India’s population differs significantly from the population of an advanced industrialised country like, say, the US. Solutions that work for the US population, will work only for those Indians who are on average as rich as average Americans. But for the rest of the population in emerging markets, different solutions apply.

The opportunity for developing innovative solutions specifically for the emerging market is phenomenal. Consider the sheer size of the population which is mobile-phone enabled: there are 250 million or so mobile phone subscribers in India, and the number is growing at around seven million a month. Most of the new users will not be those who can afford the luxury of pure information, but will be those who need actionable information.

The taxi driver needs to know where his next fare is, the plumber where the leaky faucet is, the corner grocery store which household needs supplies and where. We all have goods and services that we need to sell or buy from the neighbourhood. The cell phone is the perfect device which will create a mobile marketplace where millions of trades can be enabled for economic efficiency.

Markets aside, the change that the mobile phone compels lies in how it changes the power structure in favour of the people, whether in a democracy or a dictatorship. It enables a marketplace for ideas. The mobile revolution is not just a good idea, it is inevitable.

The writer is a Mumbai-based economist

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