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I am not so sure. I see two problems in the current situation here.

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.

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Flipkart & other ecomm portals are not offering any technology. They are using a fairly simple website to let people order everyday goods.

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.

Flipkart & other ecomm portals are not offering any technology. They are using a fairly simple website to let people order everyday goods.

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.

I think you are kind of missing the point. mehtapratiroop referred to the simplicity of flipkart not as a jest, but was simply expounding the facts. (There were/are many similar sites (i think a infibeam.com?) but I think flipkart's great idea was cash-on-delivery.)

The mention of Flipkart was for parents argument that Indians don't want to pay for anything and would pirate things it they can. Flipkart sells books and music successfully which a lot of people here don't seem to be willing to pay for.

>>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.

Yeah I found that statement a bit weird too. I think Indians are wary of being cheated (which is a legitimate fear, I must add) which is why the adoption of new technology is a lot slower than in a high-trust western society.

I know this is early days for Flipkart's music service, but are there any numbers available on how customers have responded to it.

http://www.pluggd.in/forum/discussion/524/flipkart-flyte-get....

Its just the beginning. I am sure that its going to increase. A lot.

Dude, have you ever worked on sites with integrated payments? That too of Flipkart's scale?

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.

- 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.

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.

Again, I am not so sure if I agree with all your points here.

>>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

- I know I was making a blanket statement. Both are somewhat strong generalizations on data I have come across via our company and other entrepreneurs. This is to provoke discussions and gain new insights. I am not trolling, though. :)

- 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! :-)

Similarly, many businesses will delay providing contractual services (with no apparent explanation or excuse).

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