It’s a Friday and D. Shivakumar, former India head for phone maker Nokia and Senior VP, IMEA markets, Nokia, has two more days to go in the company. It’s a busy day as he makes a market visit and also speaks to the staff of a large cell phone retailer in Chennai followed by a lunch with the distributors. Later in the day, he’s one of the main speakers at the MMAever on Managerial Excellence.

eWorld had a dialogue with Shiv, as he’s popularly known, on the eight years he’s spent with Nokia. He’s loathe to dwell at length on his exit from Nokia at a time when the cell phone maker is going through troubled times, saying enough has been written about it. It’s time to reinvigorate and rejuvenate himself, he says, without disclosing what he plans on doing next.

In a conversation, Shiv talks about a few key strands that have defined the past decade which saw a revolution in mobile phone connectivity. One impact, it has had, he says, has been on the country’s GDP; secondly, it has become a virtual tool for use for many. Thirdly, he elaborates on how India can gain because of a strong digital infrastructure and lastly, on how the whole world is tuning into apps.

The GDP effect

In 2006, India had only 80 million subscribers of cell phones. Today, India has 800 million subscribers or more. “Now we know for a fact that for every 10 per cent growth in penetration of mobile phones you get anything from one to one-and-a-half per cent growth in GDP. We have seen this in every single economy. So if you actually look at 2005 to 2010, as India went from about 10 per cent penetration to 70 per cent penetration in mobiles, you know a sixth of the GDP growth was accounted for by telecom,” he explains.

Now that this growth has plateaued, and a replacement cycle is coming, “that’s why at one level the GDP growth has also been hit.” Thanks to the mobile phone, in the past decade, a lot of people who were in the informal economy got into the formal economy. From artisans, to painters, carpenters, tailors, cooks et al got into the formal economy with more access to the market than they had before.

In the past few years, the phone has emerged as more than a voice device. “Voice, text, and that Indian innovation, the missed call, and then email. These were the four big things which drove mobile usage, he explains. “Now with big screens, what we are seeing is the fundamental shift towards entertainment. People are virtually living their lives on the mobile. It’s truly an integral part of life. For example, there’s this US study which says if you lose your credit card, it takes you about 18 hours to 24 hours to recognise that you have lost your credit card or misplaced it. It takes just 10 to 20 minutes for people to register that they have misplaced their phone!”

Shiv draws a parallel for the mobile in the hands of teenagers today to a paradigm shift that happened during the First World War. When wars were fought in those times, the simple philosophy was you started at sunrise, fought through the day and closed at sunset. And, the soldiers didn’t really do know what was happening to each other or know how they were doing. “All that changed with two fundamental innovations. One was the radio and the other was the wrist watch. In the early days of wrist watches, it was nurses who wore them, to monitor the pulse. When the waist coat went out of fashion so did pocket watches and the wrist watch became de rigueur. And in the war, thanks to radio and the wrist watch, you could mobilise your resources and troops to a designated spot at a designated time. It had a fundamental impact,” Shiv elaborates, drawing a parallel with the youth today.

The mobile phone in the hand of youth is as powerful as a radio and watch was in the hands of the soldier. At a fundamental level it has increased the hierarchy of influential power. Second, it has given them a lot of access thanks to social networking while being on the move and connected to all. It has also made youth very good at multitasking. They can do four things at one time thanks to technology.

In 2013, Shiv says, there will be two big developments. One is a billion smart devices will be sold. And, second the mobile internet will be bigger than the fixed internet globally.

The youth don’t take anything for granted without checking it on the search engine. “It’s a fundamental change and very few people have read or thought about it deeply,” he adds.

The impact on marketers is profound. In a future world, marketers will have to think like the consumers, the users, talking about their brand, building their social and brand capital. “This is because, to the youth the voice of their friend matters more than the voice of television or the voice of the brand,” he adds.

The third fundamental change is about creating a completely digital infrastructure society. Thanks to mobile phones and digital technologies one knows boundaries are mere lines on a map now. “The impact it has is that every business will have a mobile business model and an internet mobile business model.”

The peer-to-peer transaction has dramatically increased. Earlier it was peer to broker to

somebody else. Now, the role of the middleman will get redefined, he will no longer be a source. “He has to do something more to earn his living. He has to become an expert,” adds Shiv.

The most important thing about digital is you have to earn your trust every day. “If one Red Bus ticketing failed to get somebody a seat, you are dead. Because, now that person will talk to a 1,000 people. So you do not have a chance to fail your consumer on a daily basis. Your trust is earned or lost in a digital world on a daily basis,” he explains. India is at a stage where both its physical and digital infrastructure are roughly being built alongside.

‘App’ full world

Soon, for everything, we will have an app. Apps have virtually condensed the information capsule. If you want something you know you will just take that app, says Shiv. There are millions and millions of apps but the key thing is people use the top 10 or 20 apps most of the time. “What’s important is when you develop an app, you need to keep the consumer in mind. The biggest apps invariably tend to be social apps. It’s in a sense entertainment as well as about connecting person to person virtually. And I think more will happen.”

The challenge to that, of course, will always be there, he emphasises. One of that could be electronic relationships overtaking face to face relationships. “So what does it do to human interaction itself is a bigger question one needs to ask,” he says.

vinay.kamath@thehindu.co.in

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