{"id":45,"date":"2004-11-25T18:01:49","date_gmt":"2004-11-26T00:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.khaitan.org\/blog\/2004\/11\/the-paanwalla-and-the-indian-mobile-phone-revolution\/"},"modified":"2004-11-25T18:01:49","modified_gmt":"2004-11-26T00:01:49","slug":"the-paanwalla-and-the-indian-mobile-phone-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.khaitan.org\/blog\/2004\/11\/the-paanwalla-and-the-indian-mobile-phone-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"The PaanWalla and the Indian Mobile Phone Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SQ 416 was late by few minutes for its scheduled time at 10:30p. Next was a hassle-free checkout (Thanks to 9 pieces of luggage and two sleepy kids!) through the <i>Green Channel<\/i> of customs at the Kolkata International airport. The next stop had to be a roadside <i>paan<\/i> shop. I was carrying a burning desire to chew a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.food-india.com\/ingredients\/i026_i050\/i028.htm\">paan<\/a> on arrival.<br \/>\nSo, we stopped. The paanwalla(<a href=\"http:\/\/paan.com\/\">click here<\/a> for a a look-alike) was chatting on a shining mobile phone. On my arrival at his counter, I could hear him closing the conversation in his local dialect, &#8220;&#8230;Auron baad mein, kustomber hai&#8221;. Translated &#8212; Rest later, I have a customer. The counter, which was barely 10 feet by 10 feet also had leaflets of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.relianceinfo.com\/Infocomm\/index.html\">Reliance India Mobile<\/a> prepaid cards stuck on the side of his wall.<br \/>\nAlthough, growth in the youth market has been fast last year symbolizing the <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/business\/3585257.stm\">breadth<\/a> of the Indian Mobile phone customers; the depth of the market could be estimated when you see a paanwalla handling a mobile phone. A paanwalla could be characterized as someone with minimal or basic education, a non-incorporated small business, no taxes, and possibly without a postal address.<br \/>\nThanks to popular <a href=\"http:\/\/www.relianceinfo.com\/Infocomm\/Rim\/rim_prepaid_rcv440.html\">schemes<\/a> offering free incoming &#038; intra-carrier calls; Indian users have been adding 1.5m &#8211; 1.7m new customers every month with an estimated base of 38 million users.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SQ 416 was late by few minutes for its scheduled time at 10:30p. Next was a hassle-free checkout (Thanks to 9 pieces of luggage and two sleepy kids!) through the Green Channel of customs at the Kolkata International airport. The next stop had to be a roadside paan shop. I was carrying a burning desire [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.khaitan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.khaitan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.khaitan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.khaitan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.khaitan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.khaitan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.khaitan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.khaitan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.khaitan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}