India is the fastest growing market for small and medium businesses (SMBs) in Asia Pacific and Internet giant Google is eyeing a piece of the pie to grow its business.
“India has about 40 million SMBs of which only around 500,000 are online. This figure needs to rise if these entities want to reach their consumers at lowest cost and raise their profits,” Karim Temsamani, President, Google Asia Pacific said.
On asked about competition from companies such as Microsoft and Yahoo that are also eying the SMB space in India with their products, he said there is going to be growth in the country overall from an online perspective, and therefore, opportunities for many businesses.
“We need all the businesses to help drive the ecosystem and we can also do all the work ourselves. It is good that Microsoft, Facebook and other companies are participating in developing the ecosystem, and I can only see this as a benefit,” he said.
Online ads
He said Google has helped 200,000 SMBs realise their potential online through its online advertising platform AdWords, which helps enterprises to show advertisements on Google’s page to individuals who type in keywords related to the products or services it offers.
With mobile Internet growing in India, many people are already using online services and are able to access information with good enough speed, he said.
“I agree that not everybody is online yet, has the ability to get a piece of information that they want, but the queries are still there. There are still lot of people all around India trying to find some specific products and as a business,” Temsamani said.
Cost savings
He said before setting up even a small business, people are checking online and Google is helping those users on how to start and save on costs.
“We will never advise our clients to spend thousands of dollars in setting up something where they would get a bad return on investment. It is bad for our business too,” he said.
Leveraging Web
According to Anu Madgavkar, a Senior Fellow at McKinsey Global Institute, Indian SMBs can generate more business by leveraging the services of Web technologies and this phenomenon will increase as more and more people start accessing the Internet.
“Internet users in India are expected to touch 350-450 million by 2015-16 and this will act as a catalyst in the growth of SMBs as they will find more and more of their target users online,” Madgavkar said.
> ronendrasingh.s@thehindu.co.in
(The writer was in Singapore at the invitation of Google India)