Key words: Internet, Internet economy, outsourcing, Russia, India

The emergence of the global "web" and its introduction into our daily lives are equivalent to the invention of electricity in the 19th century in terms of its significance and impact on the overall progress of human civilization. No one doubts that we are now living in the digital age. But, as in any historical era, there are countries that are "ahead of the planet" in this area, and there are also countries that are lagging behind. Russia and India are among the world's top ten countries with the largest number of Internet users, but they represent different concepts of Internet economies.

Using the terminology of the "old" economy, they can be described with a certain stretch as import-substituting and export-oriented models.

WHAT IS THE INTERNET ECONOMY?

"Internet economy "(other names - " digital economy "or" cyber economy") is usually called the use of modern information technologies (IT) in business, the dynamic development of which radically changes the working methods of many companies. This is most noticeable, of course, in the field of high technologies, but today other areas - trade, mechanical engineering, chemistry, biotechnology, medicine, financial and stock markets, oil and gas industries - can no longer function successfully without IT.

Nowadays, the ability to quickly and efficiently master and implement new Internet technologies in business processes is of strategic importance for the survival and competitiveness of almost any large enterprise. Internetization has brought unprecedented opportunities to speed up production cycles, in particular, pre-production (selection of raw materials, search for suppliers, etc.), product sales, and promotion on both local and international markets.

In fact, the modern economy and most companies have become a hybrid of the "old" economy and the new Internet economy, which at the same time qualitatively improves and contributes to the growth of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) in several areas at once.

First, prices are falling. E-commerce provides a freer environment for

competition, devoid of "official rent" ("kickbacks") and corruption. Thanks to this, the price difference with regular (offline) stores can reach 30% or even more. And this leads to a decrease in inflation.

But buying and selling through the "global web" is just the tip of a massive and growing iceberg.

The Internet allows companies to enter a huge global market with their products, significantly reduce costs in the supply and demand chains they have built, serve customers at a level that previously could not have been dreamed of, enter previously inaccessible markets for geographical reasons, create new labor and capital markets, new income streams, and finally, review the very nature of its activities.

Completely new Internet companies are emerging in a wide variety of industries, from the production of biologics to the advertising business and cargo transportation. Using the power of the Internet, these information intermediaries create highly efficient electronic markets for goods and services, bringing together sellers and buyers who previously could not find each other, and carry out "purchase and sale" transactions using electronic document management tools.

As an example, it is impossible not to mention www.Alibaba.com - a leading international Internet company founded in 1999 in China, market capitalization (value) which reached $26 billion. Its main activity is B2B online trading*: through this online platform, local companies can advertise their products and make deals with companies around the world.

Secondly, the development of information technologies increases labor productivity. In particular, using countries and territories located in different time zones allows you to organize round-the-clock work on projects (which is especially important for such a huge country as Russia). In international corporations, this has been done for many years, which provides significant savings and ensures business continuity: when evening comes in Seattle-in the US state of Washington-and Microsoft head office service workers leave their jobs, morning comes to Bangalore, and they are replaced by Indian colleagues from the subsidiary a branch of this IT giant.

Third, the Internet has a positive impact not only on macroeconomics, but also on the incomes of ordinary citizens. If you calculate what services the World Wide Web provides for free and how much it saves the average person (not even counting downloading pirated movies and TV shows, but only legal services), then in developed countries it comes out on average from $18 to $28 per person per month. These savings are achieved by finding more favorable prices for goods, cheaper communication, education, getting free alternatives to paid information services, and quick access to information.

In addition, the transition to the Internet of services is extremely important. The transition to document management on the Internet and the development of public service sites can increase the efficiency of bureaucracy and reduce bureaucracy. After all, one of the weaknesses of many economies, including the Russian and Indian ones, remains the inefficiency of the state apparatus. In our country, an important step in the fight against this defect was the launch of the portal of public services www.Gosuslugi.ru -a single point of access for citizens and organizations to information about public services provided by executive authorities, as well as about the possibility of receiving these services.

Naturally, the advantages and benefits of using information technologies are not limited to this, but the overall picture is clear: the Internet economy is the future in which we are already beginning to live.

What is the current contribution of the Internet economy to the development of Russia and India?

RUSSIA AND INDIA ON THE WAY TO THE INFORMATION SOCIETY

As of March 2011, in absolute terms, the number of Internet users in India reached 100 million (4th place, after China {477 million people}, the United States and Japan).¹, in Russia - 59.7 million people2 (7th place in the world, after the mentioned countries, Brazil and Germany)³.

As a percentage, this means that today 43% of Russians go online at least once a month. In India, only 8.4% of its residents have access to the network. At the same time, over the past decade, the number of users in our country has increased by more than 18 times, and in India by 20 times. According to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the average user spends 1.7 hours a day online in Russia, 0.5 hours in India (2.7 hours in China) ⁴.

At the same time, in contrast to developed countries, where the Internet is mainly associated with a home personal computer and Internet at home, in Russia, India, China and Brazil, due to the increase in the number of portable computers, the development of third-generation networks (3G) and the emergence of cheap and functional smartphones, mobile phones and the Internet have become the fastest growing types ofcafe.

According to eMarketer, a New York-based Internet research and analysis company, the number of mobile users in China today exceeds the total population of the United States, which, according to the US Census Bureau, reached 308.7 million people by April 1, 2011. Mobile Internet penetration is expected to grow in Russia in 2011-2015

* B2B (business-to-business e-commerce) -electronic commerce between companies (editor's note).

Figure 1. Share of the Internet economy in the country's GDP (%).

Source: McKinsey&Company. McKinsey Global Institute. Internet Matters: the Net's Sweeping Impact on Growth, Jobs, and Prosperity. May, 2011, p. 15 - http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/internet_matters/pdfs/MGIJnternet_matters_fulLr eport.pdf

from 29% of mobile users to 36%, and in India - from 12% to 34%. In China, more than 600 million people will use ^the mobile Internet in 2015.5

RUSSIA: THERE ARE SOME SUCCESSES, BUT...

According to a study by McKinsey, one of the world's leading consulting companies, the share of the Internet economy in the GDP of the 13 countries considered, whose share in the global economy is 70%⁶, ranges from 6.3% in Sweden to 0.8% in Russia.

In the United States, this figure is 3.8%, among Asian countries, South Korea is in first place (4.6%), followed by Japan (4%), India (3.2%) and China (2.6%). Brazil ranks second to last (1.5%) (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 shows that Russia has the highest rate of private consumption of the Internet (74%), very high private investment (33%) and public expenditures (25%) in this industry. However, the import of Internet resources significantly exceeds their export, as a result of which the negative balance of foreign trade in this sector accounted for 32% of the contribution of the Internet economy to the country's GDP. In Russia, the Internet economy is weakly export-oriented, outsourcing of services is not developed, but users spend significant funds on foreign services, such as Skype - free software that provides voice communication via the Internet, the worldwide online auction eBay, the purchase of foreign "software" (software), WoW (a popular online advertising platform).the game World of Warcraft - "World of combat skill"), etc.

However, the domestic Internet economy also has its strengths.

In May 2011, the Russian Internet giant Yandex listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange NASDAQ*. During such an Initial public offering (IPO), the market value of this largest search engine on the Runet was estimated at $8 billion.

The launch of Yandex on the stock exchange is not the first successful placement of Russian Internet companies. In November 2010, the London Stock Exchange held an IPO of the largest Russian Internet holding (investment fund) Mail.ru Group, part of which was sold for $1 billion. The total capitalization of the company reached $5.7 billion, which made Mail.ru Group is the largest Internet company in Europe that participates in exchange trading ⁷. The holding company owns 100% of the leading Russian postal service Mail.ru, 100% stake in the social network Одноклассники.ги, 100% of the centralized Internet instant messaging service ICQ (Iseek You - I'm looking for you), 33% of the social network Вконтакте.ги as well as a number of other smaller Internet assets.

It should be added that the most popular social network in the former Soviet Union Вконтакте.ги left no chance for the world-famous American network Facebook⁸.

Such Russian companies as Kaspersky Lab (an international group of companies with a central office in Moscow, specializing in the development of protection systems against computer viruses, spam and hacker attacks), ABBYY (a company that produces electronic dictionaries and software for document recognition and form entry, the most famous products are the system FineReader document recognition software and Lingvo electronic dictionaries, head office is located in Moscow), Parallels (a company specializing in software development-

* NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation) is one of the three main US stock exchanges, an electronic trading system specializing in shares of high-tech companies (manufacturing electronics, software, biotechnological products, etc.) (editor's note).

Figure 2. Comparison of leading Internet projects in the world and Russia.

software for virtualization and automation. The company's headquarters are located in Switzerland, and its development centers are located in Russia).

According to Alexa Internet - company gathering statistical data about site traffic 5 is the most popular Russian sites - Yandex, the Russian-language version of the search engine Google Google.ru, mail Mail.ru, American Google.com and Vkontakte.EN.

It would seem that what is surprising in the popularity of homegrown sites? It is surprising that this situation has developed only in a few large countries of the world, primarily in China and Japan. But even advanced Europe doesn't have its own strong search engines, social networks, and other Internet services.⁹ They were crushed by American competitors: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, etc. And although the language factor (they say that most Russians simply do not know foreign languages, so they do not use foreign Internet projects) does occur, it is by no means decisive: the main thing is the technologies themselves, successful marketing and competent use of the peculiarities of the mentality of the domestic user.

According to BCG, " Russia Online. The impact of the Internet on the Russian economy", which conducted a study commissioned by Google, in 2009 the contribution of the Internet to Russia's GDP was not 0.8%, as in the McKinsey document mentioned above, but 1.6%, or $19.3 billion (this is due to differences in the research methodology, although in general the conclusions about the state of the Internet economy coincide). The Internet's contribution to Russia's GDP can be compared with that of some European countries, such as Italy (1.9%) and Spain (2.2%). However, it is significantly lower than that of leading countries such as the United Kingdom (7.2%) and Sweden (6.6%)^.10

BCG includes in the Network's share of GDP the cost of goods purchased via the Internet, the cost of public access and infrastructure, net exports associated with the Network, and government spending on the Internet.

The largest contribution to the Russian Internet economy today is made by private users. Household consumption in Russia in 2009 amounted to $13 billion. of the above-mentioned $19.3 billion. Private investment ranks second ($10.5 billion), followed by government spending ($1.5 billion). The high level of investment compared to other European countries is partly due to the need to build an Internet infrastructure. Net exports are negative for Russia (- $5.3 billion), which imports significant volumes of IT products.

According to BCG researchers, the importance of the Internet for the Russian economy is more significant than can be concluded from the above figures, since a number of types of activity of users and companies are not directly taken into account in the calculation of GDP. This is the population's gain from using the Internet for a number of reasons that are not taken into account in GDP: the ability to have high-quality access to information and communication, search for online goods that are later purchased offline ($16 billion). per year), direct savings on online purchases (5-10% of the cost of goods). Activities of enterprises related to

However, it is not directly included in GDP to avoid double counting, and includes B2B e-commerce (about $80 billion). per year) and online advertising ($0.6 billion in 2009, or 9% of the total advertising market) ^.11

In terms of Internet usage and development, Russia is on par with other fast - growing economies, but still lags behind most of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries. (This index, developed by BCG, reflects three main parameters of Internet usage: availability, online sales, and user activity.)

Denmark, Sweden, and the United Kingdom are the leaders with index scores of 140, 134, and 128, respectively. Russia, with an index of 52 on the global scale, is comparable to other fast-growing (emerging market) countries, slightly behind Brazil (53), but ahead of China (41)and India (22) ¹².

In Russia, the Internet economy is expected to grow rapidly in the near future. Its contribution to GDP by 2015 may reach up to 3.7% (or 5% of GDP if the oil and gas component is excluded), which will be comparable to the current level of more developed countries in this area.¹³

Despite certain achievements of the domestic IT industry and the success of Russian Internet companies, Russia still lags behind the rapidly growing Indian information technology market in terms of its contribution to the country's economy.

INDIA-OUTSOURCING CHAMPION

According to a McKinsey study, the share of the Internet in India's economy is 3.2% as of 2009, which puts this Asian country on a par with such advanced states as Germany and France.

By the ratio of export and import of information services of Internet resources in India, you are-

India ranked first among the countries represented in the study: the foreign trade surplus of the Indian Internet economy reached 47% in 2009. Back in the 1990s, India became the undisputed leader in outsourcing software development - the so-called offshore programming. According to preliminary estimates for 2010, Indian companies earned more than $⁷³ billion in total14. For comparison purposes: As noted above, the entire Russian Internet economy totaled $19.3 billion in 2009.

The Global Sendees 100 ranking of the largest outsourcing IT services companies in 2011 included 39 companies from the United States, 31 from India, 6 companies with head offices in Russia (Artezio, Auriga Inc., Recsoft, MERA, Luxsoft, LanitTercom), and only ³ from China15. To understand the reasons for the spread of figures, let's give the following example: one of the five domestic companies included in this rating - Luxsoft-earned $149 million ⁱⁿ 200916, while its Indian competitor-Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)-only for the 4th quarter of the same year received revenue of $1.64 billion ¹⁷.

At the same time, in India, private user consumption accounts for only 20% of the Internet economy. This is the lowest rate among all the countries represented in the McKinsey study. The fact is that as such, the Internet market in India is much less developed than in Russia. In India, there are no large "home" Internet projects (no Indian sites are included in the world ranking of the 100 largest sites, while Russia is represented by Yandex.ru (26th place), Mail.ru (36th place) and Вконтакте.ги (37th place ¹⁸). E-commerce and online advertising are still in their infancy, and the Indians themselves prefer to use American resources. The top five most popular sites in India are the American-Indian Google India, American Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and the YouTube video service.

However, in the future, the situation in the domestic market may change for the better, since private investment in Indian information technology is not inferior in volume to the same indicator in other leading countries - 28%.

So far, government spending on Internet development is also low - only 5% (in Russia, the state spends 5 times more in percentage terms), which is partly due to the presence of more pressing problems for the Indian government. But recently, it also announced its decision to provide free Internet access for the entire billion-strong population in the next two years.

Two state - owned telecommunications companies-BSNL and MTNL-will lay fiber-optic cables and create all the necessary infrastructure. The project will be funded by a special USOF fund, to which all telecommunications firms in the country annually transfer 5% of their profits.¹⁹

The Government hopes that the implementation of the free public Internet project will give a powerful boost to the country's economic development and help smooth out inequality between different population groups and provinces in India. In addition, the project should destroy the cartel of a few communications companies that has developed in India and ensure competition in this sector of the economy.

Currently, there are no more than two dozen telecom operators working in the market of a country with a population of one billion people - three times less than, for example, in small Singapore and Taiwan.

WHICH IS MORE PROFITABLE-IMPORT SUBSTITUTION OR EXPORT WORK?

So, after a brief comparison of the concepts of the Internet economies of the two countries, it is a stretch to designate them as import-substituting Russian (relatively developed domestic market, weak presence in the international IT market) and export-oriented Indian (weak domestic market and world leadership in information technology outsourcing).

Probably, each of these concepts will have its own supporters and opponents. Naturally, a developed national segment of the global " web " is a serious advantage over countries that do not have so-called electronic sovereignty, whose Internet space is firmly "occupied" by foreign (read, American) resources. This advantage allows the country to independently determine its own policy in cyberspace and compete with world leaders, even in its own local market.

Moreover, many people believe that outsourcing is primarily work "for the uncle": after all, the customer of services still benefits from this division of labor by saving money and reinvesting them in the further development of their company.

But it's not that simple.

Working closely with leading Western IT companies, Indian specialists primarily contribute to the flow of investment and advanced technologies to their country, solve the problem of oversupply of labor and lack of natural resources, and ultimately improve the well-being of India's growing middle class. And in the long run, those tens of billions of dollars earned by Indians are their own-

much more valuable than the same amount of money earned from selling hydrocarbons abroad. After all, the oil will run out sooner or later, but the brains, knowledge and experience will remain. And as for "electronic sovereignty", is it really necessary for a country that already accounts for up to 30% of its employees, including top managers, such monsters as Google, Microsoft, and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)?²⁰ With a different organization of the Internet economy, a significant part of such people would work in Russia.

Most likely, the answer to the question indicated in the subtitle can serve as a basic rule of chess: only by playing with a stronger opponent can you learn something. Of course, this rule applies both to Indian IT companies that compete with the rest of the world in providing high-tech services, and to Russian Internet giants that are fighting with Western competitors for dominance in the domestic segment of the global web.

But there is also another rule that works here, already from business: it is better to occupy a niche of a couple of percent in the global market than the lion's share of the local market. Simply due to the fact that in the conditions of leadership in any local market, there are no incentives for further growth and development. And the lack of development for any business structure means stagnation, which is tantamount to inevitable death. It is also unprofitable to lock yourself in your own market and in purely material terms: for example, if the Russian software market is 1 - 2% of the world market, this means that working only here brings only 1 - 2% of potential income.

10 leading Russian IT companies on a global scale - small companies. Why? Because any technology company should be global, says Parallels founder Sergey Belousov21. Technology, especially high-end technologies , is an area where only forward movement takes place. And if they are produced only for the local market, then you can get much less financial profit, which is so necessary in order to finance participation in the technological race.

Indian companies initially chose the second way-to enter international markets. Of course, they had no other option: the domestic Indian information technology market began to develop relatively recently. But being a global leader, it is much easier to capture any local market, especially your own, native one, than to become such a leader by conquering the domestic market.

Fortunately, leading Russian IT companies already understand this. The aforementioned Kaspersky Lab and ABBYY have their own representative offices in the USA, Germany, Great Britain, Japan and other countries. At the same time, Lab's sales outside Russia and the Transcaucasian countries accounted for 82% of total sales ($391 million)in 200922. And the Parallels company founded by Sergey Belousov was initially registered in Singapore, and only much later the entrepreneur moved some development centers to Russia. Yandex, which opened Yandex Europe B. V. in The Hague at the end of 2010, is also moving in this direction. It is known from the registration documents that the European branch of the Russian search engine will specialize in such areas as Internet services, electronic data processing, creation and operation of data centers (data processing centers). Fortunately, after a successful IPO, the company now has free funds to expand to Europe.

The potential of the Russian Internet economy is great, and there is reason to hope that its volume will grow in an upward direction. India, on the other hand, is successfully moving along the well - trodden path of outsourcing, and its main task is to use the accumulated experience to attract private users.

¹ Internet World Stats. Usage and Population Status. Internet Users in Asia. March, 2011 - http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm

² Internet World Stats. Usage and Population Status. Internet Users in Europe. March, 2011 - http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats4.htm

³ Internet World Stats. Usage and Population Status. Top 20 Countries with the Highest Number of Internet Users http://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm

⁴ The number of Internet users in developing countries will double by 2015 01.09.2010 / / CyberSecurity.Ru - http://www.cyber-security.ru/telecommunication/101790.html

⁵ Mobile advertising budgets in BRIC countries are growing, 22.04.2011 / / Advertology.Ru - http://www.advertology.ru/print89353.htm

⁶ McKinsey&Company. McKinsey Global Institute. Internet Matters: the Net's Sweeping Impact on Growth, Jobs, and Prosperity. May, 2011, p. V - http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/internet_matters/pdfs/MGI_internet_matters_full _report.pdf

⁷ http://top.rbc.ru/economics/09/11/2010/495799.shtml

⁸ The number of Facebook users exceeded 600 million, 14.01.2011 - http://www.rian.ru/science/20110114/321630411.html

^{Podrez Taras, Vaisberg Valery.} 9 Yandex registered a subsidiary company Yandex Europe B. V. / / Marker, 21.01.2011 -http://marker.ru/news/3349

^{Banke Bartolomeo, Butenko Vladislav, Kotsur Olga.} 10 BCG report. Russia online. Influence of the Internet on the Russian economy, pp. 5, 8 -http://www.bcg.ru/documents/file79165.pdf

¹¹ Ibid., 5-6.

¹² Ibid., p. 15.

¹³ Ibid., pp. 5-6.

¹⁴ The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) (India). IT-BPO Sector in India: Strategic Review 2010 -http://www.nasscom.in/Nasscom/templates/NormalPage.aspx9id-58662

¹⁵ The 2011 Global Services 100: Defining Leadership in Global IT and Business Process Outsourcing - http://microsites.globalser-vicesmedia.com/gsl00/show.article.asp?5E5F5F115A5956115E

¹⁶ Данные Luxsoft - http://www.luxoft.ru/about/glance/fact_sheet.html

^{Yershov Sergey.} 17 The global IT outsourcing market has gone through the worst of times // CNews.Ru - http://www.cnews.ru/reviews/free/itservice2009/articles/rin.shtml

¹⁸ Data Alexa.com. Places as of 21.09.2010.

^Rekhajain. 19 Improving telecom USOF's impact., 11.06.2011 // The Economic Times - http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-06 - 11/news/29647164_1_vpts-rural-areas-rural-obligations

^{Ponomareva A.} 20 Programmer = Indian // India.Ру - www.india.ru/india/dif/programmer.shtml

^{Golitsyna A.} 21 An IT company should be global. Interview with Sergey Brusov / / Vedomosti, 12.07.2010.

²² Kaspersky Lab website - http://www.kaspersky.ru/about

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