This is an update on a blog from 2011 titled What’s On(line) India? I wrote that blog about a year after I moved back from US and compared the services that were available in India online to the ones in the US. I had identified a few areas where the services had just launched in India and a few more where we did not have an equivalent service in India.
I was curious to check how things have changed in India and so did a refresh of that table.
Some observations:
- Most categories popular in the US are all available in India and with reasonably good options
- There are a few categories (particularly in O2O) that were non-existent (or very early) in 2011 that have quickly evolved in both US and in India and have got to reasonable scale. These categories are highlighted in green.
- The categories that are driven by subscriptions or purely digital revenue (e.g. Movie rentals) are still early in India – particularly since subscription businesses are yet to catch the Indian consumers favor.
- Most of these products/services are still getting traction mostly from the top of the Indian consumption pyramid
- With the growing smartphone penetration and growing income levels, we can expect some of these products/services to trickle down to the next layer of Indian consumption – what Goldman Sachs calls the Urban Mass
The above list is by no means exhaustive. Curious to hear what products/services you would love to order from your mobile or your computer that you are not able to yet in India.
Note: Blog also posted here
