Few days back, I came across an article published in YourStory.in (it's a website which focuses on entrepreneurial success stories). The title of the article was - "Is India ready for Digital Entrepreneurs?".
The author himself being an digital entrepreneur argues that,
"Unless people and culture change, innovating would be like making a comb for a bald person. But yes, there is a hope. The hope that the emerging digital revolution might just be able to create and expose the variety in today’s society."
He goes on to talk about the needed change in Indian media, but downplays the role of digital entrepreneurs in bringing that change. Rising Indian blogosphere and non-traditional means of news reporting is a step towards that direction.
He was being very pessimistic (not a bit but very!). First of all the biggest mistake, he was making, is that he is looking India from the US's point of view!
India and US are two different markets, with totally different needs and wants of their people. Of course there some diffusion of innovation from US to India and visa-versa, but even the applications of these innovations is contextualized.
This contextualization is very important here. And may be because of this lack of contextualization that many of the Indians digital entrepreneurs are still finding it tough to sell their solutions!
The key wisdom is that, don't design something that people don't want or don't need (need may be what they don't perceive yet but want in future if they recognize it!).
But if one does not pay attention to it and ends up designing something, simply because it's successful in western markets, then he is bound to design something which is like making a comb for a bald person!
There are some beautiful examples like Flipkart (Copied amazon but contextulized), Redbus (fully contextulized!) and many more...
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