Riding the K-Wave <> Inside India's great digital reset <> Customers for life (the LTV moment) <> 12 unicorns <> Gandhi loses his cool
Over the last few weeks whenever I am taking a photograph of her, my 11-year old has taken to holding up her fingers as if she is about to snap. After a couple of times, I asked her what on earth was she doing. ‘That’s the BTS sign, dad’. What? ‘It’s a K-Pop group, they do that with their fingers whenever they are being photographed.’ Okay. She adds a total unnecessary ‘you won’t get them’ as she walks away.
This morning I see this headline in the Mint Lounge, ‘Riding the K-Wave’, and I am wondering why on earth is the Lounge writing about economic recovery. Which the Mint has written about earlier. Then I start reading. Today’s piece is about Hallyu, a Chinese word literally translating as a “Korean Wave”. A tsunami of cultural products from South Korea is sweeping the world. It’s a fascinating account of how Korean businessmen are riding this wave in India.
Interestingly, while business is not overtly a part of Hallyu, it is inextricably linked with promoting Korean business interests overseas. The business community of the 10th biggest economy in the world (nominal GDP rank as per the International Monetary Fund’s 2020 estimates) is very aware of the social and economic impact of its pop culture and eager to cash in on it—with the government’s blessings; in fact, some scholars have called Hallyu a “government construct” and “a phenomenon of cultural production” in the book The Korean Wave: Korean Popular Culture In Global Context, a collection of essays edited by Yasue Kuwahara, a scholar of communication theory at Northern Kentucky University, US, and published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2014.
Korea has figured that as a nation’s culture gains popularity, it allows for businesses and brands to follow. And they have been building to this moment patiently, hatching a thousand chicks.
“There is a saying in Korean—that to make a phoenix you have to first hatch 1,000 chickens,” says Junghee Hahn, director general of the Chennai-based Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (Kotra).
Haresh Chawla is a thinker to follow. He writes about the great digital reset that has created the great divide between the digital and the dying. He writes about how the massive internet consumer base is now gaining depth and is beginning to spend. And how he believes C K Prahlad’s prediction of the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid is no longer a mirage.
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
For a few years I’ve been saying that India needs multiple internets—in regional languages and designed for the “not so savvy”, first-time smartphone users. (Fact: Over 90% of our online video consumption is non-English.) With Covid-19, the market has arrived before the apps have.
CK Prahalad’s prophetic 2002 work on how the poorest can be served profitably is now coming true. They are now connected and can be served with the same tools and technology as the nerd in Indiranagar.
This thought provoking piece is a must-read.
This MediaPost article brings the news that LTV (Lifetime Value) is now the top metric to track for e-commerce players. Which, in my opinion, should always have been the case. Chasing ridiculous acquisition numbers at any cost just doesn’t build a healthy business. The math is easy to do. When we focus on LTV, acquiring and retaining become equally important. If I can put my neck out, the latter has been treated as a step-child for ever. All the glamour is with the teams bringing in the customers, that is what is highlighted in CEO dashboards. Wise marketers and wiser CEOs know that the real value is been created in the retention/churn department somewhere in the back of the building.
I had written about elsewhere how subscription marketing is like watching a monkey climb a greased pole. Read, it explains the math :)
Nasscom reports that 12 unicorns were born in India in 2020. What I found interesting is more than half were business to business (B2B) companies. From the Mint article:
In 2020, 12 startups joined the coveted unicorn club, the highest ever in a year, with 58% of them being B2B tech startups, including Razorpay, PineLabs, Zerodha and Postman. At $16 billion, Paytm is India’s most valuable unicorn, followed by edtech startup Byju’s.
I am sure you are feeling very smug that you know what an unicorn in business is. What about a decacorn and a hectacorn? No, it’s not about the number of horns. Answer from Wiki.
You heard about Gandhi losing his cool and setting off nuclear missiles at entire civilizations? No? Read:
Have a peaceful weekend.
Suprio