Friday, January 01, 2016

Fwd: Will India make it – 2016? Indian innovation ready for prime time


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: S G Naravane


In India, what we have, thanks to Aadhaar and the India Stack, are open platforms that can be mass-innovated upon

Google's driverless car is one kind of innovation, and India has several types of innovations being worked on, but the biggest developments this year and over the next are going to be centred around the stack of Aadhaar-based APIs (application program interfaces) and mobile payments APIs — the India Stack, so to speak — and these are about going paperless, presence-less and cashless. This will fundamentally alter business processes in corporations and in government; it means every business and application in government can be re-imagined.
Take the example of mutual funds. India was one of the early adaptors of technology in capital markets with the advent of NSE, NSDL, etc, and we had dematerialised trading from the 1990s. But since then number of retail investors has stagnated. If you look at mutual funds, the cost of acquiring a customer is Rs 1,500, so you need a portfolio of at least Rs 3 lakh and so you can target maybe 3-4 million households. If acquisition costs can come down to Rs 100, you need a break-even portfolio of Rs 20,000 and can now target 34 million households; at Rs 10, the break-even is Rs 2,000 and the target is 105 million households! This is where the innovation is taking place right now. The Securities and Exchange Board of India is focused on reducing these customer acquisition costs.
The cost of acquisition is high because the front end is cumbersome, you need an in-person verification for 
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sent from samsung galaxy note3 neo, so please excuse brevity

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