We are in the midst of tremendous change all over, driven by technology, a very young population and rising aspiration. The business climate is changing for the better. Crony capitalism, both at the business level and at the political level, is seeing a pushback, with inquiries and broad-based revulsion at the citizen level. In the field of natural resources, a new paradigm of open auctions is becoming the de facto standard. Overall, the feeling of despondency at an inactive polity and large-scale corruption is giving way to the hope that it will surely bring in better policies and an upsurge in entrepreneurship.
Our youth are, as usual, showing the way. All over India, more and more youngsters are banding together and starting their own businesses. Many with off-beat ideas, selling groceries, growing vegetables, branding fruit, growing rare varieties of rice, creating new agricultural implements to increase agricultural productivity, and the like. Many small cities are the new homes of such start ups. Entrepreneurship is cool and something youth want to try and take the risk, in increasing numbers. Bengaluru has emerged as the start-up capital of India. Sadly, the areas chosen are largely those linked to services or technology, rather than manufacturing. Govern-ment failure still deters entrepreneurs and we should be concerned.
This upsurge is driven by certain factors.
The mobile revolution has connected people like no other phenomenon. Over 90 crore connections are in use with more than 70 crore actual users. 2014 may see the magical 100 crore being crossed. Internet usage is around 15 crore users, and galloping. Most young people are connected and using the mobile as their window to the world. They are using it to purchase bus tickets, train tickets, for movies, clothes, etc., in ever larger numbers, some enticed by great discounts and convenience, at e-commerce sites funded by overseas funds looking to strike rich with the next great e-company from India. 2014 will see an inflexion point in this upsurge. These are the children of the Liberalisation generation, unconstrained by the shackles that bound earlier generations.
Our shopping habits are changing, at the margin almost revolutionary but on the base very evident! Many old bookstores have shut down, driven to closure by readers going to the online bookstores, thanks to the fat discounts available as well as the convenience. Of course, there is the flip side -- money invested by overseas funds are covering up the losses incurred due to the deep discounts that Indian e-commerce sites find necessary to offer in order to grow revenues, and the Competition Commission of India is turning a blind eye to predatory pricing practices that have destroyed brick-and-mortar bookstores. This trend is spreading across many other consumer sectors. 2014 will show up the deep impact of a change in habits across a much bigger section of consumers.
Start-ups are changing the way we interact with restaurants, boutiques, travel agencies. Many portals are intermediating between the consumers and suppliers based on consumer comments and preferences. Music, movies, entertainment are being driven by Web marketing. Social media is becoming a country in itself, creating new marketing channels. Instantaneous news, individual comments, greater flow of information are creating a new reality with individual power at the finger tips impacting political behaviour, too.
Every consumer has a voice, and their voices are changing supplier responses. No longer can businesses afford to ignore consumer experiences as their responses are widely read. Costs are being driven down, better deals offered, convenience beginning to dominate, and the marketing field levelled between businesses as the Web becomes more dominant. This trend will accelerate in 2014 and the Web will become the dominant new medium of commerce.
Organised Retail, too, has reached a critical size. With over 40 crore people living in urban areas and most towns and cities saturated by malls and shopping plazas, people are beginning to realise the benefits of organised retail. The massive increase in onion prices, in vegetable prices and other daily needs has turned the gaze to the benefits of organised retail. Malls have become the new hang-outs for our youth and part of their daily routine. 2014 may well see this becoming ubiquitous, driven by a new government and change in policies.
Our business heroes have been around for some time and most peaked out last decade. Many carry on, building on their past achievements. 2013 saw some successes but the stake was smaller. 2014 will see the emergence of new heroes. With a more vibrant market, larger scale, more confidence, the coming year may see the rise of a new generation of business leaders who had taken the plunge a few years ago, pioneering change through e-commerce. Their success will spur a larger move towards entrepreneurship. Over the last decade, many start-ups struggled in an immature system. But their pioneering moves will bear results soon. They have, across many areas, reached a reasonable scale, which will make them more visible and their debut in the market will throw the spotlight on them.
The economic scenario will change in 2014. Not only will we see a new crop of business leaders emerge, change in consumer habits driven by technology across sectors, retail getting bigger, but the economy may see the start of a secular growth phase, driven by more optimism.
We will have a new government, a new government forewarned by a young electorate, who are against cronyism, corruption and the old style of governance, who have made their preferences clear through the Aam Aadmi Party’s victory. They dislike the politics of poverty and want the politics of jobs. Jobs are the No. 1 priority for the 50 crore voters under the age of 40 who will be the dominant voting force in 2014. Partition, Pakistan, religion, caste, doles, etc., no longer resonate with our young voters. They want jobs, growth, the good things of life, a chance to make a decent living. This change in the voters, change in preferences, will be transformational, and 2014 will see the start of a new era in India. Hopefully, a new generation of leaders will arise in politics and government, too.
2014 will be the year that will change India, for the better!
(T.V. Mohandas Pai is chairman of Aarin Capital Partners)
The state-run telecom firm Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has decided to discontinue the 160-year-old telegram service from July 15, 2013 once a source of quick and urgent communication. Here, DC Online offers helps you recall those gadgets that have already vanished or are awaiting extinction.
Smart phones, emails and SMS seem to have pushed the humble telegram service to a quiet corner with the BSNL deciding to discontinue the 160-year-old telegraph service from July 15.A telegram notifying parents of the death of their 22-year-old son, US Marine Cpl. Thomas, who died in the bloody assault on a Japanese-held island during World War II. Telegram existed in Europe as early as 1792. In 1837, American artist-turned inventor Samuel F. B. Morse conducted the first successful experiment with an electrical recording telegraph.Once the main source of quick and urgent communication, the service delivered many happy and sad news to people spread all over the country. But with the advent of technology and newer means of communication, the telegram found itself edged out.The first telegraphs used smoke signals, beacons or reflected light. As e-mail arrived in the mid-1960s it slowly replaced telegraph. Though in many countries like Netherland and Ireland it was closed by early 20th century. Nations like Baharin and Mexico still use it as low cost service. In picture: electric telegraph BSNL employees display a set of 1960's telegraph Morse key transmitter, left, which the operator used to send messages and a telegraph receiver, right, at a telegraph centre in Bengaluru.An official showing an old double sounder telegraph board at Central Telegraph Office in Mumbai. Click on to find out what other services (that may matter to you) are coming to an end soon.Curtains will be down for landmark music-and-movies store Music World next month after losing the battle to online downloads, streaming and piracy. In March 2011, Music World had 39 stores across India but one year later it was down to seven, all in Bengal. By June 2013, the Park Street Music World was the last one standing. Gone are the days people waiting for letters from dear ones. As communicating through telephone, e-mails are cheaper than writing letters, inland letters face extinction. Thus, India post is increasingly running at a loss for the few decades. Stamps are not in demand; they are now collector’s items. A stamp which has been issued a long ago is more valuable if unused.India is among the first country in the world to witness a total wipe-out of the radio paging industry. The device without display was used to alert the user that a message has been sent.The introduction stage of pagers occurred in 1950s, and the earliest innovators were hospitals which used pagers as a means to sending messages to nurses. At that time, pagers were not available for the general public. In early 1990s, the pager industry had 64 million users all over the world.However, by the mid-1990s, as cellular technologies became cheaper and more widely available, advanced services began to displace paging as a commercial product. Even though the pagers are nearly extinct, they are still used by a marginal population such as technicians.From its creation in the 1960s through to its peak of popularity in the 1980s, the audio cassette was part of music culture for 48 years. It almost remained as an history to new generation of Apple and iPod. At least a handpicked ones still like their music played on cassettes.Dutch electronics giant Philips perfected the design of the cassette in the 1960s. Oddly, Philips did not charge royalties on their cassette patent, allowing numerous other companies to use their design for free. This ensured the quick acceptance of it as a new form of media. In 1979, Sony came up with its first stereo cassette player which was cherished by a generation of joggers, school children and music fans. The Walkman revolutionised the way people listened to music but has since been overtaken by another icon of the modern era, the iPod. With total sales of 385 million around the world, Sony pressed 'Stop' on Walkman in 2010.Trunk call was a telephonic call between towns or cities that went through the telephone exchange. In this system, human operators used to interconnect (switch) telephone subscriber lines to establish calls between subscribers. A well known phrase of those times were 'number please'. There used to be ordinary calls, urgent and lightning calls. 1924-era telephone switchboard on display at the Atlanta History Center in Atlanta, Georgia. In the ringdown method, the originating operator called another intermediate operator who would call the called subscriber, or passed it on to another intermediate operator. This chain of intermediate operators could complete the call only if intermediate trunk lines were available between all the centers at the same time.In October 1966, the system was automated and known as Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD). This increased the number of STD calls that could be made per day. At this point 95% of long distance calls could be connected via STD. The remaining 5% had to be connected by an operator. Telecommunications technology has come a long way since. The term 'trunk call' gradually fell out of use.Teleprinters, once used by newspaper offices for receiving data, went out of vogue with the advent of the internet.
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