Bharat calling: The next tech revolution lies in rural India

In these Covid-19 saturated days, doom and gloom are not far away from our
minds. But I want you to forget the crowded metro spaces of India for a
while and think of the vast horizons of Bharat. This ‘country’ so very different
from India has long intrigued me. For, this is where the ‘next billion digital
consumers’ reside—the consumers who will lead the next phase of the digital
revolution in India and across the globe. But, few companies have truly
been able to capture this market. Why is that and why has this market
become the holy grail for tech companies?

ROTI , KAPADA , MAKAAN & TIKTOK ?

You might relegate many of the videos created by Bharat’s creative minds on
TikTok in the cringe category. But the 200 million, mostly tier-2 and tier-3
users of TikTok (until it got banned in India) made us collectively sit up and
notice the fact that these so called ‘roti, kapada, makaan’ focused consumers
were not just consuming digital content but were also actively creating
it. This is not a digitally illiterate population anymore.
This TikTok phenomenon is the visible indicator of the digital and behavioural changes sweeping across Bharat.

THE SHEER SIZE OF BHARAT IS THE SINGLE BIGGEST DRAW FOR STARTUPS & INVESTORS

With better infrastructure, cheaper data plans—thanks to Jio—and affordable smartphones, Bharat’s citizens will go digital in their millions in the next few years. Communication and entertainment are, of course, the first ports of call when a user newly discovers digital. Trell, a homegrown short vlogging startup that supports Indian language content, sees 25 million monthly active users and 5 billion views a month! But Bharat consumers are also looking for solutions that solve specific needs.

MyUpchar, an online Indian language health content, consulting, and medicine delivery provider, sees over 20 million users visiting its site and facilitates 3 lakh teleconsultations a month. EdTech is also finding takers in this market when it is solving Bharat’s particular problems. Pariksha’s mobile app helps aspirants prepare for state government jobs in local Indian languages along with English. It already caters to 1.9 million users and has a potential user base of 75 million. 

WHAT ALL THIS MEANS IS THAT THE NON-METRO & RURAL DIGITAL CONSUMER IS MOVING UP THE VALUE CHAIN

While Covid-19 has heavily impacted metro populations, the rural
community is relatively better off. For one, the monsoon has been good this
year & with lockdowns lifting across the country, produce is flowing much more
freely, money is reaching the hands of farmers. The government has also
pumped money into the rural economy. The Rural Affairs & Agriculture ministries
spent over Rs 1.5 lakh crores in April & May this year, as against Rs 45k crore
during the same period last year.[1] We can infer from available data, like the
22.5% jump in tractor sales in June 2020 compared to June 2019, that there is
greater confidence regarding the economy in Bharat.

THERE’S ALWAYS A BUT…

However, companies need to understand that it is not easy to monetise this market. The main challenge is that India is not homogeneous. Products that work well in developed markets work well in India’s Tier-1 market. That’s not the case with Bharat. For instance, consumers are mobile web first and are not used to complex sites. This is why a simple interface like WhatsApp worked well for them.

Pulkit Agrawal, the co-founder of Trell, tells me that startups need to innovate bottom up. Trell, for instance, built a community of users from small towns before launching its vlogging platform. Rajat Garg, the co-founder of MyUpchar, says his team spent an additional year understanding the nuances of the Tier-2 and Tier-3 markets before rolling out the product.

Further, languages, customs, and nuances change across regions. Customising for each of these submarkets and ensuring they earn money is difficult, especially for those offering products beyond communication or entertainment. While offering content in multiple local languages has become de rigueur, that isn’t enough.

Rajat shares this great insight—in the areas close to the Bangladesh border the strain of malaria is different and needs a different set of medicines compared to the rest of the country. If a person here is consulting with a doctor in, say, in Delhi, the doctor needs to have this local knowledge and that needs to be built into the system.

While trust has gone up, cash-on-delivery (CoD) continues to be king—93% of transactions on MyUpchar are still CoD. The bigger challenge is convincing the consumers that a service or product is worth paying for. MyUpchar had to keep consultation free and monetise on medicine delivery.

Why startups are tapping into India’s small towns

As is clear from the points made earlier, I believe the future of digital in India lies in Bharat. What startups and investors targeting this market need to remember is that Bharat is a long-term play and startups catering to this market need patient, long-term capital. Further, releasing a product and expecting the consumers to ‘bite’ is not going to work. This market doesn’t need yet another edtech company offering basic online streaming of classes. We need to go beyond Make in India and work towards Made for Bharat.

The good news is that in this massive market that is mostly still untapped, there are vast white spaces that are perfectly poised for tailor-made products. So, a Pariksha that caters to the large customer base of state government jobs’ aspirants finds success.

A company like MyUpchar that started off with health content evolved to offering virtual consultations and medicine deliveries, thus solving real problems of the Bharat market. Similarly, agritech startups offering agronomy advice and agri-inputs are finding a ready market among farmers. These white spaces are present within each sector, from finance to commerce. Startups should be willing to look beyond the obvious and come up with creative solutions & investors need to be willing to back these new business models. So, startups providing easy credit via mobile for rural craftspeople based on past sales or current orders, or those offering better access to online school education in local languages even on 2G networks, or those creating better on-demand & low-cost supply chain support for farmers will all find takers. Like I said the horizons of Bharat are vast and pioneers are the need of the hour.