by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Entrepreneurship, Markets, Success Stories, Technology
Jack Yun Ma
By Nishant Arora,
New Delhi : That he speaks impeccable English despite being a Chinese comes from the fact that Jack Yun Ma, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of e-commerce behemoth Alibaba, graduated from Hangzhou Teacher’s Institute with a major in English and later became a teacher, imparting lessons in the same language.
Strange are the ways in which tech honchos function: News about a change of guard came via his interview on Friday with The New York Times — at a time when US-China trade war is at its zenith — and not from Alibaba itself.
As Ma turns 54 on Monday — the day when he will reportedly make his retirement official which also happens to be Teachers’ Day in China — he is leaving behind a legacy which will not be easy for his successor to carry forward.
When it came to India, Ma, who also serves on the board of Japanese corporation SoftBank Group, always had big plans.
Although not directly present in the online marketplace, Alibaba’s diversified portfolio in India include top-of-the-line investments in digital payments platform Paytm, in Cloud computing via Alibaba Cloud, in the digital media space via UCWeb and several innovation initiatives that makes the country an attractive destination for the $420 billion conglomerate.
As the Indian e-commerce space flourishes — with Walmart’s acquisition of Flipkart and Amazon pouring in millions of dollars — recent media reports indicated that Ma has plans to invest into Reliance Retail Ltd which, if true, will see Alibaba have physical presence and a bigger retail clout in India.
The opportunities are immense for the current $35 billion Indian e-commerce sector which would be worth over $100 billion by 2022 — with a growth of around 25 per cent from the current level — a joint PwC-Nasscom report said on Friday.
In collaboration with Alibaba, Paytm has also launched its AI Cloud computing platform for developers, start-ups and enterprises in India. Alibaba Cloud, the Cloud-computing arm of Alibaba Group, provides computing services to businesses of all sizes globally.
According to the company, Paytm AI Cloud processes and stores their consumers’ data locally in servers located in India — a demand from the government that has resulted in its rival WhatsApp and Apple deferring their digital payments services in the country.
Not just the private sector, Alibaba is also increasing its footprint in the government sector.
On September 3, the Andhra Pradesh Economic Development Board (APEDB) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Alibaba Cloud to adopt cloud computing frameworks within the government model.
The MoU envisages leveraging Alibaba’s Cloud and Smart City technologies for sustainable farming, integrated traffic management, smart city management, small and medium enterprises and skill development programmes.
India is a “very important” market for Alibaba in its global strategy, its Chief Executive Officer Daniel Zhang told IANS last year. “Globalisation is one of our key strategies for Alibaba. As part of this strategy, India is a very important topic. India is a very important market for us to look at,” Zhang said.
Ma — who will remain on Alibaba’s board of directors and continue to mentor the company’s management after retirement — met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015 and discussed ways to empower small businesses in the country.
They never met again and Ma too didn’t reveal much about his India plans, but his company has been making inroads into a country that provides massive opportunity owing to a growing Internet and smartphone user base amid an increasing digital drive across enterprises.
With a net worth of more than $40 billion, Ma is the founder of Zhejiang-based Jack Ma Foundation which will help realise his new dream of philanthropy in education.
A devotee of Chinese martial art form Tai Chi, Ma started Alibaba in 1999 from his modest apartment in Hangzhou, the capital of east China’s Zhejiang Province, with 17 other people (remember that Jeff Bezos started Amazon from a garage in Seattle).
Like Bill and Melinda Gates, who are often seen in India on various charity tours, we may also see Ma more in the country to fulfill his philanthropy goals, but his days at the helm have already helped Alibaba realise the potential the India market has beyond China.
His instructions must be clear to his successor — focus on India that is not yet saturated like China and growing by leaps and bounds across the technology domains in which Alibaba has expertise.
(Nishant Arora can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Economy, Markets, News, SMEs, Technology
By Prabhu Ram,
With its new aspirational premium sub-brand POCO, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi seeks to disrupt the Indian market by redefining the premium segment.
The “POCO F1” smartphone, launched this week in India, comes with all the specifications that a “premium smartphone” boasts of, at a price unheard of.
The question lingers: Has POCO played safe with its pricing?
According to the data from “CMR Mobile Handset India Market Review”, since it made its debut in India in 2014, Xiaomi has grown tremendously, accounting for almost 30 per cent of the smartphone shipments.
It has aggressively competed with Samsung for the pole position in the India smartphone market. Xiaomi has gained a reputation for selling smartphones at aggressive price points, and is enjoying mass market appeal.
Xiaomi has sold low-end and mid-range smartphones with specs comparable to the competition, but at cut-throat prices.
Its early success came through e-commerce platforms as well as its own online store. Of late, it has expanded its footprint in the offline space, through brick and mortar stores, to power its growth.
A multi-brand strategy, if well executed, enables one to target different demographics and distinct audiences.
This is a proven strategy that automobile companies have adapted for decades — to break price ceilings and boost growth with a different branding to shake-off their existing brand imagery.
From a strategy perspective, creating a sub-brand named POCO was to take on premium smartphone brands, especially the likes of OnePlus.
In doing so, did POCO get its pricing wrong?
Surely, POCO will attract its own set of users and will do phenomenally well. While doing so, it will also eat into the market shares of the likes of Honor, Vivo, OPPO and Asus who have smartphones in the same price bracket.
However, POCO did not have these brands as their target competition and that, in itself, tells a story.
For a company like Xiaomi, getting the specs right and the price right are the easy asks but getting a user to shell out more for its brand is a tough ask.
Some smartphone flagships command buyers despite their price while others get buyers only because of their price.
For a smartphone to be considered as “premium” in the eyes of a potential smartphone buyer, it needs to have the brand recognition and equity to back its pricing up.
Let us consider an analogy from the automobile sector. When Lexus was conceived, Toyota invested all their engineering and manufacturing expertise into the luxury brand.
They backed Lexus with a clear brand positioning in the luxury cars segment. In the US, buyers would not consider the Lexus LS400 as a “true luxury car”, if it were to be placed next to a Toyota Corolla on a lot.
Similarly, for POCO to taste success as a “premium brand”, it has to move away from Xiaomi’s shadows.
With POCO F1, the brand draws upon Xiaomi’s extensive supply chain strengths in India to deliver the cheapest flagship smartphone ever — powered by Snapdragon 845 processor with a big 4,000mAh battery to boot.
POCO F1 comes with a 6.18-inch 1080p display, a 20-megapixel front camera and dual rear camera, sporting 12-megapixel and 5-megapixel cameras. It offers all the premium specs in the sub-Rs 30,000 price band (the premium segment is considered Rs 30,000 and above).
While POCO has almost won the specs war, the plastic or “polycarbonate” back takes the sheen off the “aspirational premium” smartphone tag.
Ultimately, it is not just about what is on the inside but how it looks on the outside that sways a potential smartphone buyer, especially in the premium segment.
The users of POCO F1 will be Xiaomi Note users who are now replacing or upgrading their device. The loyal Xiaomi fan will be keen on upgrading to a premium device from the Xiaomi brand itself.
However, this is not the demographic that Xiaomi had in mind when it created POCO as a sub-brand.
If POCO from Xiaomi has aspirations of being seen and perceived as a “premium” smartphone by the users, it has to have the courage to price it accordingly.
Unfortunately, POCO plays safe.
(Prabhu Ram is Head, Industry Intelligence Group, at CyberMedia Research. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at pram@cmrindia.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Opinions, Technology
By Faisal Kawoosa,
The recent screaming headlines about data security and privacy in the wake of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal have started making even the “illiterates” of the digital world aware about their personal data and the ramifications of the data being leaked or improperly shared.
People have slowly begun realising how their data is being used for purposes that are surreptitious in nature and how, most of the time, they are not even aware of it being collected in a “digital underworld”.
From India’s perspective, data security and privacy are increasingly becoming paramount — with more and more people going digital amid the rapid adoption of data services in the lower strata of society, where overall data sensitivity could be very low.
By the end of 2017, India had 83 million 4G subscribers in its rural geographies. The trends indicate that the data penetration is going wide and deep, meaning people from all strata of society are going online and there is a higher probability of data risks and frauds.
So-called digital literates and experts are surprised by the facts that reveal how and what kind of data is or could be collected by the apps that people use on a daily basis. To prove the case, let’s evaluate the top five grossing apps in India (as of March 31) as per App Annie, an app market data and insights company headquartered in the US.
On March 31, Vigo Video (formerly Hypstar), WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, UC Browser and Ludo King game were the top 5 apps on the Android platform in India. Android runs on 96 per cent of smartphones in the country. (Athough, the Top 5 trending keeps changing and may not reflect the actual Top 5 most-used apps; but such apps are widely used by a huge number of smartphone users.)
While conducting an audit of the kinds of permissions these apps should be seeking to perform the functions that they are here for, and the actual permissions they seek, some alarming facts have emerged.
For instance, under the “Device and App” history permission group of Google Play, Vigo Video and UC Browser, they can read sensitive data log. This means popular apps like these can effectively scan everything in your smartphone.
Similarly, under the “Identity Permission” group, Vigo Video, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger can read, add or remove accounts on your device.
Likewise, Facebook Messenger and Vigo Video can download files without notification as it seeks permission under other permissions groups of Google Play. UC Browser seeks full licence to interact across users in this category of permissions.
Even for advanced app developers, it is difficult to decipher why these permissions are required — and even if they are able to establish a reason, they cannot guarantee that the permission is not abused.
For instance, permission to download files without notification by Facebook Messenger and Vigo Video could be used to install stickers and other such things seamlessly on one’s device for better user experience and friendliness. But the only things stopping them from dropping a hidden software development kit (SDK) on a smartphone are ethics and trust — both at an all-time low these days.
Google must act like a “Digitally Socially Responsible” platform that forces developers who publish apps in its Play Store to provide a full description of the permissions they seek — and what exactly the apps require the permissions for.
This ambiguity of “may” or “may not” definitely gives them legal comfort, but users cannot be experts to decipher to what extent the app may infringe on their data.
There is also a need for third-party independent app audits that could evaluate them and certify whether these are only doing what they are supposed to do.
In this digital age and time, data is bound to rest with the app makers and other value-chain players. As long as they are transparent in seeking only the requisite permissions and, at the same time, clarifying to what extent a permission group is used, they are real friends and enhance productivity of the users.
As of now, it appears that only Ludo King among the Top 5 apps is a fair one that seeks a few network and accessing storage permissions, besides preventing the device from sleeping.
There is no solution unless the entire ecosystem becomes more transparent. One may think of removing all the suspicious apps from the system but, how to decide what is suspicious and what is not is a real herculean task.
(Faisal Kawoosa is Head-New Initiatives at CyberMedia Research. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at releases@cmrindia.com )
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Markets, Medium Enterprise, Online Marketing, Sales, SMEs, Technology
By Faisal Kawoosa,
Are all smartphones in India sold online? Not really. This is something which should come as a surprise to the cyber-savvy buyers of gadgets and gizmos.
A study from Google, published in 2012 but still relevant, says that 70 per cent of Indians decide about the brand and variant during an online search before going to a retail store.
Although the study was done in major cities and would have sampled a few people researching online before going shopping offline, both the parameters — the number of people researching online as well as coming prepared with their choices — must have gone up considerably by now, especially for a category like smartphones.
Smartphone sales haven’t crossed 40 per cent through online channels in any of the best seasons so far in the country. There are still limitations to online channels in India.
ROPO (Research Online Purchase Offline) is no alien concept to the smartphone industry. This is an established trend how smartphones are purchased across the globe, including in India.
In 2017, one of the key focus areas for all emerging smartphone brands has been to expand offline (the latest example being Xiaomi which has a great online presence but is now trying to make inroads into the offline segment).
With smartphone purchases being mostly replacement or upgrades in nature, exposure to online research has increased, making ROPO impact even stronger in India.
In such a scenario, will the massive offline expansion plans help smartphone manufacturers?
The biggest challenge in the offline space would be to mirror the exact online availability of models. Online is just a catalogue, be it Flipkart or Amazon, and with a robust logistics back-end, a person can choose any model, variant and colour and that will be delivered as per the shipping policy, irrespective of from which warehouse the online seller has to deliver.
This is not going to be the case in offline. There are going to be situations, especially when a brand has several variants in specifications and colours, where the particular model and variant for which a buyer visits the store may not be available.
ROPO could efficiently be taken care of by handful of brands like Apple, Google and OnePlus, where the users are evolved, models and variants are few and inventory can be exactly mapped offline.
For other mass-market brands, it’s going to be challenging. This becomes even more significant in a case where buyers tend to be impatient and would not want to visit the store again till the retailer arranges for the desired model and variant.
Streamlining the lag between availability of a new launch throughout the length and breadth of the country via offline is also going to be challenging to match the online expectations. This may eventually lead to a different connotation of ROPO with regard to the India market — Recce Offline Purchase Online.
What usually stops someone researching online from clicking that ‘Buy’ button would be an interesting research to undertake.
As offline expands, should the online players like Flipkart and Amazon be worried? To a certain extent, because the brand that was so far enticing people to purchase online with discounts and other offers would not tell buyers to visit stores.
Creating smartphone experience zones also won’t help much because it wouldn’t make sense for someone to experience a smartphone offline and then buy it online.
What are the options for e-tailers like Flipkart and Amazon?
What they and others could do is to take the showcase right to the doorsteps. A prospective buyer can select a few models that are in his/her zone of consideration.
The delivery boy could be doubled up as a brand in-store promoter, answering queries from the buyer. For more technical queries, a video call could be initiated with the technical sales executives. Once the buyer is fully convinced, he or she may purchase the smartphone.
A single channel won’t work for any brand. It has to be an omni-channel approach that is going to bring sales. However, as ROPO is triggering expansion into offline, the online mediums also have to look into reasons why the final call is not made in the cyber domain.
(Faisal Kawoosa is the General Manager-Research & Consulting with CyberMedia Research. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at releases@cmrindia.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Technology
By Prabhu Ram,
The year gone by was an exciting year as many new flagship devices entered the market — Apple X, Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8, Google Pixel 2 and 2XL, and the OnePlus 5 and 5T made some waves.
Apple iPhone X offered a radical re-design, catering to a hyper-competitive market in the throes of smartphone fatigue.
I call it smartphone fatigue because of near-uniformity among brands when it comes to shapes, sizes, designs and functions.
Smartphone brands are fighting the current market trends by differentiating themselves from others by offering customers bigger and better screens, refined camera specs and ramping up the average selling points (ASPs) for their flagships.
However, whatever be the price of a smartphone, there is not much difference in features between brands at various price points.
Even as the fight for better specifications hits a plateau, the expanding smartphone base in India offers avenues for new market entrants to test the waters.
India continues to be an exciting market for smartphones as well as one with the largest feature phone base. It provides smartphone vendors with clear targets: An attractive and lucrative replacement market, as well as an aspirational class that looks at migrating to smartphones from feature phones.
Later this year, key smartphone flagships will debut with some minor tweaks and iterations, rather than bold innovations.
The only exception to the rule could be Samsung. The electronics giant will be testing the waters with its truly foldable OLED smartphone in its “Galaxy” series with a limited run in South Korea.
It is one of the very few smartphone manufacturers hedging their bets on foldable flagships, with Apple and even Microsoft in the fray.
It will be late 2019 before these flagships start emerging in the global markets, depending on how the initial test run for Samsung goes this year.
This year will witness smartphone manufacturers embracing Artificial Intelligence (AI) significantly, with AI-powered smartphones heralding a new hype cycle.
In all likelihood, all the flagships in 2018 will come with an AI-chipset. The challenge for smartphone innovation will come from Voice AI. For instance, with increasing use of Voice AI, the smartphone will eventually become a mere enabling device, with the voice assistants controlling how we navigate the world around us.
Whether it be Siri or Google, Alexa or Bixby, the Voice AI is preparing us for a seamless experience between the real world and the technology layer. It is not surprising therefore that technology companies are training their Voice AI to embrace the lingual diversities of India.
An early sign of the future comes from Google. Twenty-eight per cent of the search queries on Google in India are by voice, with voice queries in Hindi growing at a staggering 400 per cent (year on year), according to Google India.
While smartphones enabled and democratised the access to information, technologies like Voice AI and Augmented Reality will communicate the information to us directly through voice or through display in front of our eyes. In an AI-driven world, the smartphones will lose their place as the only medium for information assimilation. We will, in all likelihood, spend lesser time looking at smartphone screens.
The smartphone, though a dominant medium, will mostly co-exist with other mediums, such as the wearable bands and the voice assistant-powered speakers in an AI-powered world. Smart glasses may make a return with new use cases by 2020.
In essence, smartphones will be around for now, but new tides of innovations will emerge elsewhere. Beginning with 2018, that will eventually lead to a new hands-free world of communication and knowledge assimilation.
(Prabhu Ram is Head, Industry Intelligence Group, at market research firm CMR, focused on advising industry participants on the dynamic telecommunications market in India and elsewhere through supply and demand side research.)
—IANS
