Why Should a Company in India be on the Web   ?  

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To Establish A Presence 

Approximately 45 million people (100 million plus expected in the year 2000) worldwide have access to the World Wide Web (WWW). No matter what your business is, you can't ignore 45 million people. To be a part of that community and show that you are interested in serving them, you need to be on the WWW for them. No other advertising medium can offer that much of exposure. Millions are surfing the web and the numbers are growing exponentially. It definitely is the most powerful communication tool ever created. Be on the WWW because before you know your competitors have.   

Ever since VSNL introduced Internet into India, there has been a steady increase in the number of net surfers as well as India specific web sites. This number is only going to increase in the near future.    

World Wide Web, would position the said Indian company to posses skills and acumen, vision and directions required in gearing towards the 21st Century.   

To Network    

A lot of what passes for business is simply nothing more than making connections with other people. Every smart businessperson knows, it's not what you know, it's whom you know. Passing out your business card is part of every good meeting and every businessperson can tell more than one story how a chance meeting turned into the big deal. Well, what if you could pass out your business card to thousands, maybe millions of potential clients and partners, saying this is what I do and if you are ever in need of my services, this is how you can reach me. You can, 24 hours a day, inexpensively and simply, on the WWW.   

As foreign invasion and multinational products seek importance in India, it's time for the Indian companies, large or small, to venture and expand globally. Internet is a revolution, which would connect trade and economy and affect every aspect of business activity. A large number of international buyers and traders seek the various search engines on the WWW, to locate and research about products and services.   

To Make Business Information Available  

What is basic business information? Think of a Yellow Pages ad. What are your hours? What do you do? How can someone contact you? What methods of payment do you take? Where are you located? Now think of a Yellow Pages ad where you have instant communication. What is today's special? Today's interest rate? Upcoming sales and new products? If you could keep your customer informed of every reason why they should do business with you, don't you think you could do more business? You can on the WWW.   

Information in printed brochures can simply not be updated that frequently and effectively with every changing information item. How often one wishes to inform the world about a particular event but the cost of printing the article, mailing etc. deters the said event. Making your business information available and accessible to all and at all times is the key towards effective customer service.   

To Serve Your Customers    

Making business information available is one of the most important ways to serve your customers. But if you look at serving the customer, you'll find even more ways to use WWW technology. How about making forms available to pre-qualify for loans, or have your staff do a search for that classic jazz record your customer is looking for, without tying up your staff on the phone to take down the information? Allow your customer to punch in sizes and check it against a database that tells him what color of jacket is available in your store? All this can be done, simply and quickly, on the WWW.    

Corporate competition has forced all brands to offer effective customer service. Moreover, Indian companies have to match the MNC's who have entered the market very closely. The MNC's are very particular about the way they handle their customers and this feature alone can make the ultimate difference in the end. On the WWW, the businessman/women can effectively serve a customer and also automatically maintain a mailing list of all his/her clients.   

To Heighten Public Interest    

f you don't get the Times of India to write up your products/local store opening, you might get them to write up your Web Page address if it is something new and interesting. Even if the Times of India would write about your event/product description, you wouldn't benefit from someone in a distant city reading about it, unless of course, they were coming to your town sometime soon. With Web page information, anybody anywhere who can access the Web and hears about you is a potential visitor to your Web site and a potential customer for your information there.   

Even people, who don't surf the net, will definitely come across articles in the press, which feature your attractive sites. The image of the company would then definitely get a tremendous boost. A good web site would also help increasing the number of subscribers at VSNL, thereby making the country more webbed.   

To Release Time Sensitive Materials    

What if your materials need to be released no earlier than midnight? The quarterly earnings statement, the grand prize winner, the press kit for the much-anticipated film, the merger news? Well, you sent out the materials to the press with "The-do-not-release-before-such-and-such-time" statement and hope for the best. Now the information can be made available at midnight or any time you specify, with all related materials such as photographs, bios, etc. released at exactly the same time. Imagine the anticipation of "All materials will be made available on our Web site at 12:01 AM". The scoop goes to those that wait for the information to be posted not the one who releases your information early.   

To Sell Things    

Many people think that this is the number 1 thing to do with the World Wide Web, but we made it number seven to make it clear that we think you should consider selling things on the Internet and the World Wide Web after you have done all the things mentioned in the previous pages and maybe even after doing quite a few more things from this page. Why? Well, the answer is complex but the best way to put it is, do you consider the telephone the best place to sell things? Probably not. You probably consider the telephone a tool that allows you to communicate with your customer, which in turn helps you sell things. Well, that's how we think you should consider the WWW. The technology is different, of course, but before people decide to become customers, they want to know about you, what you do and what you can do for them. Which you can do easily and inexpensively on the WWW. Then you might be able to turn them into customers.    

International trade laws towards India too do not permit company to easily sell their products to through the WWW.    

To make pictures, sound & film files available   

What if your product is great, but people would really love it if they could see it in action? The album is great but with no airplay, nobody knows that it sounds great? A picture is worth a thousand words, but you don't have the space for a thousand words? The WWW allows you to add sound, pictures and short movie files to your company's info if that will serve your potential customers. No brochure will do that.   

Through the magic of Real audio and Shockwave, sound quality of the web is almost CD-like.   

You can even decide to distribute your corporate profile as down loadable PDF"s, Zip's or exe files. Downloading these profiles (typically less than 1MB) saves the user the time on the web and also promises to create a permanent mark on their desktops. The prime example of the above is Skypak Service Specialists Ltd. (India's largest domestic courier) which is currently distributing 1997 calendars as well as their corporate profile through their web site located at www.skyserve.com.   

To reach a highly desirable demographic market    

The demographic of the WWW user is probably the highest mass-market demographic available.    

A TCP/IP account itself costs Rs. 15,000.00 and setting it up on a Pentium machine does guarantee that the user has spent close to Rs. one Lac (Rs 100,000.00) in setting up of the machine. This market is usually consists of people who are college-educated or being college educated, making a high salary or soon to make a high salary. This market segment is substantially small in India but highly desirable for products of most companies. Opine shapers, market movers, critics, knowledgeable, international travelers, executives, news media personalities etc. are some of the characteristics of this market.   

The demographic will remain high for many years to come though the anticipated $500 computer may just hasten the Internet revolution in India.    

To Answer Frequently Asked questions     

Whoever answers the phones in your organization can tell you, their time is usually spent answering the same questions over and over again. There are the questions that customers and potential customers want to to be answered before they deal with you. As e-mail auto responders gain prominence, simple queries now get instant feedback automatically, unmanned. Alternatively you may even post them on a WWW page and you will have removed another barrier to doing business with you and freed up some time for that hurried phone operator.   

To Stay In Contact With Salespeople    

Your employees on the road may need up-to-the-minute information that will help them make the sale or pull together the deal.    

Indian corporate sales teams/individual traveling abroad can easily contact and retrieve information stored specifically for them. All they have to do is connect to the Internet (available in most hotels, for a nominal charge) and access your company's web site. Information pertaining to a particular team/individual could be accessed from password protected HTML pages. Photographs, audio etc. can be transmitted. The salesperson can then save the information, edit it, and complete his/her deal. There would be no need for the sales people/s to call into the office for constantly changing information.   

To Open International Markets     

You may not be able to make sense of the mail, phone and regulation systems in all your potential international markets, but with a Web page, you can open up a dialogue with international markets as easily as with the company across the street. As a matter-of-fact, before you go onto the Web, you should decide how you want to handle the international business that will come your way, because your postings are certain to bring international opportunities your way, whether it is part of your plan or not.    

Another added benefit; if your company has offices overseas, they can access the home offices information for the price of a local phone call.    

To Create a 24 Hour Service    

Business is worldwide but your office hours aren't. Trying to reach America or Europe is very expensive. But Web pages serve the client, customer and partner 24 hours a day, seven days a week. No overtime either. Virtual offices (web sites)on the WWW would be norm in the 21st century. These offices can customize information to match needs and collect important information from customers that will put you ahead of the competition, even before they get into their office.   

To Make Changing Information Available Quickly     

Sometimes, information changes before it gets off the press. Now you have a pile of expensive, worthless paper. Electronic publishing changes with your needs. No paper, no ink, no printer's bill. Positioning your company as Eco-friendly.   

You can even attach your web page to a database, which customizes the page's output to a database you can change as many times in a day as you need. No printed piece can match that flexibility.   

To Allow Feedback from Customers    

You pass out the brochure, the catalog, and the booklet. But it doesn't work. No sales, no calls, no leads. What went wrong? Wrong color, wrong price, and wrong market? Keep testing, the marketing books say, and you'll eventually find out what went wrong. That's great for the big boys with deep pockets, but who is paying the bills? You are and you don't have the time or the money to wait for the answer.    

With a Web page, you can ask for feedback and get it instantaneously with no extra cost. An instant e-mail response can be built into Web pages and can get the answer while its fresh in your customer's mind, without the cost and lack of response of business reply mail.   

To Test Market New Services and Products    

Tied into the reason on above, we all know the cost of rolling out a new product. Advertising, advertising, advertising, PR and advertising. Expensive, expensive, expensive.    

Once you have been on the Web and know what to expect from those who are seeing your page, they are the least expensive market for you to reach.    

They will also let you know what they think of your product faster, easier and much less expensively than any other market you may reach. For the cost of a page or two of Web programming, you can have a crystal ball into where to position your product or service in the marketplace. Amazing.   

To Reach The Media     

Every kind of business needs the exposure that the media can bring, as we touched on in reason #5 "To Heighten Public Interest", but what if your business is reaching the media, as a newswire, a publicist or a public policy group.    

The media is the most wired profession today, since their main product is information and they can get it more quickly, cheaply and easily on-line.    

On-line press kits are becoming more and more common, since they work with the digital environment of more and more pressrooms.    

Digital images can be put in place without the stripping and shooting of the old pressrooms and digital text can be edited and outputted on tight deadlines.    

All these can be made available on a Web page.    

To Reach The Education and Youth Market    

If your market is education, consider that most universities abroad and few like IIT, Ramrao Adik in New Mumbai, etc. already offer Internet access to their students and the one's who most don't will be on the Internet within the next few years.   

Books, athletic shoes, study courses, youth fashion and anything else that would want to reach these overlapping markets needs to be on the Web.    

Even with the coming of the commercial on-line services and their somewhat older populations there will be nothing but growth in the percentage of the under 25 market that will be on-line.    

For a detailed study of how an Indian educational school conducts itself on the WWW, visit the Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology at www.patil.com   

To Reach The Specialized Market    

Sell fish tanks, art reproductions, flying lessons? You may think that the Internet is not a good place to be. Well, think again. The Internet isn't just computer science and IT professionals anymore.    

With the soon-to-be 45 million and growing users of the WWW, even the most narrowly defined interest group will be represented in large numbers.    

Since the Web has several very good search programs, your interest group will be able to find you, or your competitors.   

There are several India specific interest groups on the web. e.g. soc.culture.india.   

To Serve Your Local Market     

We've talked about the power to serve the world with a Web page. How about your neighborhood?    

If you are located in Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta or New York, there is probably enough rich and famous local customers with Web access to make it worth your while to consider Web marketing.    

Web marketing is soon becoming a revolution in itself. A Palo Alto, California restaurant even takes lunch orders through the Internet! You may or may not do the same, but no matter where you are, if the big client has Web access, you should be there too. It will help your image and your sales.