Completely agree with the "don't want to pay for software" bit. Heck, they don't want to pay for ANYTHING. Pirated windows, pirated accounting software, cheapass website because they look for the cheapest deal... the list is endless.
1. Pricing. The cost of most software is comparable to its cost in U.S. A windows 7 professional edition costs around 8000 bucks, which I think is pretty high. I am sure most people would gladly pay if they thought it was reasonable. Same with books.
2. Convenience. Most people are wary of using their credit cards or debit cards online. For physical goods, there is Cash On Delivery which is working out pretty well for a lot of companies. Not sure what the alternative is for software thought.
For example, look at Flipkart. They are killing it.
Also could not make much out of the article.
My post is mostly about
- Indian Businesses and consumers don't pay for Technology Products.
- If they want to pay, they don't have mechanisms to pay you online.
- Most people aren't online. They are offline.
>>Cash on Delivery has a lot of issues. I won't elaborate but, customers refuse the sale later on (impulse buy regrets), delayed booking of revenue, costs around collecting and cash reconciliation.
So do other modes of payments. There will always be customers who will want to get a refund. As I said am not entirely sure what the best solution is for non-physical transactions.
>>Indian Businesses and consumers don't pay for Technology Products.
This a blanket statement. Maybe the types of businesses we interact with are very different. From my experience a lot of them are ready to pay well if they see the benefits.
>>If they want to pay, they don't have mechanisms to pay you online. Umm, this is false. There are lots of ways to pay online. IRCTC does this on a decent scale.
All that being said, I agree it can be hard doing business but I don't believe it is any harder than doing it anywhere else. Every market has its set of advantages and disadvantages, but one needs to focus on what can be done instead of obsessing over what cannot be done.
I looked at your site and like the idea. I am sure you must have tried this but have you tried making up deals with IT companies where you do the tax filings for all the people in the company for a bulk rate. A lot of companies do this since the guys collect the documents from the office saving the employees time and your pricing is very reasonable. Also, they are the ones who'd be more likely to understand and pay for this.
Cheers
- Many businesses will send you cheques, recurring payments are PITA, as you have to do "collection". Delayed payments are quite common.
>> but have you tried making up deals with IT companies where you do the tax filings for all the people in the company for a bulk rate.
- We do exactly that. Large employers buy ClearTax on a negotiated price for all their employees. Most people want to transact in cash.
- My point is the infrastructure is maturing very slowly. You can't bootstrap easily. Your startup may die by the time the market matures.
>> I looked at your site and like the idea.
Thanks! :-)
The concept of ecommerce is pretty old in itself. The fact that Indian consumers have woken up so late to it re-emphasizes that Indians resist technological intervention. It is not as if internet penetration, credit card penetration and logistics infrastructure has changed radically in the past year in India. It is the only the investment scenario that has changed. Archit's article in some sense calls for more such investments in other technology and technology enabled products.
>>The fact that Indian consumers have woken up so late to it re-emphasizes that Indians resist technological intervention
Maybe I see things wrong but I don't think Indians resist technology. Its that the technology got here late. Also, its just that it is a different market and different factors at play here.
Its just the beginning. I am sure that its going to increase. A lot.
This is almost like saying Amazon is useless.
Flipkart is doing absolutely amazing job by delivering things at people's door step. And that's not easy.
Code is not an answer to everything.
This is precisely what I said before.
Understand what value you bring to your customers
Don't assume your customers should buy from you just because your webpages loads 0.001ms faster than Flipkart. Understand the total business proposition. Technology is one aspect of it, there are many aspects to business.
Unless the customers feel some value in your product they are not going to buy no matter what hipster technology its built on.
Processing 100s of transactions and dealing with Indian payment gateways requires some kickass technology. They have scores of engineers working on the site's backend.
- SaaS is good as piracy is not a big problem.
Small/Medium Enterprise don't see a huge benefit of paying for Technology. Its both a mindset and a cost issue.
We do Tax Returns, so we see how margins are quite low for most Indian Businesses. Paying for software that can be pirated easily might tip them to a loss.
Software cost isn't factored in as a cost of doing business.
PS: I am saying "Indians" because I am quite familiar with the situation here. I am sure though, that things are quite similar in most "developing nations".
Inside businesses? Really? Don't think I have ever seen pirated software at the places I have worked, and I don't believe it's very common. I have seen people "borrowing" software to install on their personal computers, but that's something else.
Is this just in Scandinavia?
'Borrowing' is a neat little alternative to the word 'piracy' :)
Why is this wrong. I don't see anything wrong in this.
Don't deals work around the world. Haven't you heard of sites like groupon?
Why are you pulling groupon into this? Businesses offer discounts through groupon. The business itself may be among the worst of its kind or among the best. So the quality of product/service received depends on the business offering discount. If you are hiring the cheapest web-developer in the market however, I can guarantee you that you will end up with somebody incompetent.
Lets take the example of Flipkart. It might not be the epitome of tech innovation. But Flipkart is sheer awesomeness.
Let me tell you why! They might have built their site with php, and they might use MySQL and they might use Java. None of that matters. It doesn't matter that they don't use Python, or NoSQL or Ruby on Rails. It doesn't matter if their webpages load 0.01 ms slower than others.
Let me tell you what matters.
What matters is, somebody with an email can go on their site and order stuff even without a credit card. And they are trustworthy to deliver the good at your doorstep. And they do this with several thousands of customers everyday.
This is what matters! They solved a problem, they do it efficiently and they do that several thousand times a day.
Code is not an answer to all solutions. In case of a business many things matters. Business is a proposition of a many things and tech is one of them.
Merely writing efficient code is not going to make you successful. Although writing efficient code will help you to be successful.