He elucidated interesting examples of revenue comparison and market capitalisation of e-commerce and non e-commerce companies. For example, he compared Amazon and Wal-Mart by showing that Amazon has a very small revenue in comparison to Wal-Mart (4 times lesser), but still has a market cap 1.5 times greater than Wal-Mart. Similarly, the market cap of Flipkart is 160 times greater than Future group though there is not much difference in their revenue. He emphasized that internet companies are valued more than brick-and-mortar companies because of high scalability of Internet companies in terms of assortment and number of cities reached.
He focused on how the revenue growth of internet companies is exponential in comparison to that of brick-and-mortar companies which is largely linear. Due to Internet explosion in India, there is an ever increasing Internet user base with 400+ million users in 2016 which is 2nd largest Internet user base in the world. Hence, there is a plethora of opportunities in the e-commerce world with the numbers reaching close to 500-600 millions in the years to come.
Similarly, there is a huge advancement in the Smartphone industry with India becoming the 3rd largest country for Smartphone sales with 104 million Mobile users, which is lower only to US (167 million) and China (250+ million). He cited examples where, few years back, people in small towns had to travel to bigger cities for shopping during weekends and highlighted how this trend has now been replaced by online shopping, thereby boosting the online shopping market. Most of the daily-use products are now available through a click of a button which has helped in revolutionising the e-commerce business in the country.
Further dissecting the e-commerce business and its usage through Mobile applications in India, he highlighted that Facebook has 90% Mobile app users in India and Flipkart has 65% Mobile app users which has made Mobile a key player in the Indian market. While in US, trends shifted from not being online-to-desktop-to-laptop-to-Mobile apps, in India it was a sudden change from not-being-online-to-Mobile apps, hence user habits are also different from other countries.
Discussing about Xiaomi, and interestingly teaching its pronunciation to all bright minds present, he explained about the origin of the name ‘MI’ from Mobile Internet and how they have become 3rd largest Mobile company in India within a small span of 3 years. The aim of Xiaomi is to build a product, and an operating system which is far more user-friendly, far more customizable than what has been available till now. Xiaomi has become the biggest Smartphone brand in China , 8th largest e-commerce company ,2nd most innovative and valued start-up with a unique Guinness world record of 2.1 million phones sales within 24 hours.
He explained how he became the 1st employee of MI, India and thereafter made Xiaomi 3rd largest Smartphone vendor within 1 year in India’s top 30 cities. Xiaomi now has 100 service centres, 2 warehouses and 3000+ employees working for it now and counting. Xiaomi Note 3 was the most searched and trending topic in Internet in 2015 ahead of celebrities and famous sportspersons. This all has been achieved without spending a single penny on marketing.
To extend this point, he busted a few marketing myths which are prevalent in the industry. First Myth according to many entrepreneurs is “marketing is equal to success” which he proved wrong by giving example of Xiaomi gaining grand success without doing any marketing and AskmeBazaar losing market share despite spending so much on celebrity advertisement. Tesla became so successful without zero advertisement and Nano lost its trust despite heavy advertisement. Second Myth which might be disagreed by many marketers, is that “4Ps of marketing is not that relevant in current times” and few Ps are far more important, like price and product, rather than product and promotion. Third myth was that “first mover gets the prime advantage” which again was disproved by the example of Microsoft developing the first tablet and then losing market share in tablet sector by not being innovative. He emphasised that execution matters far more than any other factor, and gave his personal 3Ps for success - Passion, Perseverance and Pagalpan.
Mr. Jain motivated young and bright minds to experiment with new things in life and not to be afraid of failures. He pointed out that there will be ups and downs in everything, but how you come out of it will differentiate you from the rest of the world. The floor was then opened for questions and our guest, with his profound expertise and competence, answered all the queries of the students.
DMS, IIT Delhi expresses its heartfelt gratitude to Mr. Manu Kumar Jain, for sparing his valuable time and delivering such an informative lecture to our students. We look forward to having him on campus many more times.
Comments