A LAYMAN’S OBSERVATIONS—EMERGING TRENDS AND OUR EARLY BIRD ADVANTAGE
PLATFORMS and AGGREGATION play a huge role now more than ownership.
1. The NEW NATIONS that inform, connect, and integrate groups
almost like nations are TWITTER, FACEBOOK, WHATSAPP, and SKYPE.
What have they done?
PLATFORM PROVIDERS
Just provided PLATFORMS for people to communicate, to express, to
exhibit, to share, etc. The content is by many who do not own anything in that
cos., nor do those companies produce content. These, of course, do not involve
any physical transaction or movement of anything.
2. SERVICE PROVIDERS
The NEW INDUSTRIES
What do they do?
UBER does not either drive or own the vehicles but
plays a big role in the 'MOBILITY INDUSTRY' (which was perceived earlier to be the 'automobile industry'), in fact, leading to a reduction in the number of
individual vehicles. It has done what highly invested metro infrastructure
could not do.
SWIGGY and ZOMATO do not own any restaurants, nor do
they cook food, but they are the top players in the FOOD INDUSTRY (which was
perceived earlier to be the 'restaurant/hotel business').
The importance of AGGREGATION and SERVICES of the AGGREGATORS: these two simplified activities have indicated two vital things: one, people need/want something, and what they want must reach them, even if they
cannot go hunting for what they want. Herein comes the DELIVERY INDUSTRY (which was perceived earlier to be ‘postal services/courier’).
3. The NEW SUPERPOWERS
Amazon and Google combined these three and are
becoming the POWERFUL GREAT INDUSTRIES.
These oversimplified versions of activities may appear awe-inspiring, but
none of them can survive without two vital aspects: AGGREGATORS &
OWNERS (or producers/manufacturers/warehouses, centralized kitchens, etc.).
4. Beneath these oversimplified versions of successful business models,
there exists a new ecosystem of various activities that are highly
interconnected, interrelated, and interdependent, and all these players in the
ecosystem get propped up and their business gets promoted.
5. By extension, a similar concept can be tried and implemented: a CREATION
OF SOLUTION and OVERALL ECO-SYSTEM in a niche area of HEALTHY
FOOD, namely SNACKS & BEVERAGES.
6. We PROP UP THE MANUFACTURERS and connect the health-conscious
customers.
7. This is precisely what Amazon and Google have decided to do
indirectly through the much-publicized US$ billions of investment and made it
clear that the entire investment is going to have a vise-like grip on the SMALL
and MSME segments, which the government is throwing up for grabs.
On what basis do I say this? AMAZON has made it clear that this entire investment is
going to be in a] another platform, which will have access to all our data, ‘CLOUD SERVICES,' and GOOGLE, and b] FINTECH, especially to ‘ENABLE EXPORTS AND TO EMPOWER INDIVIDUALS AND
SMALL BUSINESSES TO COMPETE GLOBALLY.'
Good and great intentions, but one has read between the lines and what
lies behind these stated intentions and what can happen in the long run.
8. The NEW AMAZON and GOOGLE story
As many, including the GOI, suffer from varying degrees of ignorance
and get carried away by a few latest and recently hyped tech
advancements, which are also in a way new platforms like 'AI cloud services,' etc., it is easier to claim big investments (they
are at best tools and new means to operate and to deliver services) without
dedicated servers and/or multilayered backup. Without cybersecurity, it is
always vulnerable (I am not saying that they may not have factored in
those criteria with such huge investments, but at times both hype and
paranoia become blind, as it did during the Y2K problem or the Anthrax scare during the war in Iraq).
9. However, those who produce raw materials, products, and other
tangible assets are THE ULTIMATE KINGS/QUEENS in any
commercial activity.
The rest are either some form of beneficiaries
or at best members of the harem who are around with various hidden agendas to
capitalize on the king's weaknesses.
10. Andy jassy: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy meets PM Modi, ups India
investment commitment in billions The Economic Times
we have the early bird advantage and in india if something beneficial kicks off, then it
gets
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