Misc

E-com Valuation in India

Plus, it is also driven by what’s happening in China, Brazil, Russia and other emerging markets. Just look at Taobao which is an online auction site for customer-to-customer trading and is subsidiary of Alibaba Group of China. It has put all of Indian e-commerce firms to shame. That company does 50,000 transactions per minute and no company in India does even 10,000 transactions per day. Of course, a few firms are approaching the 10,000 mark and if that’s where we are going, you would certainly expect a bubble type valuation environment. The answer is somewhere in the middle and it is very far from Taobao.

This kind of development gives the investors the leap of faith. We may not get there yet but being closer to them means a fairly big number. Investors today are looking at China and other markets, and if this trend continues, e-commerce will certainly become big. I think very large companies will be built in India who will operate across the e-commerce space. And along the way, a lot of companies will have lofty valuations, execute poorly and consequently, will go down.

IT Product Entrepreneurship Challenges in India

The focus is more on sales than on marketing – this leads to weak branding and PR efforts. We are always in the dilemma of short-term vs long-term thinking.

The Challenging Environment

▪ There is no good product ecosystem in India and to add to this India is more focused on services. Hence there is lack of availability of skilled staff with a product mindset. We understand people business more than the product business. Unlike India, where we walk in with a ‘tell me what you want, we will get it done’, the US product company seems to say ‘we are the best in solving this specific problem; if you need help here, you will find no one better than us’

▪ We tend to say yes to all Customization requests and end up creating multiple product versions that ultimately damage the product, drive the cost up and...