The Third Web #10 - An Emerging India

Recently I visited India representing the DFINITY Foundation. The trip was supported by upstart venture production and consulting group, Dunya Labs, and advocacy group, InCrypt. Those ten days altered my understanding of the way technology manifests products and the driving role the needs of high growth nations will have in defining the digital landscape of tomorrow.

In this episode, I’m joined by co-founder of Dunya Labs, Cathy Guo, and co-founders of InCrypt, Nitin Sharma & Sumukh Shetty. We examine the Indian startup, business and regulatory environments. We also look at the growth of telecommunications infrastructure alongside macro demographic trends and the unique business conditions they create.

https://www.incrypt.co/

https://www.dunyalabs.io/

Incrypt

Investment, community building, and policy research and advocacy

Has produced study and guidence on regulation

Dunya Labs

Research Arm

Product specific research

Infrastructiure team connecting applications to protocols

Community and incubatioon

Cathy’s Book

Entrepreneurial philosophy

Corporate responsibility

Emerging tech landscape in India

Emerging startup ecosystem

The way that Indian startups create social and economic value

How do you see blockchain technology beign deployed in india?

Low trust, high administrative friction in india

Middlemen are a big problem

Desire for transparency and automation

More data is moved through Indian infrastructure than the US

Beginning with banks and private ledgers

Supplychain, etc. basic pilots that we are used to seeing in the first phase of blockchain experimentation

Next step is public blockchain

This is limited by the regulatory environment

Look at india for talent, users & capital

The 4g Rollout

India is experiencing a leap frog effect for technology rollout

Tech companies

Indian tech companies are moving from a service based model through a period of optimizing external business models for the indian market to a native innovation model where they will begin exporting technology

There are 18 tech companies valued at over USD1b

It is important not to overestimate the Indian consumer base

There is limited local market protectionism

There may be 1.3 billion people but the number of consumers of tech products may be 30-50 million

Users can’t pay the way that they can in China or the US

Companies survive by being very lean

Talent is cheaper

This makes it a good place to launch

Deep tech is still limited

Need funding and educational support

If we compare the indian market to where it was 10 years ago you see 10 - 100x growth but it is still an order of magnitude lower than china/us

There is a huge impact in reducing fees on increassing addressible market

Almost 50% of indians are under 30

Little legacy infrastructure but high web and mobile penetration

3 million software developers in india with a 50-70% increase in graduates yoy

Legacy

Primacy of agriculture

Fear of automation (computers)

This has changed

What are the business models that will drive the next generation of Indian unicorns

Many current unicorns are already expanding overseas

Enterprised focussed, or SaaS companies can be based in india and address markets abroad - Zoho, Freshworks

A new crop of SaaS companies are emerging with that model

This allows the targeting of specific niches because of the lower cost of talent

Many blockchain projects fit this model

Engineering Education

Theoretical

Lack of innovation focus

Desiged to pass you on to a services company

MOOCs and open source are enabling autodidacts and hackers to innovate

Tertiary education is of variable quality

Brain drain is a major problem

Regulation

Bit Connect took USD3b equiv from India

https://factordaily.com/walmart-turns-to-flipkart-for-tech/

https://www.dunyalabs.io/

https://www.incrypt.co/