Bangalore has been a favourite place for startups. There are several SaaS startups in Chennai. However, these days it is not necessary to rely on metros and A class cities to set up startups. You can set up startups at Tier II and Tier III cities. It makes opportunities available there and leads to expansion of these places. Many SaaS startups have been set up in smaller cities, say Jaipur, Kochi and Coimbatore. Surat and Indore too have been selected for setting up SaaS startups. Such places have real estate available at reasonable cost. They have good internet access. There are engineering colleges around. All these facilitate the setting up of software and SaaS firms. Thiruvanthapuram too is an attractive destination for startups. It houses the oldest tech park. It is true that the market for these startups is in cities.
Month: January 2022
Metaverse Security
Metaverse was once a fringe concept. It is now being conceived as a network of 3D virtual worlds. Consumers too look forward to having a completely digital universe.
Metaverse is still away from being ready for day-to-day use. However, its components are already here. Corporates such as MS, Intel, Nvidia, Apple, Epic Games and Robolox and many more are tirelessly working to bring this virtual reality to life. All this will require AR headsets and gaming consoles, but also at the same time tremendous amount of software to work out the metaverse. Thus metaverse will largely be software.
It leads to the issue of the security of the key components of the metaverse. Security will have to be integrated to the fundamental process. There could be automated scanning. There has to be supply chain security.
Currently metaverse seems to be a hybrid of online collaboration experiences. At times, these are amplified into 3D, and projected to the physical world. Ultimately the aim is share immersive experiences with other people even when we are not together physically and do things together which we cannot do in the physical world.
There would be need for a code to support this virtual world, and a lot more software updates. These updates will require faster releases and continuous releases.
Targeting in Digital
These days everything is user-first, user-compliant, and with user privacy as a priority. Thus in future, advertising will operate in cookie-less targeting. Besides, there is Apple’s app tracking transparency network. Still, there would be targeting but it will occur by finding new ways of identifying users at an aggregate level, without going at an individual usage level. There would be contextual targeting — targeting on the basis of context of the app or the website the user is on. It gives indications of user’s intent and preferences.
Programmatic
Programmatic has become a core part of media buying process. Organisations which consider visual and mobile marketing has programmatic specialists. Mobile video has become more important for programmatic. It has seen phenomenal growth year on year. Video ads attract major portion of app programmatic spending. E-commerce, entertainment, and fintech brands leverage this channel. Programmatic ads should be kept transparent and fraud free.
Digital Ads and Mass Media
Digital ads target brand awareness and bottom of the funnel. In mass media, the aim is to create awareness mainly. Digital ads offer a lot more targeting and measurement as compared to mass media. Digital ads may attract better tariffs in future. In India, mass media and digital complement each other. Later there could be some changes. Linear TV that we see today can get converted into connected TV in years to come. The lines of digital and TV will then blur.
Gaming
India is now the world’s top market for mobile gaming in terms of downloads. Several billion games were installed in the first half of 2021. Gaming now accounts for 20-25 per cent of mobile media time spent by consumers. This is not limited to gender or age group. Women too engage in gaming. Gaming attracts users across age groups, gender and location. Gaming thus has become attractive from advertising standpoint. Advertising firms provide billboards within a game that are native to the game.
Modern Journalism
Reuters Institute of Study of Journalism prepared the annual report of journalism called RSJ’s report on ‘Journalism, Media and Technology Trends and Predictions, 2022’. It was released in the beginning of January, 2022.
Some findings of this report are — more subscribers leading to more subscription revenues, more earnings from on line advertising, engagement with AI and metaverse, and more revenues from short video.
The report is based on a survey of 256 senior people from the field from 52 countries.
There are signs of revenue increase. There is confidence about prospects. It is a result of more subscription revenue, say The NYT’s 8.4 million subscriptions of which 7.6 million are digital. Digital revenue outstrips print. Many smaller digital publishers too have substantial reader revenues.
In India too, the business is subscription-driven. However, it means rich and educated audience is being super-served.
The battle ground is news on short-form videos. Here you get to younger audiences.
The areas of concern are the rising polarisation and rising attacks on journalists.
Edtech : Code of Conduct
There is a need to regulate the edtech sector, where monopolitic tendencies tend to exploit the students. There are large edtech startups — Byjus, Unacademy, Upgrade and Vedantu. They have jointly formulated a self-regulatory code of conduct. The consortium has in fact 15 companies. Regulatory oversight looms large over the sector. They wrote the government that they will set up a two-tier grievance mechanism to ensure that the business is conducted with transparency and the customers’ interest in mind. The other firms in the consortium are Careers 360, Times EdTech, Harappa Education, Doubtnut, Toppr and Simplilearn.
TikTok Clones
After the ban on TikTok in 2020, many startups here in India built short-form video platforms. TikTok attracted over 240 million active users in the country. It had 20 million active content creators who uploaded at least one video a month.
Indian versions built up their own user base of content creators. TakaTak attracted 9-12 million users. Moj commanded an audience of 10-15 million.
ShareChat launched Moj. MX player launched TakaTak. Glance has been funded by inMobi and Google. Glance acquired Roposo. Dailyhunt has launched Josh. There are big players such as Google Shorts and Facebook’s Reel.
In smaller towns, the user base of short-form video is bigger than that of YouTube. Roposo has 30 million active users.
Glance allows live commerce through which creators run their shopfronts. Roposo has 500 creators who live-stream commerce. Glance has acquired Shop 101, a tech company that helps it to do influencer-led and celebrity commerce. All short-form videos carry ads for monetisation. However, these attract only 1 percent of the total advertising revenues. As people spend more time to see these videos, these will bring in more advertising revenue.
Social Commerce
There is a merger of e-commerce apps with short-form videos. It sets the tone for social commerce in India. E-commerce model is intent-based. Social commerce model is discovery-based. It is suited for fashion, accessories, home decor, beauty and personal care products.
Social commerce benefits resellers, small business owners and first time entrepreneurs.
There is partnership between e-commerce apps and social media apps. Apps like Chingari and Mojo earn a commission of about 10 per cent on purchases made by a user from those links.
Meesho is a popular social commerce platform. Ropso too forayed into live commerce. Traditional e-commerce players too have joined this bandwagon. Flipkart tied up with Mojo to develop video and live commerce capabilities. Amazon and Chingari joined hands to develop a shoppable video feature on Chingari platform. Myntra too has ventured into live commerce.
Social commerce accounted for an industry worth $1.5-$ 2 billion in 2020. It has the potential to grow to $16-20 billion by 2025.