India fastest growing SMB market for Google AdWords

Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in India are using the Internet as a medium to generate more qualified leads and sales, and Google AdWords claims to deliver that value to businesses with their search engine advertising platform.

Google AdWords delivers relevant advertisements when someone is looking for a product or service on Google Search--making the ad more useful and relevant. The business only pays when someone clicks on the ad.

"Facebook on the other hand is a display advertising solution and serves a different kind of marketing need," asserted Sandeep Menon, head of marketing at Google India.

According to Menon, Google has been witnessing triple digit growth in terms of advertising revenues from SMBs in India. In the last two years, Google India has raced ahead to become the fastest growing SMB market for Google globally.

"With an estimated 47 million SMEs (small and midsize enterprises) in the country--India is a strategic market for Google. We have made significant investments in localizing our market outreach to tap the various clusters of SMEs. In the last year alone, we have significantly ramped up the efforts to maximize our reach and educate the Indian SME on the benefits of online advertising."

Google India has been ramping up its efforts to educate SMEs about the power of digital advertising and evangelize the Google AdWords platform.

It has now 10 Premier SME Partners in India and is aiming to have a sales workforce of over 10,000 people through this program in next year. The Google Engage program now has over 3,000 partners spread across 165 cities in India. Also, Google India has set up dedicated call centers who provide local language support in six Indian languages to SMEs who want to get online and start their campaigns.

Advertisement for Google AdWords.

The advertising potential of Indian SMBs has interested Google for quite a while.

In the past, Google has taken steps to help SMBs in India to gain from the digital economy by helping them establish online presence for free through their "India Get Your Business Online" campaign. In the last year and a half, they've developed and published free websites for over 175,000 SMBs from over 8,000 Indian cities.

Obviously, this wasn't a CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) exercise but an organized program to bring physical or offline businesses to Web adding them to the pool of potential digital advertisers.

Kathana Jewelers, a hybrid store making jewelry buying a visually appealing and hassle free experience for their consumers, started using AdWords with a modest budget of INR 20,000 (US$370) per month in 2010 and now have raised it to over INR 100,000. The revenue scaled phenomenally and today, AdWords accounts for 100 percent of their advertising budget.

"AdWords worked great for our jewelry store and it was the best strategy that we invested in," said Aditya Gupta, director of marketing at Kathana Jewelers.

While Google AdWords face stiff competition from Facebook Marketing solutions for the digital budgets in Indian SMBs, the huge market would keep the two companies, and other players, satiated. For businesses, digital advertising is helping them to effectively gain customer base and impact the top line with enhanced revenues in the long run.

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Micromax and Karbonn power Indian smartphone market growth

India smartphone shipments hit a record high at 5.4 million unit shipments for Q4 2012, according to IDC Asia-Pacific Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker data.

The overall mobile phone market in India has reached approximately 218 million units in Calendar Year (CY) 2012, a 16 percent year-on-year growth from the previous year, according to the data released Wednesday. The growth was mostly driven by the burgeoning smartphone market in India which grew from close to 11 million units in CY 2011 to 16.3 million units in CY 2012, a considerable growth of about 48 percent.

Breaking the 5 million mark has largely been powered by the sub-INR 10,000 (US$200) price points and upgraded specifications like 4-inch plus screen sizes. "Local vendors ramped up shipments and aggressively launched new models to meet the growing consumer demand in the low-end smartphone market segment," said Manasi Yadav, senior market analyst in the client devices team at IDC India.

“Local vendors have remained dominant in sub-US$100 price band while they pose serious competition to the global vendors in the US$100-US$200 price band. These two segments emerged as the most vibrant and the fastest growing smartphone price band segments in the Indian market," added Manasi.

While Samsung remained the leader and pace-setter for the market, inspiring both international and domestic vendors to launch their own quadcore and 5-inch plus screensize models, Micromax gained through its aggressive ramp-up and an enhanced product portfolio. Sony and Nokia garnered a significant shipment share owing to its mid-tier range of smartphones doing quite well in the market.

Karbonn, the dark horse amongst local vendors, made it to the top 5 for the first time, thanks to the new range of attractively priced smartphones that were launched in last quarter.

In terms of revenue, while Samsung stayed the leader, Apple took the second spot after seeing a sudden surge due to the channel restructuring and the launch of iPhone 5 in 2012 Q4. With the newly appointed National distributors - Redington and Ingram Micro, Apple reached out to a consumer base bigger than ever before.

The mobile phone market in India is expected to continue its growth into 2013, driven by the stupendous growth of close to 70 percent in the smartphone market. While Android continued its dominance in 2012, increased pick up of other operating systems--such as iOS and Windows Phone 8 and the recent release of BlackBerry 10--is expected to spice things moving forward.

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