Our multi-billion dollar digital tomorrow

It’s not just because Reliance Jio, just launched, has made an aggressive pitch towards instant market leadership. It’s offering free ‘voice’, while charging for data usage, the real revenue McCoy, but in small chunks, for little money.

In the end, Jio won’t take in less in aggregate, but will do so with better lures. Will it appropriate Modi’s  Digital India vision? Well, the backbone of it, could well be the smartphone.

It’s clever stuff, this battle for the concept definition itself, but is cellulartelecom all there is to it?

The notion is fuelled and reinforced by the Mobile App, the medium through which a lot of digital traffic/eCommerce is growing, rather than via the laptop/tablet.

Even if mobile telecom isn’t synonymous with Digital India, the internet certainly is; and 3 G, 4G and 5G speeds, will continue to batter down the dimensions of both time and distance.

Money, they say, never sleeps, but neither does the eCommercialmarketplace. It is awake for the insomniac, and never takes a day off.

Jio could well be the blockbuster, given the potential of the Indian telecommunications market. It already boasts over a billion cellphonesin use, many of which are voice only. Older people tend to be technology averse.

But other gadgets are inexpensive, and not so cheap, smart phones -- consuming entertainment, data, advertising, media, music, photos, videos -- receiving tax returns, banking, governance, subsidies, payments, surveillance.

And people are forever upgrading to more, for less, and even the defence of the realm depends on it.

eCommerce already dominates the travel business, morphed into eTravel, and this accounts for 70% of the entire caboodle.

eTailing, on the other hand, in India was at $6 billion, out of the  $16.4 billion of the  online business in 2014.

This, with 16% of India’s population, largely under 35, online in 2013, according to Forrester Research, quoted By PWC.

Out of this, only 14%, or 28 million people, were online buyers -- for books, accessories, electronics, apparel-constituting 80% of what they bought.

But now that the Amazons and Ali Babas are joining in, along with the Magicbricks. So what is the size and shape of our digital future?

The kitty was projected to grow to $22 billion by 2015, and five to seven-fold in number of online buyers by 2020. This means 200 millionconsumers. And would the monetary pile be $105 billion, or more? And how many  more people just browsing online -- 500 million maybe?

Significantly, our online buying penetration is already, in absolute terms,bigger than most countries, barring China, where 50% of its much bigger population, is buying online, if not exclusively, today.

The question is why? It is just faster and more cost effective, even if it hasn’t realised its full potential yet.

The tentacular Indian post offices are going to join in too, as the COD last mile, and as payment banks.

But can the online model, pimped out and pumped up on outrageous valuations, VC funds, and cash-losing discount-selling, survive, let alone grow, manifold, in just four years? Yes, because the delivery is potentially fantastic, and just about everything else, is clambering aboard!

The American Mall, the quintessential late 20^th century place to ‘hang-out’, is dying. The same thing has been happening in metro India,though people in smaller towns, coming to the experience later, still like the razzle dazzle, the bright lights, the airconditioned swank.

But tier two and three towns are also huge internet users, for hooking up,as much as for selling, or buying.

Premium stand-alone markets in all our metro cities, with the steep rents, are morphing into upmarket restaurant-land. The retail footfalls however, are falling.

The office space market too is becoming a special interest zone- IT,banking/insurance back offices, larger brokerages, consumer sales/marketing for white goods, vehicles, servicing establishments -need them.

Other high tech 24x 7 establishments, straddling time zones, use them for the concentrated infrastructure.

But many other small businesses no longer do, pointing to their cars, smart phones, laptops, and homes, instead.

Manufacturing, except for yesterday’s labour intensive variety, is also tending towards using fewer people, more machines/robots. Though robotics is a revolution yet to happen substantially in India.

Institutions - hospitals, schools, museums, universities, government offices, still need large places to congregate. But even here, a lot of what was physical has now gone virtual/digital.

This is, therefore, a wave to ride, because there is no ducking it, andwatch out, it ups the ante every quarter.

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