Alibaba needs to go offline in India

China's top B2B platform Alibaba.com has now also the top position as online market place in India, reports the Financial Times. That looks like a nice achievement, but does not mean that much. What in the comparison between India and China often is forgotten is the internet. China now has 250 million internet users, covering 16 percent of the population and that number is using very fast. India has just over 40 million people online, despite its track record for developing software.
Last month I attended in the Netherlands the Global Wage Indicator conference, on online tool for collecting wage and labor information, and found myself more than once sitting between the representatives of India and China.
Boy, were their problems different. In India you cannot reach enough people if you stay online. In China you need a solid infrastructure for online projects, otherwise you are wiped away by the flood of internet users.
That means that - as Alibaba does - any online operation has to go offline, adding tremendously to the costs.

“I don’t believe it is possible to go into India with a 100 per cent online platform today,” [Alibaba's CEO]Mr Wei told the Financial Times.

In India they join Infomedia, the country's Yellow Pages. Still, they will have a hard job in any way.