Life is getting more and more tumultuous. People seem to be converging in their behaviour and likings but at the same time seem to be discovering their own hyperlocal behavioural patterns. With the evolution and proliferation of technology, with tech creeping into every sun-laden crevice, more and more people are crawling out of their chinks out into the open, onto the web, like cockroaches crawling out and getting stuck into a spiders web.
More and more Indians are getting onto the internet. From rural folk to urban grandparents, there is a rise in the daily active users across every vertical as more Indians discover the internet and its uses. India had 1.2 billion mobile subscribers in 2021, of which about 750 million were smartphone users. It is forecasted to have 1 billion smartphone users by 2026, the growth primarily driven by rural users (acc. to this Delloite Study). For context, that is around double the sum of the populations of USA and Russia, as in 2022. The urban demand and the rural demand are expected to grow at 2.5 and 6% CAGR from 21-26. So the increase in the number of smartphone users in the next 5 years is equivalent to getting the entire 2022 population of USA onboarded! Imagine that.
However, an aspect that we should try to understand is the type of people that are being onboarded. Where is the growth being seen and what sort of behaviour does this new population have? Where do they come from ? And why are they coming now?
This crawling out has led to the idea of Bharat and India. Both of these actually referring to my homeland, but having very different contexts in terms of the type of people they represent or rather type of economy they represent in the startup world. The stratification of the Indian consumer has given way to a beautiful dichotomy getting created which has opened up a sea of opportunities for the wolves of the country.
As more and more varied expectations and experiences are created, as the challenges people face and document become more and more hyperlocal, it’s becoming important for most companies to make their products, messanging, and dialogue inclusive.
Inclusivity, importantly, can be looked at from two different views.
The first is to make whatever you create straight-up inclusive. Whatever messaging, idea one is spreading should be inclusive and considerate of all groups of people and strata of society. The messages or content should be respectful, dignified, and unhurtful in this modern world of constant fragility and warring interests.
On the other hand, is the idea of inclusivity through exclusivity. It might be impossible to make everyone feel inclusive with the same branding, tagging, dialogue, language, etc. What if we make everyone feel that they are welcome by creating disparate equal spaces for their community and them to reside in? So you create different messages, branding, and content for different silos of people. You tailor the strategy acc. to the group you are trying to reach. Why use the same messaging or space when you can use multiple spaces and separate people to appease them more. Let an old granny get a ‘Happy Diwali’ post with a family in the background while a youngster sees same post with friends in the background. This strategy would potentially help everyone be more respectful of cultures, communities, spaces, and choices. Without generalising and hoping that your messaging works out for everyone, there might be much more merit in creating a custom solution for everyone (obviously this has its drawbacks, as does any other thing at this point in time).
Being Hyperlocal is what I am looking forward to as we go ahead. Being extremely adaptive to each and every community’s needs and actually helping them onboard in a culture/people specific way is what I am rooting for.
With the advances in AI, this becomes a very interesting and important debate. AI is helping us personalize and create specific tailor made solutions for everyone. But, till when do we keep doing this? When do we stop it and say it’s enough customisation? When do we draw a line and start seeing that people are becoming increasingly sensitive because of hyperlocal content and information and that we, as a world have become ever so unstable?