Before we start discussing whether it is possible or not for India to have its own Google or Facebook, let us share some facts. India has the cheapest and the best telecom service Reliance that entered into a merger deal with Facebook (the Reliance-Facebook merger).
There is a revolution happening right in front of us. India consumes more data in the world than any other country. 86% of India’s social media marketing individuals and users prefer Facebook over other social media apps like Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, and Pinterest.
Coming to Search, Google is dominating the Indian market since it is used by 92% Indians for all sorts of search queries. Thus, the other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Baidu, and Yandex are hardly a competition. Also, WhatsApp, which is also owned by Facebook, is used by more than 400 million users.
Now, all these above-mentioned social media platforms used by Indians are not actually an Indian platform. This is why 95% of the digital ad revenues are generated outside India. The ad revenue is roundabout $2600 million where Search generates around $966 million.
Google and Facebook are nabbing more than 80% of the Indian digital pie. Apart from that other issues like privacy and data security remain constant.
What Can India do to generate digital ad revenues?
Is the concept of “Atmanirbhar Bharat” applicable for the digital marketing platforms too? Today, China is eye-balling the USA because it can afford to. They have opted for the self-reliance mode a long time ago. China had the foresight to figure out that they didn’t need the Western world to dominate their own market.
With almost a billion mobile users, China has actively created their own versions of Google, Facebook, Twitter, and similar other apps. Let us consider the scenario of WeChat. It has 1.132 billion users per month and 620 million users daily.
WeChat is an all-in-one application. It is like Facebook, Google News, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Pinterest combined. Also, it comprises ten million third-party applications known as WeChat mini-programs.
The Chinese make use of WeChat for multiple purposes. Starting from restaurant bookings, investments, flights, shopping, paying bills, transferring money, hailing taxis, almost everything can be done with the app. At present, WeChat is one of the most valuable companies in the world with its worth more than $500 billion.
China has created a strong digital ecosystem in the last decade where it monetizes billions of dollars in ad revenues. Apart from WeChat, let us share some more self-created digital platforms of China.
- China has an alternative to Twitter which is known as Weibo. It has more than 500 million daily active users.
- QQ aka Tencent is an instant messaging platform developed by China. It is ideally a replacement for WhatsApp. At present, it has more than 800 million users.
- Baidu and Baidu Tieba is the replacement of Google and Reddit in China.
- Zhihu is the Chinese version of Quora.
- Meituan is the Chinese replacement of Yelp and Zomato combined.
- Douban is a social networking platform (like Facebook but it also includes movies, books, and music events). It is Facebook and BookMyShow combined.
China has already created its own version of almost all the major digital marketing and social media marketing platforms. Where does India remain? Among the top 50 websites in the world, there are only 7 Indian websites.
These are indiatimes.com, moneycontrol.com, icicibank.com, ndtv.com, rediff.com, manoramaonline.com, and Hotstar. Since Hotstar is Disney owned, it should not be on the list. Creating and promoting a local social and digital marketing ecosystem comes with its benefits.
So why is India not in the game? We are not too late. China was capable of creating such a self-reliant digital ecosystem in less than 10 years. India needs to have a serious culture of research to capitalize on our massive demographic dividend.
For instance, last year, Qualcomm India filed 1840 patents, while the Indian institutes like DRDO, ISRO, IIT’s filed 781 patents. Is it possible for India to create its own version of Google and Facebook? The answer is yes, definitely.
The Unified Payments Interface was initiated in 2016. In 2017, only 142 banks were live on UPI and a monthly volume of 799.54 million transactions took place. The total value of those transactions resulted in Rs 1.334 trillion ($19 billion).
By the mid-2019, UPI transactions witnessed 1030 crore transactions. The mobile-only payment system helped in generating a total of 17.29 lakh crores ($240 billion) in the first three years of its operation. If the payment systems can do it, then why not social media marketing and digital marketing platforms?
All we need is the mentality to achieve something big. We have already had some major digital successes like Flipkart, Nykaa, MakeMyTrip, Swiggy, PayTm, Byju’s, Ola, Oyo, Snapdeal, Zomato, PolicyBazaar, and Snapdeal. In the early days, rediff.com was considered a rival of Yahoo.
Our major digital platforms have not been able to be equal to the American and Chinese companies. However, the dominance of the above digital and e-commerce platforms, both in the local and global market clearly state that India can do it.
To do that, India needs active government support, substantial funding, and dedication to R&D. If China can do it, India can do it too. We have got the required demographic dividend and a huge domestic market to use it for national advantage. Local CAN win!
This doesn’t mean we have to eradicate Facebook or Google from India. The UPI’s didn’t drive out VISA or MasterCard. It created a culture of self-reliance on India. This is the time for India to be self-reliant. Don’t you agree with it?
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