Billion dollars is a magic number and is often the benchmark of judging success when it comes to businesses. However, in the technology world, market capitalization is much more important.
How are Indian start-ups faring here? Not too well, one would conclude, when compared globally.
Rajan Anandan, Vice President and Managing Director of Google India, says there are 30 publicly traded internet companies and 10 Software As A Service (SAAS) firms in the United States who are valued at more than a billion dollars. China has 17 publicly-traded Internet companies of more than a billion dollars. India, in comparison, has just three billion dollar babies -
Just Dial, which is publicly traded, besides private players InMobi
and Flipkart. The next decade could be better.
Anandan, who gave a pep talk at the Nasscom Product Conclave, says there are many segments where billion dollar companies could emerge from. SAAS is an obvious area since India has a history in services and Indian companies could make money by selling to millions of small and medium businesses who would go online and consume cloud products in the next few years. Advertising technology, classifieds, payments, voice access for the Internet and e-commerce are the other promising segments.
E-commerce seems to have now garnered a negative connotation because of the losses most start-ups are running into. But it is a good bet in the long run, Anandan insists.
"By 2020, there will be 500 million Internet users in India and 100 million of them would transact online. We will have a few billion dollar companies here," he added.
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