Made In India Products Face Problem Of Coming From A 'Third World Country'

Mark Zuckerberg paid around $19 billion for messaging app, WhatsApp just two years ago. The room full of media, foreign delegates and experts from the startup industry in India are still deliberating upon the valuation WhatsApp had secured. The pertinent point experts raised was "Instead of American, if WhatsApp has been an Indian company, had it been able to attract whopping valuation?"  "Not at all," the meeting room reverberates.
 
"We are creating far better products with far better technology, but India is facing a perception problem," said IT and Industries Minister K T Rama Rao at World Economic Forum (WEF), New Delhi.
 
Product made in Koramangala and product made in Stanford -- both will attract a different set of valuations, irrespective of the product quality -- concluded a panel of experts, including Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma, KT Rama Rao, Kartik Hosanagar, and Gaurav Dalmia.  "We love the romantic idea that technology has levelled everything. It's untrue, geography matters," Rao emphasised.
 
In a crux, we are getting the third-world valuation for our products, said Hosanagar, who is a professor of technology and digital business at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania said in a casual manner. The audience burst into a chorus of laughter. He further validated. "Google hasn't moved their most important products in India. There is a problem of perception. There is a difference between the quality of product and perceived quality of the product. Sometime back, the products of Japan, China were perceived as of low quality."
 
Now, how to make things better for India? "Sell better. We need to outsell. We must be able to market our products better. It is no more about making a world class product but also about articulating," Paytm's Sharma, founder of country's largest mobile wallet company said.