An experiment in light expression

Business Standard had an interesting plug on Google’s plans for developing products for rural Indian consumers. The article states….”Google is developing with local vendors a simpler search engine, as well as content tailored to the needs of rural users. The customised content for rural customers would include weather updates, crop patterns and other local data.” The article notes that sectors such as telecom, retail, and certainly FMCGs (fast moving consumer goods) have experimented quite a bit with rural products and services, often quite successfully, atleast in telecom and FMCGs.

So is Google’s press release a sign that the software technology sector might be opening its mind to the possibility (Doh!) that the Indian market for software and web products represents the next logical step from services and product outsourcing? In the past years, the software technology sector has been a no-show with the the rural market. While rural consumption rides high for commodity goods such as washing machines, televisions, radios, mobile phones, DVD players and the like, the consumption of desktop computers or computer software has not really taken off. Despite the chest beating about e-governance, and all other top down ‘e-initiatives’ taken by the government and other agencies, the end user consumption of desktop software and in general software products remains quite low.

One part of the problem is that international software product companies have focuses on the big boys - the institutional/government machinery and its million dollar budgets for IT-fication and automation of existing manual processes. It is still easier/cheaper/simpler to do some look-and-feel, language, and font changes to software and call it ‘Localization’. A second part of the problem is that large Indian software organizations have never considered India as a relevant market for themselves. Why bother when outsourcing can continue to bring in billions of dollars, from clients based in Boston or Bosnia?
The mainstream Indian market forays (and eventual success or failure) of Google, Yahoo and other companies will be an interesting reference for what kinds of content, products, services, and technology infrastuctures would make sense for rural Indian consumers. Will farming, banking and such areas be the natural port of entry into this market? Are there other enterprise or consumer scenarios where software interventions might be relevant?

One of the areas i’ve discussed with random folks in Bangalore is the idea of a search platform that integrates or co-exists with the vastly successful informal knowledge network based search in India. For example, if i need to find a doctor for extracting my wisdom tooth, or find out about the best Hyderabadi biryani in town, or find out where to get a 0.5 mm pick for my guitar, or a second hand Frank Miller graphic novel, i would probably ask a friend of a friend, or call JustDial (23333333 pre-fixed by the city code, available in 26 cities in India - a good service!), or somehow randomly find what i’m looking for on Church street in Bangalore. How would Google manage this?
So, how do you take a farmer with no technology/media in his house other than a pocket radio and a B&W television to start using a web based search service to find out about the next expected rainfall, especially with 6 hours of daily power cuts? I hope Google is able to remember its own Yoda-like dictum “Focus on the user, and all else will follow”. This represents a great opportunity to do some ground breaking ethnographic and user research work, leading to designs that well, get used in the first place!

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