The Search for the Killer App: Silicon Valley, India Style
I must admit that I was unsure what to expect when first visiting software companies in India.
My visit to Adobe in Noida (an outlying city of Delhi) was amazing because it highlighted the untapped potential of India and provided the contrast needed to understand this country.
My journey started from downtown Delhi around 8am. The distance between Noida and Delhi is approximately 30km, however don't let that time fool you. If you go during any kind of peak travel hours you can easily expect a 3 hour journey.
I arrived at Noida around 10/10:15AM after traveling along what were mostly dirt roads. It is important to remember that Noida and Delhi are technically in different "states" within India. This means that you must stop upon reaching Noida and pay a tax to cross the border. I stayed in the car during this process but it seems like it took my driver quite some time to pay the tax and come back out. If the beuaracracy for this was anything like the immigration lines at the airport, there was probably serious paperwork involved.
Upon arrival in Noida I was shocked to see an incredibly modern building. I guess I assumed such buildings might exist in Bangalore but to see an entire city of them was kind of odd. I have posted pictures of the building here (
).I had a wonderful meeting with Dr. Naresh Gupta, SVP of Adobe's Print and Classical Publishing Business Unit & Managing Director, India. It was somewhere in this meeting that it dawned on me just how important India was to Adobe and how serious an investment Adobe had made in India. Adobe India is an example of how the technology industry in India is expanding beyond simply QA and support. Adobe India now manages a number of products from cradle to grave, including some of Adobe's bread and butter product in the creative and print/publishing space.
During a wonderful lunch Naresh poised a question that has stuck with me for this entire day. He asked me what the next "Killer App" was. I have to confess that at lunch I brushed off this question but after thinking about it later I realized he was asking a far more profound question.
In the software world we are constantly searching for the next killer app. A killer app is different than some new technology advance in your Oracle database. A killer app is something like Microsoft Windows or Netscape/Mosaic (the browser). It is an application or technology that the masses use and rely on. The software industry continuously searches for the next killer app and when it can't be found we fall back on enhancing performance of existing applications as our "innovation".
The technology industry has been a western focused industry since its creation. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard (whom I regard as the founders of today's modern tech industry) didn't intend to create such a western focused industry, you can see this simply by looking at the international expansion HP did during a period of intense American isolationism, but they did. No matter how hard you look, the "power" base for the technology industry starts and ends in Silicon Valley. If not at the innovation level, then at least at the funding level.
India (and the respective BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China) represent a new marketplace for ideas, not just consumers. The sooner technology companies (including my own) recognize that emerging countries such as India represent the next frontier in the search for the "Killer App" the sooner we can really make a difference. In a country with 1,095,351,995 people...surely they have to be able to help us come up with a few new ideas.
Perhaps we really should be considering Africa in our search for the great "Killer App"?
posted by Kyle MacDonald @ 12:51 PM
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