There’s always a first! Remember the old heavy, bulky, unwieldy NOKIA phone? Fast forward to 2022 when all of us today have our own smartphones. But had it not been for those Nokia sets in India, the concept of personal mobile phones would not have reached people, in every corner of the country and spawned the Micromax and Karbonn mobiles that eventually came into being and built the mobile phone manufacturing industry in India.
Likewise, there are several new industries being built by pioneers in our lifetime; let’s look at them—the OGs who took a leap of faith—and inspired young minds. Five pioneers who have paved the way for many others:
Flipkart And Ecommerce
Founded in October 2007, Flipkart is one of India’s leading E-commerce marketplaces and is headquartered in Bengaluru. Initially started as an online bookstore, it later went to sell gadgets, clothing, grocery among other things. Flipkart spawned multiple eCommerce ventures in India, some of which are- Myntra, Jabong, Nykaa, Book My Show, Snapdeal etc.
Jumboking And Fast Food
India’s largest homegrown QSR chain, Jumboking was founded on August 23, 2001 by Dheeraj Gupta. Since then, the brand has been an exemplary ‘Made in India’ success story and a favourite on-the-go eating option across Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Pune, with 115+ outlets. Before Jumboking, the world knew only McDonald’s and Burger King- but its success spawned dozens of QSRs in other food categories as well, like Yo China, WOW Momos, New York Burrito Company etc. Jumboking was the first to recognise that youngsters seek convenience food and were able to bring the best of western formats and Indian tastes to their lives.
Paytm And Online Payments
Launched in August 2010, people went gaga over online payments and Paytm became a household name when demonetisation was announced in 2016. Cashless payments are the norm now and the likes of BHIM UPI (2016), and Phone Pay (2015) are omnipresent. It’s almost as if no one carries cash around anymore!
Jio And Accessible Internet
Before 2016 if you asked a college student how much mobile data they use, the answer would be 1 GB in a month. Come September 2016 everyone used 1.5 GB of data per day. Launched in 2016 for public use, Jio was an ambitious plan to build a nationwide 4G mobile at a cheaper price. Later the same year all mobile operators decreased their prices with the aim of 4G internet for all. And a report by Nokia’s annual Mobile Broadband Index (MBiT) released in 2022 indicates that the aim is being achieved. It states that India’s growing 4G networks carried almost all mobile broadband traffic in 2021. It is Jio dhan dhana dan time indeed!
TCS And Information Technology
Tata Consultancy Services, better known as TCS was the pioneer for software development services in 1968, started by the TATA group. They then started to get a number of small and big projects which led it to become India’s top IT company with a turnover of more than the US $25.7 billion at present. Many others joined the IT bandwagon- Infosys, Wipro etc; as of 2019, India has over 31000 registered IT companies and the count continues to grow.
It seems that it takes just a spark for a revolution to come to bear. Hats off to these pioneers.