“THE BEST THING about India is we don’t have to replace anything,” says Sachin Bansal. He founded Flipkart, an online marketplace, with $8,000 in 2007. When it lists later this year, India’s answer to Amazon is likely to be valued at $15 billion. That is because Indians are learning to leapfrog, says Mr Bansal. Many will never see a supermarket, but will go straight from shopping in local kirana (neighbourhood) shops to ordering online. He expects his firm, eventually, to create jobs for 2m.
He is speaking at a dinner in Bangalore, where other guests make similar claims. Some 900m Indians have access to mobile phones. Smartphone use is likely to go up from around 200m now to 500m by 2020. Bhavish Aggarwal, who founded OlaCabs in 2011, says his smartphone-based taxi service has 150,000 drivers, mostly first-time entrepreneurs. It is several times bigger than the Indian branch of Uber. He believes that many Indians, like himself, will skip over having a car of their own.
Advertisers are also leapfrogging. Naveen Tewari and Abhay Singhal are two founders...
from The Economist: Special report http://ift.tt/1FzJT1T
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