eCommerce in India has disrupted and scared several Retailers as it is being chased by Technocrats & Investors from across the Globe. WE attended a conference of Consultants, investors and companies shared research on the pervasiveness of e-commerce across every industry and service in India and the conflation of telecom and technology that is enabling this change. The dizzy rate of change in the sector and the tricky business of determining e-valuation drivers are the challenges faced by Venture Capitalists. Here are some of the Views of the Top Most Guys in the Indian eCommerce Space
Month: August 2014
RCom to Leverage on Reliance Jio’s Fiber & Tower Infrastructure
Reliance Communications Management has guided for capex investment of Rs15-20bn for FY15 following a capex-light model. They indicated that they will be receiving any additionally required fibre and tower assets from Reliance Jio through the reciprocal arrangement and will only invest in electronics.
The company has realigned its low-usage cell sites to achieve base station level profitability. This will have a temporary effect on the subscribers in those geographies; however, the company intends to use ICR (intra-circle roaming) arrangements to provide services in those areas. Management attributed the decline in the revenues of global operations to
Time Spend on Mobile / Tablets Increase, Apps the Catalyst
Time spent consuming digital media on mobile is gaining traction at the expense of time spent on the traditional desktop. This trend is not new, but when looking at the numbers, it is clear that this shift has been swift and unrelenting. In their 2Q earnings reports, GOOGL, FB, LNKD, YELP, GRUB, Z, EVDY and others, highlighted the robust growth of the mobile channel and the strategic importance of their respective apps.
Since August 2013, mobile has continued to gain widespread use as the platform for digital media consumption. Although mobile now accounts for 60% of time spent consuming digital media, consumers have adopted mobile as the forum for
Corporates Spending on CRM & Talent Management
Corporates Insight suggest customer (CRM) and employee-facing apps (esp HCM / talent management) remain at the forefront of application spend and we see broad based evidence of better demand. Inputs suggest financials, manufacturing and supply chain are not moving to cloud. The three largest traditional apps vendors (Oracle, SAP and Informatica) are now all paying reps neutrally for SaaS vs. perpetual license. We expect this will have the inevitable impact of driving more core apps business to SaaS.
System Integrators (SIs) and customers suggest that with customer and employee-facing apps being the focus, UI and mobility are increasing priorities,
Chinese Video Sites Collaborate with Koreans Promote Dramas
Sohu yesterday announced that it has established a strategic partnership with Korean entertainment company KeyEast, and will invest approximately USD15m to take a 6.4% stake in the company. Through the partnership, Sohu will become KeyEast’s sole online partner in China and the two companies intend to introduce more Korean celebrities and entertainment programs to the Chinese audience. KeyEast was founded by famous Korean actor Bae Yongjoon, who also enjoys great popularity in China. The company signed up actor actor Kim Soo-hyun has attracted a considerable Chinese following through the hit TV drama – “My Love from the star“. The total video views of the drama on iQiyi (the first online video platform to broadcast the drama in China) had reached approximately 2.6bn as of 8 August, with
MakeMyTrip Flying High on Airline Bookings
Online Travel & Hotel Bookings site MakeMyTrip management Mr Rajesh Magow (Co-founder & CEO – India) and Mr Mohit Kabra (CFO) in a call highlighted the status of their business amidst most airlines have already reduced OTA (online travel agents, such as MMYT) commissions to 1% (from 5-6% earlier), but allowed OTAs to charge a convenience fee on bookings. Management thinks that the revenue model might shift to a ‘convenience fee only’ model with zero commissions in the worst-case scenario.
MMYT delivered a solid Jun-14 quarter with USD 35.5 million in revenues i.e. 26% of the upper-end of its FY15 guidance of USD 136 million. Despite the strong quarter, the company did not increase guidance primarily to ensure that the demand uptick witnessed in the seasonally
Taxi Booking – New Battle Ground for Chinese Internet Giants
Baidu and car rental company Yidao Yongche yesterday announced that the two companies will jointly launch a business car rental service “Baidu VIP Car” The Chauffeur driven service will be supported by Baidu Map, with the first app to support the service soon to be released on the Android platform. Founded in 2010, Yidao is a leading car rental company in China. Its service currently covers 74 cities in China and also 3 cities in the US.
With China’s three largest internet platforms all having launched ventures within the car rental market, the space seems to have become a new
Reliance Jio’s Massive Optical Fiber Network + 5 NationWide Data Centers
Industry Channel Checks are indicating that Reliance Jio Infocomm has quietly rolled out ~100,000 Rkm (route kilometer) of optic fibre cable, and the rollout continues at a fast clip. This is already comparable with fibre rolled out by the rest of the industry. Sources Indicate Reliance Jio already has the largest intra-city optic fibre network with 85,000+ km across 700-800 towns. This is a major differentiator for mobile backhaul in an industry with sub 10% fiber penetration into towers. Till date, Airtel Vodafone and Idea Cellular have used 12-24 fibre threads, while RJio is using mostly cables with 288 fibres (in some cases 96 fibres).
What if Reliance Communications & Reliance Jio OFC Networks Complement Each Other ?
Till now, RCom was believed to have the largest fibre network among private operators, with an intra-city network of ~70,000 Rkm [Once again laid under the direct project Management by
How Many Towers Reliance Jio Requires for Launch ?
The entry of Reliance Jio into the 4G space is expected to accelerate data growth / pickup for operators. The 4G LTE rollout has taken off with a very slow start. Empirical data suggests Operators will need more 3G towers vs. 2G towers because 3G is on higher spectrum (2100 MHz) and data networks are non-scalable. Importantly, data coverage shrinks as a result of increases in additional subscribers, i.e., additional data usage since the BTS has limited data capacity. Extending the same analogy, 4G spectrum is at 2300 MHz band, and one BTS has coverage of about 300-400 meters at this spectrum versus 1,000 meters at 900 MHz spectrum. Hence, the number of BTS required for providing seamless 4G LTE data coverage will be significantly higher.
Reliance Jio Infocomm would require
Bharti Infratel to Ride on Incremental 3G /4G Tenancies
The nature of growth in the tower industry has undergone a substantial change, reflecting the change in maturity, structure and growth drivers of the mobile telecom sector. The coverage of key mobile operators is now more or less complete. The focus is now on augmenting voice capacity and data coverage. As a consequence, the tower industry growth is being driven more by increase in tenancies than through new tower additions.
According to Bharti Infratel management most 3G sites are co-located with 2G sites and over
time, as data grows, standalone 3G sites would drive