A few days ago, Stuart asked, What’s your India Strategy? Really good question! The Indian Government estimates 500 million mobile users by 2010. Imagine 500 million cell phone users, each one with a story to tell!
Rickshaw puller.
Lattoo may be a relatively poor 35-year-old mason living in a New Delhi slum, but he still typifies the reason why India’s mobile phone market is the world’s fastest growing. He spends about Rs20 per day on topping up the mobile phone he acquired two months ago to keep in touch with his mother in a village in Central India. “My uncle in the village has a phone too. So my mother doesn’t have to go far to make a long-distance call,” says Lattoo, who earns Rs6,000 per month. That may not seem much to many people, but it still means Lattoo, who goes by one name, represents the new cellphone user in India: lower middle class, self-employed and urban.
Chauffeur Ashok Gautam, 22, spends less than Rs160 per month to remain connected. He says he can afford that on his monthly salary of Rs5,000. “Thanks to this phone, I don’t have to wait for hours in the car for Madam (his boss). Now, I feel free,” he said.
Autorickshaw driver Kishan Lal said his son bought him a handset a few years ago. “Life is easier with this phone and there’s no tension, I can get in touch with people when I need to,” he said.
India’s legion of self-employed, which comprises half the workforce, has benefited the most. Maids, cooks, autorickshaw drivers and construction workers have bought mobile phones even on incomes as low as Rs4,000 per month.
“It’s no longer a status symbol. It is increasingly becoming a necessity like water and electricity,” Singhal said. Now when a carpenter sticks up advertisements at a local grocery to find business, “he has a mobile office”, where people can call him, he said.
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