Rural India Snaps Up Mobile Phones

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123413407376461353.html

by prakash • 17 years ago

9 6 17 years ago

online.wsj.com

jyothi• 17 years ago

There is an enormous opportunity here. Agriculture is a huge vertical which is operating inefficiently in India today. One short of finances and second directions.

Micropayment startups like Dhanax are really enabling farmers on #1 and now with broader reach if someone can enable #2 more effectively, it can essentially improve lives of one of a billion people.

Vision problem in Indian agriculture is a more complex issue.

visitor4rmindia3• 17 years ago

Mobile phones sales are doing well not just in the rural areas but in the bigger cities as well. Everyone has one - from the guy who drives me in an auto to the maid who comes in to clean my house.

And their mobiles are usually really good models too - better than mine most of the time. It's stuff like this that gives me hope that India is getting upwardly mobile [ excuse the pun :-) ].

ponnap2• 17 years ago

Most of the revenue generated by cell phone service providers through their walled gardens seems to be from voice and not data. It would be interesting to see how long these service providers would continue to be profitable given their decreasing margins. Usage of the so called smart phones that help provide value added data services is not to be found in large numbers. Also, access to data is pretty expensive (when compared to the quality of service offered in the US). There have been instances of a few startups that have worked around this problem of expensive data services.

For example, there is this startup that strips and forwards email from lets say gmail, yahoo etc to an email associated with the cell phone number as an SMS for a very low price. SMS seems to be a very viable and inexpensive solution to target a large user base.

visitor4rmindia3• 17 years ago

Could you explain why you say that margins are decreasing for voice calls? My mobile bill hasn't changed much over the last few years.

Rural India Snaps Up Mobile Phones

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