@Headstart 09 Bangalore – Innovation in Consumer Services
The second panel in headstart was on Innovation in Consumer Services.
The panelists were:
- Amit Dayal from Yahoo
- Kiran Anandampillai from Onmobile
- Rajesh Sawhney from Reliance Entertanment
- Kiran Konduri from AskLaila
- Moderated by Harish Gandhi, Canaan Partners
The focus of the discussion was: How entrepreneurs can take advantage of consumer market dynamics and lead to innovative services?
The discussion was initiated by Kiran Konduri who stated that the boom in consumer market is expected in the future. He also expects incomes to triple in about 15-20 years which means that there will be a lot of disposable income and a lot of spending by consumer on interesting services. He felt India is very positively poised with the demographics being even better as we are such a young nation that needs even more innovation in services.
Amit stated how are emerging markets are important for Yahoo – India, LatAm and SE Asia. He said “It is really exciting to be in the consumer space. He said that the Indian market is just starting up and there are a number of large problems that are still yet to be solved unlike US where things are getting more and more saturated. There is a opportunity to look at interesting stuff like enabling communication and processes.”
Kiran (Anandampillai) pointed out that internet had been the channel for delivery of most services in western markets but now with mobiles in place, there is a potential of such services in India as well. Kiran (Konduri) added saying that the half a billion devices (mobiles) are looking for right kind of innovation and this fact is the most exciting.
Rajesh Sawhney explained the journey of Reliance Entertainment from Adlabs to present day of “BIG” platform. He outlined how Reliance has the largest online games chain that Reliance is running in addition of Bigflix and Bigadda. He then spoke about the large opportunity that Reliance is seeing in Indian demographics moving forward.
Amit Dayal said there is a potential to use Google and Facebook’s eyeballs by using OpenSocial or Facebook Apps and if you do that then there is no need of building a distribution network. Kiran Anandampillai pointed out that another potential model is the operator led model in Mobile VAS. Kiran (Konduri) answered this question by saying that in the last 3-4 years, the classified business has built up really nicely because of the internet infrastructure thanks to players like Sify and others.
The panel concluded with panelists making their predictions for the future. The interesting point made during predictions was that the slowdown would increase efficiency and focus among companies which would be a good thing.
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