R&D : The Local Rush

Fifteen percent of the total registered Orkut users (12.8 mn visitors, an
increase of 81% from the previous year, according to ComScore) are from India.
This does not include those accessing the web from cyber cafes or their Internet
enabled mobile phones. The number of Internet subscribers in India, as of
September 2008, as per ISPA, India, was 12.2 mn, while total broadband
subscribers stood at 0.5 mn. The total number of Internet users, however, is
around 50 mn.

Startling at it might sound, this is a hard data that emphasizes the
importance of India in the Internet usage space. The sluggish growth of PC and
Internet usage in India has been overshadowed by the stupendous growth that the
Indian market is experiencing in the mobile user space 300 mn plus. It is this
segment which companies are looking at capitalizing on. Work is underway at the
R&D centers of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and AOL, apart from others. The fact
that India is a lucrative market is now a foregone conclusion. The country has
become an experimental ground for many innovations being developed or launched
by the companies.

Challenges and Opportunities

Making a product for the emerging markets including India is not easy as
each geography poses unique challenges. Says Prasad Ram, center head and
engineering director, Google India R&D, It is not the high cost of Internet
access that is the hurdle, as Cyber Cafe rates have come down to as low as Rs 10
per hour. We concluded that therefore Internet needs to be made more relevant.

What does it take to make Internet more relevant to the people? Ram adds,
The first thing users need is local content and information. Billions of pages
of information are there on the Internet but the page which Indian users want
for local needs are not. Every street of Europe and America is there on the
Internet but local Indian streets are not. Most local businesses are still not
on the Internet. We lack local information and we need to enhance local content
to improve the relevance of the Net.

Language is another major barrier. Keyboards are mostly in English and so are
the applications. At the same time, the content overwhelmingly is in English.
Tons of information on everything is available on Wikipedia but mainly in
English. Srini Kopulu, corporate vice president and managing director, Microsoft
India Development Center has a similar viewpoint on the language issue.
Vernacular language is one big challenge for us in India. One has to make sure
that technologies, functionalities, services, and experiences are available in
local languages as well, he adds. One of the biggest challenge is the input of
local language as keyboards have only English letters. Manufacturers dont know
if making keyboards in vernacular language is a good idea because they are not
sure how many people will adopt them. Digital keyboards are also not very easy
to use.

Vernacular language is one big challenge for us in India. One has to make sure that technologies, functionalities, services, and experiences are available in local languages as well Srini Kopulu, corporate VP and MD, Microsoft IDC	It is not the high cost of Internet access that is the hurdle: Cyber Cafe rates have come down to as low as Rs 10 per hour. We have concluded that Internet needs to be made more relevant Prasad Ram, center head & engineering director, Google India R&D

Microsofts strategy is to use India as a test bed. According to Kopulu, As
a global company the technologies we build would be relevant to multiple
countries. India and China create unique opportunities and some unique
challenges also. The challenge is that these market are not mature from the
technology adoption point of view. This is more true of consumers and small
business segments.

One specific challenge he mentions is the map service in India, which proves
how under-prepared India is in terms of adopting new technologies. The biggest
challenge for India in terms of creating map-related products was that addresses
in India are not very structured.

Mario Queiroz, vice president, product management, Google adds that local
language challenges are there in terms of search. We have to interpret the
words and the websites and match the content with the query. And a lot of that
is language related. Inherently, language problem needs to be solved. We are
building computer programs to solve these interpretation problems.

In certain languages, multiple words are written as a single word resulting
in interpretation problems. Regardless of somebody entering it as one word or
sets of multiple words, the computer program should recognize that the words
have the same meaning.

Keyboard Puzzle

The availability of local language keyboard has been a big issue and is yet
to be addressed by hardware vendors. Traditional hardware vendors are not sure
how much business the local language keyboard will provide them and are
reluctant to address this market. Incidentally, Microsoft is also into computer
hardware like keyboard but its plans of launching local language keyboard is not
clear.

Googles Internet Bus initiative is a unique concept wherein the bus goes to villages and people are encouraged to get into the bus and use the Internet to get an idea of the technology

Google has been trying to address the need of keyboards in local languages by
introducing transliterate functionalities to some of its products, allowing
users to write their mother tongue in English which gets converted to their
local language.

However, there is a big difference between one-time usage and where a user is
content with writing somewhere else and copying. The digital keyboard concept
has not really worked as it is not user friendly.

Popularizing the Net: Who will Bell the Cat?

Large sections of the Indian population continue to be without any kind of
awareness about what the Internet can do. There have been several initiatives
from the central government to provide Internet connectivity through its CSC
centers.

BSNL, the largest telecom operator in the country, took a very good step in
this direction by providing free dial up Internet usage for a period of two
months across the country. There is no indication of any plans of private
telecom providers to popularize the Internet. But providing connectivity is not
enough. Content and applications in local language is almost conspicuous by
their absence. Googles Internet Bus initiative is a unique concept, wherein the
bus goes to villages and people are encouraged to get into the bus and use the
Internet to get an idea about the technology. Microsoft, under its Global
Unlimited Potential effort, also intends to work toward achieving this aim.

Way Forward

The way forward for these companies is to work toward utilizing the
potential that the mobile user base offers. With a base of more than 300 mn
mobile phones out of which around 50 mn users access Internet, there is a huge
opportunity. The access medium has to move beyond PCs to these devices which
have become affordable. The challenge before the R&D teams is to develop
applications which can run on these small form factor devices.

In India, mobile phone penetration is incredibly high and mobile phone
adoption is also very high. Looking at this we thought we should work on the
search space. The logical step was to add search to SMS keywords. This could not
have been thought of sitting in the US. This would also be relevant to other
countries that have high SMS usage and mobile phone growth, says Kopulu.

Creating content in local language is another challenge and technology
companies are banking on user generated content for now, which is a good idea.
Internet is optimized for PC and for people who have a reasonable level of
connectivity. The biggest challenge is to provide information to people with
language, device, usability, and connectivity barriers. Regardless of usability,
connectivity and other barriers, Google aims to work on technologies which can
help get better Internet user experience.

Sudesh Prasad

sudeshp@cybermedia.co.in