'India most important online market, not China'

[IDN.TV]

RD I have nothing against the indian governement, but never count on the indian goverment for the investments, we have other long standing problems.

But, I can tell you one thing , You have a great depth of knowledge about a lot of cultures, which will take you a long way.

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by fd99392

RD I have nothing against the indian governement, but never count on the indian goverment for the investments, we have other long standing problems.

But, I can tell you one thing , You have a great depth of knowledge about a lot of cultures, which will take you a long way.

Well the internet is a wonderful thing. I have yet to step foot on Asian Soil.

[drbiohealth]

Vimal, on the face of it your model on India seems logical. The model seems to perfectly fit the data of yesteryears. However, the only flaw in your model is that it does not take into account the current or anticipated future technological trends in India.

It is sensible sometimes to have a holistic view of the situation, else one may miss the forest for the trees. This is because one tends to get biased of the situation just too soon perhaps because of the immediate environment around oneself. Those that you are taking feedback from are those guys whose backgrounds probably are not very much different than yours - this way you are biasing your model. Have you talked to any rural folks (living in semiurban areas) in India about their experience with computer/internet? I am reasonably sure that you have not. Because I know these guys in reality are afraid of using a computer because of English, perhaps because they think that something might go wrong with the computer if they touch it. Local languages will come in handy here to overcome this barrier. Till date "urban" folks in India did not have a choice between hindi/english wrt using computers? It remains to be seen how they will react if they are given a choice of that sort in future - I do not have the answer for it today. I am not sure how you formed an opinion that these guys will "only" use english in future.

My general philosophy: If I am confused, I try to follow/sense the trend that is being followed by big companies because there is less likelihood that all of these companies can go wrong at the same time. Because I realise these companies have 1000s of smarter guys than me who are much better equipped than I am in formulating their company policies. Many of these companies are laying thrust on localisation, may it be intel, microsoft, google, reliance and the list goes on and on. Incidently, this trend tells a totally different story than what you have painted. Have a look here,

<Quote>
If you thought customers in semi-urban and rural markets were using mobile phones only to make calls, think again. If Reliance Communications Ventures Ltd is to be believed, this is a myth, which has been broken.

Much to its surprise, the company realised that a sizeable portion of its customers in the towns and villages of the Bimaru (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states were using cellphones to log on to the Net, stream video clippings and for infotainment.

http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/apr/21spec.htm


"The demand for more localised, regional content is increasing. For operators, the growth is going to come from non-metros. Only 60 million people know English. Hindi is where the eyeballs are," says Raj Singh, director, Activemedia Technology. Note that mobile data growth is coming not just from the metros but from across the spectrum of A, B and C class cities.

http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2006/apr/25bspec.htm


To further exploit the full potential of SMS in a country with 18 officially recognized languages, Nokia launched many handsets at affordable prices that enable SMS in the most spoken language, Hindi.
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/8954.asp
</Quote>

Regarding jobs in local lingo, my sense is that growth in Indian economy will create jobs for local language speakers (for example call centres catering to local population).

Its no rocket science to sense that an economic revolution is currently undergoing in India, similar to what had happened in Japan between 1960-1980. Take any sector - everything is getting overhauled, infrastructure (road, rail, air), cement, steel, telecom, auto, services, software and others. Analogy, those who stay above water cannot guage the power of the tsunami current underwater. I am sure many secrets will be unraveled wrt india in not so distant future.

Well, I am willing to buy Indian names at reg fee should anyone of you wants to quit hindi IDNs .. .

Cheers!

[blastfromthepast]

I don't know what you guys are talking about! Even my Sanskrit IDNs are getting traffic. LOL

The reasons put forth above for a "snobism of locals" regarding their native language also applies to Russia.

About 100 years ago, nobody who was anybody would read newspapers in Russian! The horror! Educated people spoke French. Pétersbourg.com would have been worth millions.

Today, to a lesser extent, sure, people speak English. We see articles by top internet developers, like A. Lebedev who designed Yandex's website, complaining about IDNs... "why would anyone want to have a domain name in Russian" they say.

Back in the early 1990s, the same thing was writted about file names and email... élite computer nerds wrote: "why would anyone want to have filenames in Russian." Why would you want to email in Cyrillic, when you can use Latin? Why bother really with your own language on the net when anyone who uses computers knows Englishi? LOL I've heard it all, and it was all wrong.

The funny thing is, I've also seen arguments made by French domainers saying "the first thing we learn about computers, is that you don't put accents in domain names."

Oyez! You British domainers, do you speak in Law French? Or English?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_French

All of this talk is nonsense. People want to write in their native language.

In fact, in the case of India, I'm sure people will feel proud to write in their scripts, and will seek out to do so, now that the technology is there.

[Giant]

Originally Posted by blastfromthepast

..... People want to write in their native language.

In fact, in the case of India, I'm sure people will feel proud to write in their scripts, and will seek out to do so, now that the technology is there.

I think so.

[yanni]

Originally Posted by blastfromthepast

All of this talk is nonsense. People want to write in their native language.

True. Isn't this the reason we are all here in the first place? Given the choice -and ability- people will choose their own lang.

[IDN.TV]

One more thing you need to take into account, is I have also invested in these names, but I am sure it will take a lot of time and it always be nice to discuss about the things that can go wrong.

The biggest and only problem is how do they check there inernet, they need a computer or need to check it in some kinda net center.

The only thing I want to point out is people who can afford to check internet have already learnt english. The government with the major private sectors has to take a major step. Provided there is less corruption.

Now those that have learnt english.

About english and hindi speaking people it will be interesting to see what they will adopt ? Its not the same, like in other countries where people want to write in there own script. I think for this the indian education system has to change, because all urban school are converting to english as the medium, most of the rural schools are converting to english as medium or already. When I say medium, they are taught everything in english. After 10th grade , Hindi or anyother native language is not taken as a subject and nothing is taught to them in technical schools (unless wish to pursue a career in hindi)

I as all of hope that indians should use their native languages,

But Indian online market might not be as big as china, coz we have so many scripts, and english with it.

India is definetly growing I have been in the stock markets for a while now, and there is no economy that looks as bright as an indian economy.

Now than having counter argument, we as IDNers what can we do to effect this change. Definetly some good sites with content. There are hardly any good sites in hindi, if you start early you never know.

[blastfromthepast]

They way to get content up is to give people the tools to create blogs and message boards in their own language. It takes minimal skill to find translations for "post new message" or ready made translated forum or blog software.

The way to draw traffic to these sites is to own AAA+++ quality domains.

[drbiohealth]

Look Into The Crystal Ball

Local content and local language has been driving the Internet space, especially with the users logging in from smaller cities. “Localisation is the way ahead. We are seeing more and more users coming from non-metros — second-tier and smaller towns. This means that many new users are accessing Internet perhaps from slower connections and are using more basic applications like email, search, chat,’’ says Rediff India vice-president, strategic services, Jasmeet Singh Gandhi.

For global majors like Yahoo, this is one of the ways to structure its future business. Yahoo has started localising its content and mail applications. Says Mr Taraporewalla, “We are one of the partners with Intel to develop localised content features in 16 Indian languages. We are looking at localisation of all our core properties.” This may mean Yahoo is looking at delivering all its popular services from mail, chat, to jobs in local languages.

From localisation to mobile services, Yahoo has tied up with all the mobile operators to deliver messages. In this kind of a growing market, no one is in a position to take things for granted, says Vikram Bharadwaj, CEO, estatsIndia.com. “For the horizontal portals like Rediff or Yahoo, the leadership position requires constant innovation of services and offerings. Localisation could be one of the ways to come up with new killer applications,” he says.

Sify is the first player to offer mail service in local language, says Mr Bharadwaj. “Localisation and vernacularisation is the new business model for all the portals. Besides Sify, both Rediff and Yahoo are heavily into it and in future their substantial revenue will come from the new local services,” he says.

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_f...tent_id=122437

I am very surprised to see the number of hindi blogs that have come up in the past few months,
http://www.google.com.sg/search?hl=e...G=Search&meta=