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Right Time for Startups to Do an Apple in India
By siliconindia
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Thursday, 10 November 2011, 03:29 IST
Bangalore: India has seen an amazing boom in mobile usage in the last decade. There are 800 million mobile users currently in India. With this, there is a great chance of many local hardware brands popping up, and this could transform the very ecosystem of mobile in the country. The leading start-up companies could make innovations on the lines of famous brands like Apple, Nokia, Samsung etc.
What are the chances of such local innovations happening in India? This was a matter of panel discussion at the NASSCOM organized Product Conclave in Bangalore. The panel included Vishal Sehgal, CEO, Lava Mobiles; Dinesh Prasad, Senior Director of Sales and Business Development at Qualcomm India and Ashish Aggarwal, CEO, SNAP. They discussed the current state and challenges in hardware design, ecosystem approach taken by players and the emerging ecosystem for mobiles, smartphones and tablet brands. The debate centered around hardware ecosystem, especially around mobility, opportunities for VAS players and how cloud or mobility players could partner with device OEMs.
"This is the age and time to create brands. Brand provides consumers something they trust, and in order to keep up that trust, brands have to constantly undergo innovations," felt Segal.
Moreover, the panel also felt that it is primarily important to identify the tastes of the consumers. As in any business, Consumer requirements matter.
"First question before any market is to figure out whom to address, that is, understand what a consumer needs, and then identify the areas of improvements. One needs to understand how consumers touch brands and identify with them," said Ashish Aggarwal, CEO, SNAP.
What all companies have to watch out is that in the coming years the demand may become more intensive, and the companies will have to meet them. At present the ecosystem is in its tender stages, and the consumers are more forgiving. Things may change soon, and consumer demand will increase. Moreover, it will be interesting to see if mobile brands may go the way of T.V. Television witnessed an uprising of brands in 1990s, but they just fizzed out in the last decade.
