giants awake

Roughly a third of the world's population lives in China and India. The former "sleeping giants" offer huge economic potentials. Both countries are facing fast-paced centuries - not without risks. Freedom of information is not guaranteed everywhere. Which role does the Internet play for those developments?
In the first part, Vishal Gondal, the founder of Indiagames, India's benchmark online and mobile games company and Farokh Balsara, head of Media & Entertainment of Ernst&Young in India will talk about their country, moderated by René Seifert, the founder of level 360 services in Bangalore, a consultancy for software outsourcing and media/tech-investment to India.

Next question: Which country will have the largest Internet users by 2010?
Answers: A. India B: China C: Brazil C: Russia
Right answer: Only time will tell!

Gondal is playing "Who wants to be a millionaire" with the audience.
Question: What is the median age the over 1 billion population in India?
Answers: A: 18 B: 35 C: 40 D: 24
Right answer: 24!

Balsara: India has a young population with little money. That's why low cost and functionality are needed.

Gondal asked the audience how many people have seen a Shahrukh Khan movie. A few hands raised. Proceeds to talk about how Indian film industry is going global.

Balsara: The young people have a huge potential; they want to come up with solutions for the masses.

Seifert: Where does the innovation in India come from?

Gondal: India is a land of innovation. Today you can find a lot of startups. Out of 1000 startups 99 percent may fail, but the one percent left might change the world. Today we have an interesting trend. We outsource games to the US, Germany and Eastern Europe. Very popular: matrimonial sites, where parents go and buy advertising space for their daughters.

Overall, media companies in India are feeling more confident.

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Talking about China onstage are Chauncey Shey, the founder of SB China Venture Capital, a leading venture capital firm and Yat Siu, who set up Outblaze in 1998, which provides white label messaging, collaboration and social media services to over 76 million users.
Their moderator is Andreas Weigend, who was chief scientist of Amazon.com.

Shey: It was very fascinating to hear about the Indian markets.

They first talk about innovations in the mobile sector and second about the innovation in the internet space.

Weigend: In India and China, nobody will rent a movie because people can buy it cheaply on the streets.

Siu: Videostreaming technology is very important. 70% of the users come from China.

Weigend: What influence do those 2 innovations have on China?

Siu: There are a lot of copycat companies in China.

Weigend: Nowadays, there is more real innovation. He is talking about Tuski, a cartoon character invented by a 21-year-old girl.

The business idea is to download games for free, but to pay monthly for the subscription. They make more money in games than in advertising. In Asia, there is no subscription, but they make money from visual items.

Siu: You can make your game person stronger by paying.

Weigend: Only one percent of China's GDP depends on the US.

Weigend asks the audience for questions.

Question from the audience: What social innovations can China offer?

Siu: A lot of former factory workers now own their own factory.

Interestingly enough, no one asked about the limitations on Chinese internet.

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