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U.S Tech Giants & their Indian Counterparts

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U.S Tech Giants & their Indian Counterparts

  December 19, 2019
 

In the United States, the media religiously covers American businesses, partially because of national favor and partially because of the sheer economic size of established U.S. tech giants. Not to be outdone, India has quickly mobilized its workforce to compete with these tech giants who are working their way into India. They’ve steadily accomplished their goal with impressive results, such as the number of households with a disposable income of more than $10,000 has leaped from around 2.5 million in 1990 to nearly 50 million in 2015. Thanks to this massive growth, India has developed its own tech giants who are quickly rivaling U.S. firms. [1]

Ola vs. Uber

These two giants have been battling head-to-head for years now. Both companies have been battling in the court trenches with Ola fighting accusations of creating false accounts and canceling them on their drivers. Uber itself is currently facing massive harassment charges which caused the CEO to exit the company ungracefully. Let’s start with Uber, which recently posted a $6.5 billion net revenue for 2016. They currently have over 40 million monthly active users and are operating in 450 cities. They also posted 160,000 Uber drivers and have close to 87% of the ride-hailing market. Ola for itself is currently in 102 cities and has nearly 70% of the Indian market. They’ve posted impressive stats of 450,000 drivers with 5.9 million monthly active users. Ola says they generated $4.21 billion in revenue in 2015.

 Flipkart vs. Amazon

It’s the battle of e-commerce, and there are only two horses in the race for first. Each is posting mind-blowing numbers, and each is looking to outdo one another. Let’s begin with Flipkart, which is currently in rumors of merging with Snapdeal, and is positioned to move Amazon India out of their home market. Flipkart has 100 million registered users and currently controls roughly 43% of the Indian e-commerce market. They recently said they have 100,000 sellers and are doing roughly 8 million shipments monthly. Flipkart is valued at $11.6 billion and it is unknown what its revenues are currently.

On the other side is Amazon who is tough to beat. They currently have 304 million registered users, or roughly the entire population of the United States, and control 43% of the online retail sales in the U.S. Amazon had $136 Billion in 2016 net sales with $857 million in profit. Here’s something which will make every Amazon investor smile: In 2016, Amazon made just over ⅓ of total sales for Black Friday. In other words, Amazon is in a league of its own for e-commerce companies.

Paytm vs. PayPal

The mobile payment giants are next in line as these two firms face off to attract users into their sphere. PayPal was founded in 1998 in the U.S by the infamous “PayPal Mafia” which included the likes of Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, etc. Paytm was founded in 2010 and has grown at lightning-quick pace compared to PayPal, which is mainly due to the boom in spending India is currently going through, and the ability to raise capital so quickly. Let’s look at the statistics. We’ll start with Paythm, which currently has over 200 million registered users, 80 million of which are active monthly sending transactions. They’re accepted by 850,000 offline merchants, not to mention the additional million-plus online merchants who use Paytm.

They posted 1 billion in transactions just last year, and account for 26% of all digital transactions in India and, in the cut-throat field of online wallets, this is impressive, to say the least. PayPal on the other hand only has 169 million registered users, by has processed 4 billion in transactions in 2016. This is due to the overall wealth of the United States, and PayPal cannot complain because they had a net income of $384 million in 2016. Add to these numbers the fact that PayPal has 16 million merchant accounts and processes 18% of all e-commerce transactions.

Are you next?

These three technology giants are just the beginning of a long competition between the United States and India for tech supremacy. As the world becomes more globalized, from increased internet usage and improved communication, we’ll begin to see greater competition for market share. Luckily, each country has a savvy population who prefers to use their native companies, but only time will tell if this continues to stay the same.

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