The Indian market is equivalent to gold rushing, and it needs to be screened through hard work again and again.

Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “deep-echo” (ID: deep-echo)< / a>, author: Ding Ren straight.

Core Points

  • In recent years, the rising economic level and Internet penetration have made India the largest single Internet market outside of China and the United States.

  • India has surpassed the United States to become the country with the most mobile data usage in the world.

  • China Capital has a unique advantage in the development of China’s Internet history and has an advantage in India.

  • China’s Internet companies need more time to go to India.

When you mention India, what do you think of? Songs and dances, curries, overloaded trains and mysterious temples? Or OYO, generics and IT outsourcing?

The above two types of things seem to be completely out of one dimension, but together they have shaped a complex Indian market.

The population of more than 1.3 billion and still growing rapidly determines India’s huge potential. In recent years, the rising economic level and Internet penetration have made India the largest single Internet market outside China and the United States. At the same time, the social inequality caused by the complex language environment, gender and caste system, and the excessive urban-rural development gap have also created many obstacles for this emerging market.

After 2014, India briefly set off a wave of venture capital, but since many investment decisions were relatively blind, the entry of funds did not promote the production and growth of unicorns. The craze did not last. After a few years of silence, the entrepreneurial and investment boom around the Indian market has revived, and the Chinese forces who have joined in it have chosen a more cautious attitude.

When the heat revived, the Indian elite gradually awakened and spawned more and more local unicorns. Among them, after winning the Indian market, OYO put the next focus on the Chinese market and triggered The upsurge in the transformation of individual hotels in the Chinese market.

In the context of the gradual loss of the domestic mobile Internet growth dividend, the gold rush into the sea has become a new choice for venture capitalists. In the face of a market with huge future space and complicated conditions in India, how should China’s venture capitalists cut through to succeed?

Rising South Asian powers

India is not to be underestimated. This view has been recognized and recognized by more and more people in the past few years.

2018, India GDThe growth rate of P is the highest in the world, with the sixth largest in the world. After more than 30 years of development, India is rapidly emerging as an important economy in the world.

With China as a reference, you can see what level of development India is currently in:

  • Economic growth: In 2018, India’s GDP growth rate reached 7.4%, and China’s 6.6%.

  • Economic total: The total GDP released by the National Bureau of Statistics is US$13.6 trillion (about RMB90.0309 trillion). According to Indian data, the country’s nominal GDP reached 185,768.50 billion rupees. At $2.716 trillion, it is about 20% of China’s total GDP.

  • Per capita GDP: The per capita GDP announced by the National Bureau of Statistics of China is 64,644 yuan (about 9768.8 US dollars); India’s per capita income is only 2,030 US dollars, slightly higher than 1/5 of China’s per capita.

Overall, India’s economic growth is obvious, and there is still a big gap between the total and per capita GDP.

Innovative workshop senior investment manager Qi Fei concluded: “Since India’s market economic policy reform in 1991, it has grown from a GDP of 300 US dollars to 2030 US dollars in 2018, which is equivalent to the past 27 years. India has grown steadily at an average annual growth rate of 7.34%. We cannot ignore the fact that India itself is and has been developing at a high speed because of China’s unique economic miracle in the world.”

In the rapid economic growth, India’s Internet industry is also developing steadily.

In 2016, the number of Internet users in India was 355 million, the network penetration rate was 27%, and the number of Internet users ranked second in the world, second only to China. After nearly two years of development, by September 2018, the number of Internet users in India has increased to 560 million.

At present, India’s population pyramid presents a classic upper narrow and wide shape, which indicates that today’s India is a typical labor-intensive country. From a specific structure, 85% of people under 54 years old, 35 The population below the age of 65%, and the proportion of people aged 0-24 is far more than China.

According to World Bank forecasts, India’s demographic dividend will continue until the outbreak occurs in 2025. It is estimated that by 2025, the number of Internet mainstream users between the ages of 14 and 48 will reach 800 million. It can be seen that the Indian demographic dividend will not be small compared with China in the next few years, and the dividend period will continue for a longer period of time.

In the construction of basic communications, due to the emergence of JIO, which entered the telecom market in free mode in 2016, the Indian communications construction has made great strides since then.The leap. Since January 2017, India has surpassed the United States and become the country with the most mobile data usage in the world. The monthly mobile data used is almost twice that of China. Before its change, its average network speed was at a medium-to-middle level globally. The situation.

At the policy level, the Indian government vigorously promoted entrepreneurship. In 2016, the Modi government put forward the slogan “India entrepreneurship, India’s rise”, starting from policy reduction and financial support, actively promoting Indian Internet entrepreneurship, with a view to establishing The ecosystem of entrepreneurial innovation. In addition, the federal government’s efforts in promoting infrastructure construction, state-level cashless payment systems, and unified identity systems will help open up the relatively fragmented status of India’s original market and form an active and unified large market to promote resources. The flow and release of consumption potential.

In the face of huge opportunities, various venture capitalists gathered together to share the market dividend: the international VC represented by Tiger, Sequoia, DST, and the speed of light, the Chinese giant represented by Tencent Ali, to Kalaari The Indian native VC represented by capital, the Chinese startups represented by UC and Yeahmobi, together form the territory of the Indian venture capital market.

Cheng Huajie, founding partner of CoBuilder Partners, who invested in Yeahmobi, Dingkai, Onion Mobile and other products in India, commented: “The gambling is the future of this country. Will there be the next Alibaba? , Jingdong, Alipay, Tencent, Vipshop.”

Where is the opportunity?

The story of Chinese mobile phone manufacturers attacking the city in the Indian market is already well known, and the opportunities for smart phone penetration and the rapid development of the mobile Internet industry will still need to be carefully examined.

The development of the Internet industry in India today cannot be separated from the local telecom operator Reliance Jio. This half-road black horse has brought India from the 3G era into the 4G era.

Reliance Jio was built by India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, who has done the following in promoting Internet construction in India.

Multi-faceted look at India: Where is the huge opportunity for space?

India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani

  • In 2016, we will build a 4G network covering all of India from scratch, investing billions of dollars to build nearly 100,000 base stations in various places, and now its 4G network covers nearly 20,000 towns and 20s across the country. More than 10,000 villages account for 90% of the country’s population.

  • To launch a super low-cost 4G mobile phone, you only need to provide a deposit of 1500 rupees (about RMB 150) (all refundable after three years), and you can also use the three-month 4G package for free. service.

  • Jio provides apps for music, videos, games, chat, payment tools, and more for users to download and use, and restrict these apps to Jio.

After three months of free use, India’s 4G users consume an average of more than 1400M per month, of which Jio users account for a large portion, and Jio announces that it will continue to offer three months of free service to further attract new Users, consolidate old users. At the end of March 2017, Jio’s free period ended, and the Indian Internet community quickly upgraded under such seemingly crazy and willful boost.

At present, the traffic of Jio1G only needs RMB 5 yuan after the charge, which is equivalent to 1/5 of the current mainstream price of the Indian telecom market, which greatly promotes the penetration rate of the Internet and smartphones in India. The ceiling was raised by Jio.

In the face of opportunities, Chinese capital is highly active in India.

Indian investor Mohanjit Jolly once said in a speech: “Since 2016, international capital investment has cooled down, Chinese capital has begun to enter. Chinese people are really optimistic about India’s development prospects, they are really wanting to join the Indian market. Growing up, there is no doubt that they will change the Indian market in the next few years.”

This situation is related to the current state of investment in India.

On the one hand, China’s venture capital trading is more active than India. In 2015, the number of investment and financing transactions in the Internet industry in China was as many as 4,000, and the number of transactions in the Indian market was about 1,000. According to data from the Zero2IPO, the amount of funds raised by Chinese and foreign venture capital institutions for investing in mainland China in 2016 was 526. One hundred million US dollars (more than 80% of the renminbi currency), more than half of which is used for investment in TMT and Internet industry.

On the other hand, India’s investment market is still small. According to data from Venture Intelligence, in 2016, VC/PE investment in the Indian market raised only $4.9 billion. The gap is more than 10 times. This data does not include all kinds of government funds in China.

So overall