ALOK MITTAL from Canaan Partners on ‘Investment Themes on the Internet’ at Web Innovation 2009

Posted by Deepanwita Chatterjee

at April 29, 2009

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Alok Mittal from Canaan Partners is speaking on ‘Investment Themes on the Internet’ at Web Innovation 2009, and I am LIVE Blogging the event, its always a pleasure listening to Alok!

‘Trust in God but keep your mobiles and laptops with you’,

Kiruba made the session very lively by announcing the break this way…Post break Alok Mittal from Canaan Partners and Ritesh Baglani from IDG Ventures India, two very well known Venture capitalists have been invited onstage, to lead the charge for the session post tea which is about Investment Themes on the Internet. Alok starts the session by introducing the 3 Canaan Investment Focus

Consumer Internet
Mobile
Enterprise and Managed Service

Alok starts off by mentioning that internet penetration is increasing and is going beyond the metros. Internet usage is going beyond communication and applications on the internet are coming up. Job, travel, matrimony, gaming are just some of the areas which have been demonstrated. Speaking on other avenues, Alok shares his insights on some of the areas where there is scope for innovation and for new companies to come up.

Search portal, is dominated by global players but there are a couple of local startups, but they have to bring a lot of innovation for it to stand out.
E-Commerce is an area which is underdeveloped. There are challenges like payment and logistics, but this market has to take off in the next 3-5 years eg. Fabmall
Travel which was a nascent space a few years back has developed and winners are standing out. The market is large so there are scope for innovations and possibilities for companies to stand out. Some big players Makemy trip.com,yatra.com
Online financial services are another area which has huge scope.
Advertising is growing slowly in India, not sure
Video and social media sites are growing in terms of usage but not so fast in terms of monetization.
Education is an interesting space for entrepreneurs to look at as there are no big players.

Interestingly Alok now shares on the various Opportunities which are present and whats’ different about India?! Sharing pointers with the audience, Alok gives the following points:

Mobile penetration is far higher than internet penetration
Internet growth coincides with the consumption growth
Demographic curve is tilted towards young population
Cheap labour costs
Deregulation

So, here is an interesting point which Alok makes:

in India the biggest job search company and biggest travel agency is online while they are offline companies in the US context

Putting forth an example of Chapak.com which deals in the entertainment area, Alok sufficiates his point. Entertainment in India means Bollywood and cricket where local players are leveraged better than global players. Chakpak dabbles in both the areas. The session is now in the Q&A mode: Q. You mentioned chakpak.com as one of the portals which focus on entertainment in India. How do they monetize it? Alok - It is at a very early stage and is larger than any other bollywood portal. There are some areas which they are exploring like movie market, movie merchandising and music sales and which of these will take off is still hazy. Since Chakpak is an early adopters so they have a lead when it comes to monetizing. We are now moving to the next session.