Saurabh Garg on The New New Thing

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Of all the questions that I try to find an answer to, the most perplexing so far has been the ones that invite a discussion on the future. And especially the ones that are around youth. Today I would like to explore the trends that marketers and brands can look forward to in next five years in India. I would want to answer questions like

• What would the country look like in next five years?
• What would youth be thinking and doing in next five years?
• How can marketers reach them best?

Before I launch into playing an old magician with the crystal ball, let me make a few assumptions. By 2013, following things would be available to a large chunk of Indian youth.

• Access to (and presence on) Internet: When I say access and presence of Internet, I just dont mean that we would have Internet enabled mobile devices but I mean that every young person (in cities, towns or even villages) would have an Internet Presence. This could be in form of a profile on social network (which network, I cant guess), a blog, a website or at least an email address. This Internet presence would make the young population identifiable and reachable.
• Information Availability and Democratization: A close knit groups of friends and a large group of loosely connected contacts over the Internet would make information easy to gather. More than data and analysis, information would be fact based, in public domain and reliable enough to allow people to take actions on. Currently, information is expensive and belongs to certain privileged few and because of this access to information, these people enjoy a lot of competitive advantages over the others one. These boundaries would blur with time.
• Availability of Credit: Money and credit would no longer be a pain. Most of the youth would have access to cheap credit. A lot of services (like transport and communication) would start following freenium model and hence the basic cost of living would come down. However even though UGC would over take experts and professionals, entertainment would get more expensive. New meanings of entertainment would emerge.
• Geographically Mobile and Global Influences: Even today a large chunk of young population is geographically mobile (we goto different states, cities for education and work), almost everyone would be in a state of flux in times to come. Not only because education and work demands so, people would want to experiment and explore. People would take on more ad-hoc jobs that stable careers and would want to live for the minute rather than planning 5 years, 10 years in advance. Youth will start appreciating global differences and would be more open to newer ideas.
• Education: More and more youths would become more aware about the world around them. Their focus and agenda in lives will move beyond grooming and pursuit of opposite sex to larger causes and making their lives better. In fact education will play a really important role in the way individuals will live.
• onDemand Economy: This is what I wrote for my Berlin School application. I will re-iterate. In next 5 years we will see businesses that would produce products (physical, electronic) on demand basis. A vague analogy would be just in time production methods use by automobile industry. A simple example could be satellite television where you can watch your favorite show anytime. Think of it as youtube for made available everywhere. Currently we use Internet for onDemand services, a time shall come when all services would be onDemand.
• Redefinition of friendship: Currently you make friends with people who study with you, live close to your residence and probably friends of friends. With Internet and more avenues to meet people, the way people choose friends will change. From incidental the friend discovery would change to interest based. There would be more compact (friend) groups and these groups would be really passionate about their interests. And finally the groups would be addressable as one entity rather than individuals. In fact this is one of the founding principles of n00b.in.

Assuming all these are correct, What do you think would be a typical 18 year old’s thought process in 2013? Knowing that he is 13 right now, in schools, amidst the explosion of media and information to satisfy their natural curiosities, how would he cope up with all this?

Once I have few answers, I shall compile them and update this post.