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By Rajkamal Rao
Go back to Earning in India
The demographics certainly favor India. Kaushik Basu estimated in a 2007 report for the BBC that India has more than 50% of its population below the age of 25 and more than 65% below the age of 35. In 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan. The young Indian masses demand customer service, ethics and quality in the products and services they consume.
Again, this changing demographic presents an incredible opportunity to the returning Indian to launch new businesses. In fact, returnees have become successful by introducing small improvements to established business models or creating new business ideas inspired by their experience in the west.
Take domestic travel, for example. Traveling by train on India’s vast rail network often required you to go to the train station, fill out forms, stand in line, fight to get to the ticket-window and make your reservation. While India’s train reservations were computerized over 15 years ago, there was no reliable interface for the masses to access this system. Today, there are multiple travel sites (Cleartrip, Makemytrip) that allow you to search for trains, check availability and make reservations online.
Tom Friedman writing in the New York Times cites the story of one returning Indian. Aloke Bajpai used his technology expertise in the West to launch “iXiGO.com, a travel search service that can run on the cheapest cell phones and helps Indians book the lowest-cost fares, whether it is a farmer who wants to go by bus or train for a few rupees from Chennai to Bangalore or a millionaire who wants to go by plane to Paris, iXiGO now has one million unique users a month and is growing. Bajpai used free open-source software, Skype and cloud-based office tools like Google Apps and social media marketing on Facebook to build his software platform and grow his company. They “enabled us to grow so much faster with no money,” he said.
Go back to Earning in India
The demographics certainly favor India. Kaushik Basu estimated in a 2007 report for the BBC that India has more than 50% of its population below the age of 25 and more than 65% below the age of 35. In 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan. The young Indian masses demand customer service, ethics and quality in the products and services they consume.
Again, this changing demographic presents an incredible opportunity to the returning Indian to launch new businesses. In fact, returnees have become successful by introducing small improvements to established business models or creating new business ideas inspired by their experience in the west.
Take domestic travel, for example. Traveling by train on India’s vast rail network often required you to go to the train station, fill out forms, stand in line, fight to get to the ticket-window and make your reservation. While India’s train reservations were computerized over 15 years ago, there was no reliable interface for the masses to access this system. Today, there are multiple travel sites (Cleartrip, Makemytrip) that allow you to search for trains, check availability and make reservations online.
Tom Friedman writing in the New York Times cites the story of one returning Indian. Aloke Bajpai used his technology expertise in the West to launch “iXiGO.com, a travel search service that can run on the cheapest cell phones and helps Indians book the lowest-cost fares, whether it is a farmer who wants to go by bus or train for a few rupees from Chennai to Bangalore or a millionaire who wants to go by plane to Paris, iXiGO now has one million unique users a month and is growing. Bajpai used free open-source software, Skype and cloud-based office tools like Google Apps and social media marketing on Facebook to build his software platform and grow his company. They “enabled us to grow so much faster with no money,” he said.
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