Lets "click" in the Kannada market!

Generally when we talk about Kannada, more often than not we talk about literature, film, music, drama, folk forms & similar ones. But we come across very little discussion on how these can be seen as products & services that people utilize or experience. It is rarely seen from a business perspective, as a potential market. It is very important for businessmen (Kannadiga & non-Kannadiga) to understand the market potential of these Kannada-centric products & services. Let us open up a discussion on this.

Products & Services
We can perhaps start by preparing a list of products & services possible around Kannada. The list below is not an exhaustive one and we encourage readers to let their imagination add to this list.
The information below is organized under two headings: Content & Delivery Channels. Content is language specific & the Delivery channels are the infrastructure to deliver this content.

Sl. No

Content

Delivery Channels

Literature

Book, Print Media, Internet

News

Print Media, Radio, Television, Internet

Films

Theatres & Multiplexes, Tapes & CDs, Television, Internet

Music

Radio, Television, Tapes & CD, Internet

Plays & Dramas

Auditoriums, Television

Study Material

Books, Radio, Television, Tapen & CDs, Internet

Software

Tapes & CDs, Internet

Advertising

Radio, TV, Print Media, Public Spaces, Internet


We can drill down further a couple of levels under each of the line-items under Content heading and can define those as specific offerings in the market. For example, if you consider music as a category: classical music, light music (sugama sangeetha), film music, folk music, devotional music are a few sub-categories which can have specific offerings in the target market.
Newer opportunities that are emerging are:
  • Kannada specific voice based call center services,
  • Training centers to train people (wanting to do business with Kannada speaking people) on Kannada.
Market Size
There are two angles to look at the market size - namely the head-count of the existent market, and its size in terms of monetary revenue it can bring to the involved organization or body. On the former scale, head-count or population, the market is around 60 million + (with approximately 50 million inside Karnataka and 10 million outside Karnataka). On the latter scale, revenue, with a very conservative estimate, 60 million people spending an average of Rs 100 per month in this market bundles up to Rs 7200 crores per year.

Current Realization of Market potential
Low (may be 15-20 % market has been realized). There is tremendous opportunity in this market as the current players are small businesses run by individuals or families which lack professional management capability & there has been little effort in market exploration, tapping and development.

Although in the last couple of years, large corporations have entered the Television, Radio & Print Media, enterprises planning to enter these markets need to hire extremely talented people who are well-versed in Kannada and understand the pulse of the market. When this happens, the real value of the Kannada market will start getting tapped, and fetch attractive returns.

What next?
The write-up above with a preliminary analysis of the Kannada-centric products & services was to initiate a discussion & present a different perspective. Karnatique readers who may be interested in working with Banavasi Balaga in researching these markets & working with the industry representatives in initiating market development activities in these industries, please respond to banavasibalaga AT gmail DOT com.

11 comments:

ನಾಗೇಶ್ said...

In 7, I think, you left out "Documentation in Kannada." Example, I do not see many pages in Kannada in wikipedia (kn.wikipedia.org).

Anonymous said...

Please post something positive about kannada,for god sake stop this series of almost sad looking stories.

Post about how kannada television viewership has increased from 40 to 58% in last two years without bashing other langauge people.

bari goLu bari goLu. sakappa saaku.
naanu kannaDa aBhimaanine.adhaare kannadadha bagge ondhu oLLe suddhi beDva.

dina saaYorge aLokke agolla.

swalpa oLLe sudhinu haakrappa.

Etc - beLgaum sucessin Irrgation or how north karnataka is getting converted into mini punjab with huge irrigation tracks.

don't push people with constant darkness with your sad stories.post good positive articles also.

Anonymous said...

we can't be really happy unless we have allround development across our state. This blog only highlights where we are currently and what we need to do go to that next level. I don't know what Mr.Anonymous saw so depressing..

Sir Sum sumne kushiyaagiroke yar kailu aagalla... namma nadina samasyegaLa bagge maatad-dey chikka putta kushi taro suddi maatadidre samasye solve aagutta??

sanna putta geluvige kushi padona,, aadre samasyegaLa bagge matadodanna, jaagruti tarodanna nillisabaaradu,,

great going karnatique !!

Anonymous said...

Mr./Ms. Anon,
What in that blog did you find sad and dark about Kannada? According to me this blog is a perfect example of an optimistic note about Kannada and its potential to take Kannadigas towards a golden era.

Why do you think talking about what we need to do "using" Kannada as a marketable entity causes pain and is like pushing people into darkness? I think this attitude is indeed the reason for not much business activity having happened around the Kannada world.

guru4vedi said...

What about Arts and Crafts?
Agri. Products?

Can we include them?

Rohith B R said...

@ guru,
The list that has been presented here I guess is mostly a list of basic building blocks of a societal setup. Of course agricultural products and such things do make a lot of sense in the business, but that is a composite product - buildable using things such as Study Material, Literature etc. What you need in Kannada in the agri products can be derived once these two are in right shape, right?

But the fact that the agri business (in KAR) needs to be centered around Kannada is of prime importance, no doubt!

guru4vedi said...

houdu, makes sense.
For example 'raagi mudde recipe'!
It's more of taxanomy. Agreed.

Anonymous said...

list madi aadamele mundenu? yavaga karyapravutharaaguvudu?

IdeaNaren said...

One simple thing everyone can do is adding more kannada content to web and "searching" for it.

How many knew that they can search kannada by typing in english through kannada suggestions at http://www.google.co.in/kn or directly typed queries in http://www.kannadasearch.com ??

Let the search begin...

Rohith B R said...

@ sakshiraj
well as the blog suggests folks interested (in this kind of activity related to business and making money "around" Kannada) should contact Banavasi Balaga at their email ID (given in the blog at the end).. We should be able to get answers to our yaavaaga's and hege's..

Unknown said...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/InvestIndianRupeesOneOnlydaily/join


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