“IDC Value Web” hints at glut in the Consumer Web 2.0 space

DQC News Bureau

Gurgaon/New Delhi: The Web 2.0 market in India is abuzz with start-up
activity, even as global biggies continue to dominate the market. Global sites
like Orkut, Wikipedia and others have a more dominant base and fan following in
India as compared to their homegrown competitors. Homegrown sites such as
Minglebox, Fropper, SirfDosti and Bigadda are doing well, but are yet to achieve
a threshold that would make them comparable with their global counterparts. The
situation may change going forward, if these players are able to find ways of
satiating local needs in ways that global sites may not be geared to address.

Excluding the established, large global players like Orkut, YouTube, Flickr,
Wikipedia et al, IDC estimates that Web 2.0 start-ups have a combined user base
in India of around 15 lakh users, after eliminating overlaps.

The IDC Value Web Matrix developed for the study revealed that out of around
70 Web 2.0 companies, more than 55 have a consumer focus, while a select 12 show
varying degrees of enterprise focus. Websites like Zoho, Cynapse, Techtribe and
Uhuroo are among the few sites that have a considerable degree of enterprise or
business focus.

Commenting on the study, Kapil Dev Singh, Country Manager, IDC India said,
“A high degree of entrepreneurial activity has been instrumental in shaping
the current Web 2.0 scenario in India so far. The trend is likely to continue in
2008 and a "me-too" driven mushrooming up will ready the ground for a
phase of shakeouts and consolidation, as some of the ventures would begin to
lose steam. This phase is expected to set in around late 2008 or early 2009. At
the same time, 2008 will also see the entry of some large Web 1.0 players in the
fray, which will help expand and grow the market.”

“Much of the current Web 2.0 activity in India is centered around a few
areas like social networking, blogging, and photo and video sharing. The
momentum towards richer, higher-value media and platforms is in the stage of a
build-up and it will be around two more years for a significant impact to show
up”, added Deepak Kumar, Head, Communications Research Practice, IDC India.

The IDC Value Web

The IDC Value Web is an IDC India proprietary matrix for evaluating the focus
of homegrown or

India-focused Web 2.0 start-up ventures across various industry vertical and
horizontal segments. The model focuses on assigning weightages based on the
depth of the feature sets offered by these start-ups.

Definition of Web 2.0: Web 2.0 is essentially a stage of the World Wide Web's
evolution, where marketers, with the help of users themselves, create products
or content to meet a long tail of existing/latent needs. This is opposed to the
Web 1.0 paradigm where the attempt is to create demand around products. Examples
of categories of Web 2.0 web sites are Social Networking Sites, Social
Bookmarking, Wikis, Web Office Productivity sites, Data and media sharing sites,
Folksonomies and Mashups.