Courtesy Aditya ‘Dean’ Dikshit and Rajat Maaker, I’ve found the inspiration to overcome inertia and come back to my blog. Rajat says I need to write down my predictions so that one day I can say ‘I told you so’. But the tipping factor on this lazy, second saturday of the month, afternoon was the movie ‘The Crupier’. It’s about a writer who gets a job with a casino - takes part in a robbery scheme but still manages to place his bets well enough to pull it off.
So here’s my piece today on taking bets in life or more specifically - in business.
Latest Opportunity Obsession:
To make a short story long, during our visit to the US in September, I noticed the prevelance of hand sanitiser gel dispensers in almost every public facility - airports, hotels, public bathrooms, lounges, corporte offices etc. etc. Not to forget, the small travel size bottles in almost every lady’s purse. Then you think about the convenience factor and that once someone starts using it, it’s hard to stop. Think about the scare factor - Mothers concerned for their kids. Lifebuoy soap sales are up 30-40% since they linked their advertisements to prevention of H1N1. Swines…
Now in India, within the last 45 days I’ve seen 3 new big brands entering in the space and the radio in Pune and Bangalore (at least) are constantly playing ads. However, the market is huge and still in the nascent to growth stage. Plenty of bucks to be made. Hotels, Offices, Schools, Restaurants are still open fields. Heck - Let me go ahead and make my audacious bets.
- I predict the market will grow significantly for the next 5-7 years.
- The urban institutional sales will peak in about 18-24 months.
- Once that has happened, some ‘chik shampoo’ dude will come along and introduce sachet size packets for sanitiser gel and sell them for Rs. 1 (or thereabout) to consumers. Middle Class Mother’s will start putting a packet in lunch boxes for the kids. The rich kid’s schools will have dispensers anyway
- A new player will emerge through a quick gain in market share. This player will either be bought out or will diversify heavily within its first 3 years.
- In 2015, free packets will be distributed to the poor (ok ok…too much)
Quoting the line from Rocket Singh - ‘Risk to spiderman bhi leta hai… main to sirf salesman hoon.’ Ok - that didn’t really make sense (…In the movie or in real life)
My other prediction is the boom for Single Malt Whiskey in India: No Brainer!
To conclude the post, my biggest bet is now on context based social networks. Large - small, generic - branded, public - private… Every single trusted relationship or network will be moving some parts of their interactions and transactions online. With the diversity in consumer tastes, preferences, needs and desires there’s place for a quite a few people to help provide those platforms and tools.
People say ‘there can only be one Facebook, one Twitter, one Google Wave’. My only answer is that large corporations by definition are ‘feature focused’ to cater to mass markets. Small startups find opportunities in being ‘customer focused’. A few marquee customers, some references and you’re ready to roll.
3 years from now, I could be eating sour humble pie .. but then the bet’s worth it 
