of cueing me for where exactly I’d kept them, my mind was impelling me to ‘Google’ it out. Perhaps many of us, who remain immersed in the world of Google, Bing or Yahoo! all day, would have also felt the same. Indeed the ‘power’ of the Internet has been impacting our life and lifestyles, spifflicating cultural and geographical barriers.

The ever-growing Internet penetration has enabled instant one-to-one connection. Reaching out to a lost contact isn’t a big task nowadays. For businesses, reaching out to the targeted audience directly isn’t a costly affair and importantly it’s the only medium that is really capable of specific measurement in terms of ‘cost of acquiring a client’. Being an interactive medium, the Internet can provide a really immersive brand engagement with the user.

However, there has been no invention of any innovative business model in terms of monetization till date other than advertisement for an Internet business to survive. Even businesses are still not very comfortable with the online medium and still are unwilling to spend online. In 2000, spend on Internet by the businesses in India was a mere $6 million, which has now increased to $110 million. However, the ‘spend per user’ is still not a big figure in India. A decade ago, it was around $1.2 and is still hovering around $1.3, even though the number of Internet users has gone up 15 times to over 82 million today. E-commerce in India has not been able to take off as anticipated. Most of the Internet companies are surviving because of their offline presence or partnership with offline businesses. Despite the popularity, social networking sites still have not figured out viable non-advertisement based business model–indeed, this is a global phenomenon as well.
Many businesses that moved to the online space to expand or grow are still struggling, as users are still averse to discover or pay for a service online. So, unless users become completely confident about carrying out business online, Internet will definitely remain another visual but interactive digital medium rather than a business platform. Consider ad dependent Internet biggies like Yahoo! or Google; in a sense they are just helping businesses reach more people. But every Internet venture can’t be a Yahoo! or Google right? So, what’s the next big opportunity on the Internet?

It’s the right time to deliberate.

On a different note, we are glad to inform you that you’ll have an opportunity to connect with many Indian women corporate honchos who’ve always believed in, and found it much more useful to look ahead, to be unafraid of failure, to make the tough decisions, and to just deal with it and win. Let’s connect and delve more into it right there at SiliconIndia Women Leadership Summit being organized across five cities ? Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Pune.