Google Really, Really Wants To Bring India's Small Businesses Online (buzzfeed.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Millions more Indians are now coming online, but India's small businesses -- including everything from decades-old mom and pop stores to neighborhood bakeries -- are lagging behind. Google wants to change that. At an event in New Delhi today, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced a brand new program called Digital Unlocked aimed at helping India's 51 million small and medium businesses establish an online presence. Over the next three years, Google will hold 5,000 daylong classes in 40 Indian cities to teach business owners everything from the basics -- getting their business listed on Google Maps, for instance -- to advanced courses like running an online advertising campaign and measuring analytics.

Comments

Fixed Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Really, Really Wants To Profit From India's Small Businesses Online

FTFY - Do not confuse philanthropy with business strategy, they are not the same.

Re:Fixed Headline

[TWX]

And don't forget that a lot, a lot of small businesses make more money than their respective tax agencies are told about. Under-the-table methods of buying and selling contribute a large part to the bottom lines of many small business owners, and those business owners are often not about to change that which would upset that applecart.

Re: Fixed Headline

[TWX]

In many ways I use the online presence of small businesses in the same way I used the yellow pages telephone directory, with the addendum that they usually have hours of operation, alternate hours for holidays, and a map to the location present. I generally still have to call to inquire if the business is a specialty supplier, and I have to go in person to do business even if it isn't. As you point out with restaurants it can be nice to have a menu, but I don't need "the experience" that so many restaurants attempt to foster on their website, I just need to know what they serve and when they're open.

Re:Lots of curry

[TWX]

I see you shiver with antici...

...

...

...pation!

Google - GeoCities?

[randomErr]

Later this year, Google will also launch a tool called My Business Websites, which will allow any small business to easily create and manage its own mobile-friendly website using nothing more than a smartphone in up to nine Indian languages.

It sounds like Google is just putting out an enhanced version of their Google Sites based on location. You pick a template and fill in a form with your information. Google then consumes it and automatically indexes your site.

Also instead of putting on these classes couldn't they just do YouTube videos and their version of the Dummies Guide to Google?

Should not be surprising

[WindBourne]

Pichai has been killing off all of the advanced stuff at Google that made them into giants and is now moving various groups to India, in hopes of helping his nation. Basically, he is doing to Google, what most Indian CEOs/CIOs do which is move all work back to their nation regardless of the long term consequences to the company.

Re:Google Maps?

[tepples]

For-profit businesses want to reach customers. If a business's prospective customers predominantly use one mapping platform and a vocal minority of freedom fanatics use another, the business is likely to concentrate on the mapping platform that brings in the most customers. In order to make OpenStreetMap viable, freedom fanatics may have to find businesses themselves and ask staff why the business's listing is inaccurate or missing.

And if you really wanna be a madarchod

[tepples]

4a. Run technical "support" hotlines where technicians pretend the tree command is a "wirus" scan, misinterpret Windows event logs as evidence of malware on the user's "dextop", misinterpret services that don't need to run right now as services disabled by malware, charge $500 for a 3-year PC maintenance plan, and threaten to lock the victim out of his own computer with SAM Lock Tool (syskey.exe) if he doesn't buy.

Source: YouTube channels Each & Everything, Thunder Tech, and Lewis's Tech

Re:Small business ideas for India

[fiannaFailMan]

I hope nobody mods up the usual unfunny racist bullshit about curry.

Tax evasion hampers such innovation

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Tax evasion is rampant in India. Underinvoicing, false invoicing, maintaining inventory and sales off-the-record etc are very common. Even well established publicly traded companies do it. My uncle was the dealer/distributor for United Breweries for a district. The brewery would invoice "seconds" "damaged" goods at low price, affix easily removable stickers on the crates and ship them to him. The understanding is, he would remove the stickers, sell the liquor at full price, grease the palms of police, excise tax collectors etc and send back the rest in cash in suitcases. (The owner is a tax fugitive now hiding in UK). Small and medium businesses like his have so many such secondary deals going on, paying off protection money to the politicians, paying off the excise tax collectors...

It is so rampant last quarter of 2016 the government demonetized 500 rupee and 1000 rupee currency notes. That is, all those notes were deemed not legal tender unless you can prove the source and deposit it in the bank.

Real estate and gold are other places full of shady business accounting practices and black money havens. Given that reality, it would be difficult to persuade people like my uncle to switch to a fully accountable, traceable, transparent business system. Unless they can be assured they can dodge taxes, they won't touch it.

Lest I give a too gloomy picture... Things are improving. The general public, despite all the inconveniences are fully supportive of the demonetizing of notes. The value of black money is discounted on the street. At some point the discounted value of black money in the street would become lower than the value of white money after paying taxes. At that point, honest businesses will enjoy so many benefits of smoother processing and efficiency etc, the economy will turn around and eschew off-the-book-transactions. Till that date comes, such initiatives by companies like google streamlining business ops will find it difficult to get traction.

Re: Small business ideas for India

[Anonymous Coward]

I lived in an apartment building with a bunch of Indians once. It fucking sucked. It stunk so bad all the god damn time. Between smelling like curry, spices and human body odor, it was unbearable. I moved after my lease was up, when asked why, I told them the truth. Because living around a bunch of Indians(6 of them in a 2 bedroom apartment, all adults) sucked.

Right market for Google

[unixisc]

Given that Android is even more dominant in India than it is in the US, Google is targeting the right market. Small businesses are less likely to own computers, but more likely to own phones - be it Galaxies, Micromaxes, Karbonns et al. So if they come up w/ suites of mobile business packages that they can use, they'd be off to the races. Specially given that they seem to support at least a minimal amount of support for Indian languages like Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, et al

Apple is hardly present in India and unlikely to grow, and Microsoft has pulled the plug on Lumias and PCs ain't selling much there. Looks like the perfect storm for Pillai's company

Google Really, Really Wants To Bring cheap labor

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Really, Really Wants To Bring cheap labor Online

If this was about small businesses, Google would be doing the same for USA small businesses. But Google is out of touch, and thinks ONLY overseas is the only place, especially third world countries, that are worthy.