The internet landscape in India has been heating up over the last 4-5 years. While a lot of venture capital money has been chasing deals lately, there are very few quality startups in the horizon. Sectors like matrimony, travel and social networking have seen the emergence of a quite a few strong contenders but there are a lot of niches still open to be exploited.
City Guides and Blogs
Chaos reigns supreme in Indian metros. With exponentially increasing population and unorganized growth in Indian cities, navigation has never been more difficult. Enter players like Justdial, OnYoMo and Burrp. While On-YoMo is still very young, Justdial has already spread to 200+ cities. This is an emerging trend and I suspect this sector has a lot of potential for niche offerings like Burrp.
Sales Leads
Lets look at the business of generating sales leads. Now in US a lot of niche players like InfoUSA, Hoovers, One-Source, InsideView and D&B operate in this segment. D&B has been in India since 1995 but I could not find any other major player in this field. This segment surely looks ripe to be picked up right away.
Education
All of us are aware of the poor standards of education ailing the plethora of ill equipped engineering schools in India. The rapid penetration of internet in India today, presents unprecedented opportunities for providing
enabling technologies to improve standards of education at a very low cost. Solutions can be as simple as organizing the best information available in a easily navigable structure or they can be as complex as designing of the next Google for educational sector. Indian market is filled with opportunities galore. All that I have mentioned above should be considered as a small sample of the tremendous possibilities. All it takes to succeed is a will to undertake risk and a keen eye to identify opportunities.
-Amritayan Nayak
