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One reason I haven't seen mentioned yet is that countries like India can be overwhelmingly mobile-dominated (as in, few people own desktops). I never had data

by crdb 11y ago

One reason I haven't seen mentioned yet is that countries like India can be overwhelmingly mobile-dominated (as in, few people own desktops). I never had data on India but in places like the Philippines or Indonesia (with similar GDP/capita), your buyer's only internet access might come from his (very basic) smartphone and I sometimes saw > 90% mobile visits. At a previous company, we saw our Indonesian traffic soar after we fixed a bug that prevented the site from displaying on Blackberries... somehow an incredibly popular brand in the region. If 90% of your buyers are on mobile, you might as well become a mobile company, if your IT resources are limited. The gap between mobile and desktop is closing though, as companies like Xiaomi keep releasing ever cheaper, more powerful and larger devices in those markets. A Redmi (1, 1S, 2...) costs a tenth of an iPhone for 80% of the functionality. The reach of mobile devices never fails to impress me. We went horseriding a few hours drive from Jiuzhaigou, and after a day of climbing the mountains on horseback, sleeping on the sloped floor of a tent (heated by a dried yak dung fire, of course), it was quite surreal to see all our guides, on horseback, playing mobile games and happily texting away on their 5" smartphones - even as they were herding yaks...

captn3m0 11y ago
The issue here is that Flipkart is not poor. It is one of the largest private companies in India, with valuations at $11 billion. They have already spun off their costlier operations (such as courier and warehousing) into separate companies which they have since sold off. The only thing flipkart is doing right now is tech and sales. They are definitely not "limited" by money or IT resources.
- thewhitetulip 11y ago
  They might be valued highly, but they aren't having strong revenue streams, they still make 2.4Rs loss per 1Re revenue, hardly profitable.
- crdb 11y ago
  You'd be amazed how money can be wasted in online retail. I know of a 2,000 employee company that took 1.5 years to produce a mobile version of its site and another year for the app. Another (also thousands of employees and over 500 developers to manage code bloat) hires a "Chief Data Scientist" to build a data science team every 6 months or so - the guy quits after 3 months without even getting access to a database, and a few months later the CEO asks the CTO how that data science effort is going and they put a job ad out again. I think they parallelized the effort and hired three in one go last round to speed up finding one that will stick... These companies have in common that they hired "cheap and many" rather than "expensive and few" initially to lower their startup costs and "tech risk", and that they are run by former bankers and McKinseys who consider tech "below them", something that is "commoditized" and can just be "bought in".
  - captn3m0 11y ago
    That really sounds like a shitty company. I'm sure that while Flipkart does have its fair share of code bloat and overly aggressive management, they still have lots of good tech people, because of what they are offering in the market. Their salaries are among the best in the Indian tech industry, so I think they do have the talent to keep a website afloat and running.

by crdb 11y ago

captn3m0 11y ago

The issue here is that Flipkart is not poor. It is one of the largest private companies in India, with valuations at $11 billion. They have already spun off their costlier operations (such as courier and warehousing) into separate companies which they have since sold off. The only thing flipkart is doing right now is tech and sales. They are definitely not "limited" by money or IT resources.

thewhitetulip 11y ago
They might be valued highly, but they aren't having strong revenue streams, they still make 2.4Rs loss per 1Re revenue, hardly profitable.
crdb 11y ago
You'd be amazed how money can be wasted in online retail. I know of a 2,000 employee company that took 1.5 years to produce a mobile version of its site and another year for the app. Another (also thousands of employees and over 500 developers to manage code bloat) hires a "Chief Data Scientist" to build a data science team every 6 months or so - the guy quits after 3 months without even getting access to a database, and a few months later the CEO asks the CTO how that data science effort is going and they put a job ad out again. I think they parallelized the effort and hired three in one go last round to speed up finding one that will stick... These companies have in common that they hired "cheap and many" rather than "expensive and few" initially to lower their startup costs and "tech risk", and that they are run by former bankers and McKinseys who consider tech "below them", something that is "commoditized" and can just be "bought in".
- captn3m0 11y ago
  That really sounds like a shitty company. I'm sure that while Flipkart does have its fair share of code bloat and overly aggressive management, they still have lots of good tech people, because of what they are offering in the market. Their salaries are among the best in the Indian tech industry, so I think they do have the talent to keep a website afloat and running.