E-COMMERCE BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES WITHIN INDIA

The consumer market is huge and expanding. It is not only growing by sheer population growth but also because the improving economy is producing a growing class of people with disposable income. Furthermore this potential market is relatively untouched. It is only in the past few years that many consumer products have become available in India.

The Potential: The potential is to get involved early in the e-commerce boom. As of now there are only a handful of companies involved. The potential is limited for the next year or two (see below). But keep in mind that China had only 600,000 Internet users in November 1997 and by October of 1999 China has about 4 million users (And the big advantage that India has over China is the common use of the English language.). The same growth of the Internet will happen in India.

The Downside: There are some serious obstacles in the way. Few people are used to the idea of mail order. It may take one or two years for the trust to be established between the customer and the company. Also the middle class is 50-70 million but only about 1 million have direct access to the Internet, only 1 in 36 Indians have a phone and most don't have a credit card.

START A SOFTWARE COMPANY

There is nothing new about this. There are plenty of success stories. Bangalore already has at least 600 software companies. Most of these are Indian owned and non-resident Indians have started a few of them. For a list of Bangalore software companies you can go to resource page. Government of India and especially Karnataka (the state in which Bangalore is), is encouraging foreign involvement and investment and has turned on the green light to hi-tech companies. They have even created some tax incentives for this industry.

The Potential: The potential is for the development of quality software using the extremely intelligent labor force in India at a lower cost. Cost savings can be found in rent, insurance etc. High quality programmers can be hired for 25%-50% of the cost of the same software programmers in the West. For a good example look at gseindia.com and read the history of this high end Swedish/Indian Software Company.

The Downside: The downside is that there are inefficiencies related to working in India i.e.: erratic power, government bureaucracy, poor Internet connections etc. Unless the cost saving is considerable, many of the problems related to doing business in India will offset the benefit.

EXPORT DATA SERVICES

Any kind of outsourcing of data entry or data conversion is a good candidate for a successful start up business in India. The hottest thing these days in Bangalore is medical transcription. Doctors and hospitals in the USA send their audio transcriptions via the Internet to Bangalore, India. They send the audio file at 5:00pm which is around 5.00am in India. The workers can do their work so that the Doctor has the text document the next morning. In Bangalore you can find good examples of companies already doing this. Go to Yahoo and type in "data entry India" or "data conversion India". You will be startled by the amount of information that is available.

The Potential: The potential for this type of business venture is great. Many of the Bangalore companies are growing and adding employees quickly. The reason there is such a global demand for this kind of work is because companies want to have their documents in a digital format. This conversion may include scanning the document into the computer and then going one-step further and tagging and indexing them in HTML SGML or XML so that it can be put on the Internet and easily retrieved. The entrepreneurs who are willing to joint venture with Indian partners to start up a business like this will not only make money but will be doing a great service for India by providing high quality skilled jobs.

The Downside: The risk is in, not maintaining top quality work for the client. This has been a complaint of many clients.