India

In case you ever begin to feel that we creative types could never make it in a really big way or have a real impact on the world, there is comfort in the knowledge that India’s most pioneering and successful entrepreneur Ratan Tata trained as an Architect at Cornell before turning to revolutionize his family’s business. OK, he was given a silver spoon to start with but just look at how big he went and made it…a grand vision from steel to the Nano and Jaguar…Vision….something he picked up in design school perhaps.

While most of the residents of Chandigarh are critical at worst or ambivalent at best about their “modernist” architecture, the rest of the world has slowly been stealing its unknown treasures and making a killing at international auction houses like Christies.

Furniture designed by Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret - both were responsible for the city’s unique plan and its official buildings and many of its residences - which normally would be considered junk in Chandigarh and sold for a few hundred rupees were fetching prices of over $8,000 in some cases.

According to an article in the International Herald Tribune:

A handful of antique dealers from around the world have become regular visitors to government junkyards in Chandigarh, the experimental modernist city 250 kilometers, or 155 miles, north of New Delhi, conceived by the architect Le Corbusier in the 1950s. They buy up disused stocks of furniture that was specially created by Corbusier’s colleagues to fit out the new city.

The disappearance of large quantities of these distinctive, ultrafunctional tables and chairs - most of them designed by Jeanneret, Le Corbusier’s cousin, for the city’s government offices, courtrooms and colleges - has begun in recent months to alarm architects and some government officials in the city.

Citizens of Chandigarh should wake up to the potential goldmine they are sitting on and begin appreciating their heritage no matter how ugly it may seem to many. The city is suddenly worth millions on the art market.

Read this fascinating article here.

According to the world’s leading Web traffic measurement service Alexa, only 5 of the of the Top Twenty Websites in the Indian Market are indigenous Indian products – the rest are all products of global media giants like Google, Microsoft, ESPN and Yahoo. On the Indian front, the usual suspects Rediff (#5), Naukri.com (#12), IndiaTimes (#14) and Sify.com (#20) rule and one private site DebonairBlog.com (a porn site - #19) lead the way.That makes 4 big Indian brands and 1 porn site!

Further along we have Raaga.com at 24, Bharatstudent.com at 30, SantaBanta.com at 33 and Indian Railways at 37. Good to see some independent entrepreneurs breaking the top 40 ceiling – well done! But there should be many more in the top 40.

So what does this tell us. Well, while it may appear that in the future, the Web in India might be brought to us exclusively by multinationals and large Indian publishing companies, the truth is that what we see before us is a huge opportunity.

The Indian Web market is about to cross over the 60 million user mark this year (25 million active users) and if all predictions prove true, we should have over 100 million active users by 2010 (Nielsen Net Ratings). On the other side broadband home access and the rapid spread of credit and debit cards will help create a vibrant ecommerce market well in excess of the current $1 billion (eStatsIndia.com). This means that the Indian market is ready for a wide range of new service, utility, shopping, leisure and entertainment sites that cater to this upcoming boom. These are heady days for Indian Web Publishers. What’s stopping you?

…Read my next post on branding to help you map out your conquest of the Indian Web market.

Greetings. This Blog is under construction and will bring you the best ideas in Online and Multimedia Branding, Creativity, Design, Innovation and New Thinking for Entrepreneurs, IT Companies, Media Companies and Designers in India and around the World. This Blog is published and edited by me, Raja Choudhury. My background is in online Web Branding and design (responsible for numerous award-winning multimedia projects and Websites in the US and UK markets over the past 14 years) as well as Architecture and Documentary Film Making. Look forward to sharing many creative ideas with you in the future.