• What is the demand for RFID in India?
• Is India really a market for India?
• Do Indian companies really buy new technologies like RFID?
• Arent the Indian companies followers?
• Will Indian companies really pay for technologies like RFID?

These are few of the questions I am always asked. I always appreciate the questions for they have more of concern than curiousity. People are concerned with our plan to operate in Indian market for a new and high tech like RFID. I keep answering them not as an 'RFID Evangelist' which is one of my titles. I choose to answer from a business's point of view or to be precise,  Perspecte's point of view.

So what is the answer? I can only say with a qualifier 'In our opinion'. And I am not responsible if my opinion is completely different from what you were expecting to here/read. Read on.

To start with, I do agree that all these questions are not just based on individual's perceptions. The perceptions are shaped by some simple economical and empirical reasonings. Some of them are,

1. Indian market and Indian companies are of smaller sizes compared to US or European corporations
2. Indian companies traditionally lag behind in technology adoption
3. India is a man power dependant country and we always felt manpower is cheaper than technology
4. Indian companies were operating in their own ways
5. The cost of RFID is very high for India

But here's our take on the same reasonings and I would like to hear more such questions to challenge our optimistic views.

1. Indian market and Indian companies are not going to remain smaller for long time. We can see the growth already happening
2. True that we lag behind in technology adoption. But can we remain so for long? Arent we seeing as much as the technologies as our friends in any other countries seeing in their lives. Businesses are not any different.
3. Check with anybody who is handling the responsibility to find people for his unit/businesss. He will tell you a different story
4. Makes a compelling value proposition for a local player like us
5. If it is high, it is high for any company in the world. Nobody throws out money on anything without ROI.

Having said that, we do see a very important difference which determines our Indian companies' attitude towards RFID. Indian companies are not used to running corporate sponsored initiatives to examine the technology trends. They are all more hapazardous attempts. They lack a vision. So in India, we see 10 times more executives from every company exploring RFID. Most of them will be doing without any top management support. India generates more enquiries than many other countries. India buys almost nill.

We have made two strategic adjustments in our game plan.

1. If the opportunity is a long term one and needs few rounds of adoption, we seek the top management intervention.
2. We go aggressively after the opportunities which are already ROI positive. A bird in the hand is worth the two in the bush.  

I will continue to write more on Indian market as there are multiple aspects to it. And I can tell you one thing for sure. They are all very interesting.