My Future Competitors

By Ramesh Akkineni
here are some excerpts from an article by YLR Moorthi in WSJ

Try this. Who is the biggest in music business in India? You think it is HMV Sa-Re-Ga-Ma? Sorry. The answer is Airtel. By selling caller tunes (that play for 30 seconds) Airtel makes more than what music companies make by selling music albums (that run for hours).

Incidentally Airtel is not in music business. It is the mobile service provider with the largest subscriber base in India. That sort of competitor is difficult to detect, even more difficult to beat (by the time you have identified him he has already gone past you).

The "Mahabharat" (the great Indian epic battle) is about "what is tomorrow's personal digital device"? Will it be a souped up mobile or a palmtop with a telephone? All these are little wars that add up to that big battle. Hiding behind all these wars is a gem of a question – "who is my competitor?"

Look at the products that vanished from India in the last 20 years. When did you last see a black and white movie? When did you last use a fountain pen? When did you last type on a typewriter? The answer for all the above is "I don't remember!" For some time there was a mild substitute for the typewriter called electronic typewriter that had limited memory. Then came the computer and mowed them all. Today most technologically challenged guys like me use the computer as an upgraded typewriter. Typewriters per se are nowhere to be seen.

One last illustration. 20 years back what were Indians using to wake them up in the morning? The answer is "alarm clock." The alarm clock was a monster made of mechanical springs. It had to be physically keyed every day to keep it running. It made so much noise by way of alarm, that it woke you up and the rest of the colony. Then came quartz clocks which were sleeker. They were much more gentle though still quaintly called "alarms." What do we use today for waking up in the morning? Cellphone! An entire industry of clocks disappeared without warning thanks to cell phones. Big watch companies like Titan were the losers. You never know in which bush your competitor is hiding!

The Idea of keeping an eye on my 'would be' future competitors is very good as is any Idea of avoiding future troubles. Idea of constantly updating and replacing my own products is related. But the quote "Have Breakfast .. or .. Be Breakfast" suggests that one can plan for replacing existing leaders in markets and succeed. In most of the examples suggested in the article the new comer replaced the incumbent unintentionally. The new comer was a leader in his unrelated market and when his market merged with the incumbent's market then he proceeded to crush the incumbent with his advantages given by technology. So in most of the cases one can't try to 'have breakfast' by planning and attacking another market. But one can avoid 'becoming breakfast' to some one else by being awake and watchful of dangers from new technology. If needed the incumbent should abandon a sinking ship and jump on the new technology which now replaced his old products. So the most appropriate quote that reflects reality in my view will be "Be Awake or Be Eaten Alive"

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