Indian Jugaad

Traveling by 'local', the public transport system - (similar to a subway) within Mumbai is an adventure. However the journey is more interesting due to the people and conversation during the commute. During my last visit, came across an amazing exchange of content facilitated by technology and innovation.

The person standing next to me was holding the rails to steady himself in the train with one hand while holding his phone in the other. I noticed that he was watching a Bollywood movie with headphones in his ear. The person standing next to him looked at his phone screen, tapped on the shoulder to confirm if this was the latest movie that he was watching. Happy with the affirmative reply, the second person immediately asked the first person to share the movie to which the first person readily obliged. Over the next couple of minutes, the second person helped navigate the options on the first person's phone, showed him the settings, file manager, etc. and ultimately got to the screen for sharing the movie. The movie was shared and both persons were now individually watching the movie on their phones.

I had witnessed was an everyday example of Indian jugaad or rather the way of life in India. Also to think of the rate of proliferation of media content as a result of smartphone penetration in India is quite amazing. For 2017, estimated number of smartphone users in India is expected to be 300 million. Quite an opportunity for a lot of entrepreneurs to play in this space!