Apple frenzy is now hitting Indians, as the latest device to be launched in India: iPhone 5S has been sold out completely within 24 hours, and there is a great demand of this handset everywhere.

Such is the scarcity that 16 GB of 5S is being sold in black at some locations of Delhi, and the price as go as far as Rs 80,000, which is normally available for Rs 53,500.

The other model: iPhone 5C which was launched alongside 5S is still available but it has the stigma of 'economical' attached to it, and people are not that keen to go for it. It is the 5S which is riding the frenzy wave across country, and people are tremendously excited about it.

As per reports, retailers of Apple products have sent repeated SOS to the management, and asking for immediate delivery of the handset. It is speculated that it will take another day or two before the stock is again filled.

When iPhone 5S and 5C were launched on November 1^st in India, Apple has reportedly stocked 30,000 units out of which only 6000 units were of 5S, which were consumed within no time.

Reliance Communication was supplied with 2,700 units of 5S, and when after they introduced a unique EMI scheme for these models on November 1, all their stock was consumed within a day and a half.

Bharati Airtel, the largest telecommunication provider was supplied with 700 units of iPhone 5S, and that too were gulped down by Apple crazy fans in no time.

By afternoon of 4^th November, Apple retailers all over the country declared that Apple 5S is sold out.

Apple distributors in India: Redington and Ingram Micro were immediately contacted by retailers all across the country to send more units; but they have little option. Due to Diwali season, shipping and distribution network is moving at a lackluster pace, and the delivery of fresh stocks is not possible before Wednesday or Thursday, as per insiders.

Even multi brand retailers such as The MobileStore, PlanetM, UniverCell and Future Group have declared that they don't have the stock anymore.

Some skeptics have claimed that it is a tried and tested marketing strategy of Apple, and it artificially creates demand to add to the excitement and craze.

But whatever it is, it has surely clicked, and Indians are now going berserk for this particular model of iPhone.

People are ordering 5S via foreign locations such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai and are even willing to pay the extra custom duty on the handset.

This Apple frenzy is quite normal in other countries, but for Indians, this is something new.

Steve Jobs would have been proud to see that the country which had provided him spiritual respite years ago, is finally warming up to the Apple addiction.

Zomato, the online restaurant listing, search and review service today announced its fifth round funding of USD 37 million led by Sequoia Capital and participation from its pervious investor Info Edge (India) Limited. With this round Zomato's total funding has reached 53.5 million. Zomato had earlier raised USD 16.5 million from Info Edge over four rounds of funding.

Zomato has also expanded its international offering in three new countries including Brazil (Sao Paulo), Turkey (Istanbul, Ankara), and Indonesia (Jakarta).

In all, Zomato service is now available in 36 cities across 11 countries that include Brazil, Indonesia, New Zealand, Philippines, Qatar, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Turkey, UAE and United Kingdom. Apart from Sao Paulo, Instanbul, Ankara and Jakarta, Zomato has expanded its services within UK from three cities to five, with the inclusion of Glasgow and Edinburgh.

The funding raised will be utilized to further enhance their online platform and expansion of their services to 22 more countries across Europe, South-East, Asia, Australia and the Americas.

Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO of Zomato commented, "This is an exciting phase for us. We believe that we can disrupt restaurant search with our rich content-driven model. This financing will help us develop a product that will change the way people look for restaurant recommendations around them. We are excited to partner with Sequoia Capital as our venture partner to help us succeed internationally, and we can look forward to seeing Zomato in many more countries over the next couple of years."

Currently, Zomato employs over 600 people across 35 cities in 11 countries. According to the press release, Zomato's traffic has risen by 300% over last year and currently gets over 15 million visits a month. Interestingly, more than half of their traffic comes from their mobile app, which clearly shows that mobile users love Zomato service.

In terms of revenue, Zomato has experienced a whopping 500% growth in their monthly billing compared to a year ago and their India and UAE operations have already broken even.

There is no doubt that Zomato is one of the few Indian startup success stories which has been able to successfully create their presence Internationally!

Way to go Zomato!

I have heard this from number of my friends who run physical stores – This year they have experienced much lower footfalls from consumers, especially in the electronic and apparel segment. And many of them believe it is due to rise in ecommerce in India. People now increasingly prefer shopping online rather than going to physical stores.

And this trend will only increase…and why not, consumers buying online are getting much better deals, sometimes nearly half the price at which local offline retailer will offer you.

While this is great for consumers, have you thought how this is affecting lakhs of local offline businesses? Obviously, they now see online retailers as their biggest enemy.

So what do offline retailers do to overcome this?

These physical store owners are now getting together to protest against the undercutting of prices by online retailers. They have launched a website – We Will Act – that condemns the business practices undertaken by ecommerce sites (mind you, in very strong words). They have also written to the Competition Commission of India, complaining that their online counterparts are selling goods below cost and skirting Indian laws on foreign direct investment in retail.

The website wewillact.com have put up Appeals to Government of India, Political parties of India, to consumers, to manufacturers and vendors and even to Venture Capitalists who are putting millions of dollars of investment.

Sample this – Here is what "We Will Act" asks consumers to do, in their own words:

?Let's take some small steps

We will not purchase or supply anything to these unethical online retailers. ( XKart, Ydeal, KBong..)

?Lets boycott them.

Let's now punish them:

1- Let’s place Cash on delivery orders for Rs.40000.00 rupees items every alternate day and cancel when delivery boy comes to delivery. This will make them to lose their fat by Rs.1000.00 at least.

2- Whenever you are free call to their customer care and waste their time. This will increase their customer care expenses.

Here is what they say about online retailers:

Some online retailers in India are like BIGDE BETE of their BIG PAPA of USA. They are getting so much money for doing so much of experiment in India and kind of playing GAMBLING. Every six months they are changing their business models, spending heavily on advertisements, selling everything to everyone at much below their cost prices, running business in huge operating losses and that is adversely affecting the traditional physical retailers.

There can be possibility if some enemies of our country or terror outfits giving funding to these MONKEYS to do so much drama and make lakhs of retailers loose their piece of mind and livelihood.

Will This Protest Help?

I really don't think this it is going to make any difference. While they have a right to be frustrated with price undercutting, it is a business model which online retailers are following with a view of garnering consumer base in long term. I don't think anyone can object online retailers' business practices.

Rather than doing a protest like this, they need to accept the new world order and join the flow. They have to find a way to compete and probably move their business online.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this!

Trai has got more efficient in past couple of months – 10 days after they released the August 2013 Telecom subscription report, they have now published telecom subscriber report for month of September 2013 as well. The highlight for month of September was Reliance losing 10 million subscribers to deactivations and thus dropping their market share by over 1 percent from 14.46 percent in August to 13.35 percent in month of Sept 2013.

On the other hand, Idea gained highest number of subscribers to the tune of over 1.2 million increasing their market share from 14.37 percent to 14.61 percent and becoming the 3rd largest operator in India.

Indian Telecom Subscription Highlights

After 4 months of positive growth, the total mobile subscriber numbers fell in September 2013, largely due to Reliance's 10.5 mln subscriber cull. The good part though is that, those numbers were mostly unused numbers that went out of system due to deactivations.

[Click image to enlarge]

Active Mobile Subscriber Base

The number that needs to be closely watched is the active subscriber base, and on that front the numbers are doing quite well. Infact, even if there has been drop in overall numbers, the active subscriber base has actually increased.

In month of August 2013, active subscriber base increased by 4.48 million, while in month of September, despite 10 million subscribers going out of the system, 3.01 million new active subscribers were registered.

India now has 738.89 million active subscribers and the active subscriber percentage has risen to 84.87. The chart below exactly shows how the active subscriber base is growing over pas 18 months.

More Highlights in Numbers [Sept 2013]

- With an decrease of 6.14 million in Sep 2013, total mobile subscriber base has reached to 870.58 million. India had 876.72 million subscribers by end of August 2013.

- Urban India witnessed a decrease of 1.07 percent or 5.63 mln subscribers, while rural mobile subscriber base decreased by 0.15 percent or 0.51 mln.

- Urban Teledensity decreased to 137.93 from 139.65 in Aug, while the rural tele-density decreased to 40.96 from previous 41.05.

- Urban mobile subscriber share stands at 59.75% as compared 40.25% of rural subscribers.

- 2.29 million new Mobile portability requests were made in month of Sept 2013, taking the total tally of MNP requests since launch to 102.49 mln.

- Active Mobile Subscriber base increased from 735.88 mln in Aug 2013 to 738.89 mln in Sept 2013 taking the active percentage to 84.87 percent.

-  Broadband Subscription increased to 15.36 mln from previous tally of 15.28 mln.

- Wireline Subscriber base fell to 29.28 mln in Sept 2013 as compared to previously 29.46 million.

- India's total telecom subscriber base (wireless+wireline) has decreased to 899.86 mln in Sept 2013, compared to 906.18 mln in Aug 2013.

Operator Wise Market Share [Sept 2013]

With nearly 10.5 million Reliance subscribers de-activated, they now have a today market share of 13.35 percent and have fallen to 4th place. Bharti has consolidated its market share further to 22.21 percent followed by Vodafone (17.87%) and Idea who now have 14.61 percent market share in India.

Aircel (7.3%) has been consistently doing well in past 1 year and now are closing in on Tata (7.26%) to become 5th largest operator in India.

Mobile Subscriber Numbers of Top 8 Mobile Operator [Sept 2013]

1. Bharti Airtel –   193,387,401
2. Vodafone – 155,543,181
3. Idea –  127,228,192
4. Reliance – 116,262,001
5. BSNL – 97,858,181
6. Tata –  63,546,938
7. Aircel – 63,24,5179
8. Unitech – 32,355,900

Links To Previous Telecom Subscription Reports [2013]

[TRAI report]