Innovation and cost-cutting
创新与削减成本

The limits of frugality
印度商业：成本节约已达极限



Making things cheaper is not the same thing as making profits
降低商品价格不等于有利可图

Oct 22nd 2011 | from the print edition

THE MOST IMPORTANT event in Indian business in 2011 may have been an outburst on September 6th by Sunil Mittal, the boss of Bharti Airtel, the mobile-phone operator. India’s telecoms industry is admired the world over for the innovative way in which it has slashed prices and put phones into the hands of even the very poorest. Today there are some 600m active subscribers in India, many of them in the countryside. But Mr Mittal said the extra cost of servicing rural customers, and their low usage levels, had made things unprofitable. Prices are now expected to go up across the industry, after two decades of decline. India’s low-cost telecoms revolution has, it seems, reached its limit.
9月6日，移动电话运营商巴蒂电信公司的老板苏尼尔?米塔尔情绪失控。这可能是2011年印度商界最重大的事件。印度的电信业享誉全球，皆因其应用创新的经营手法大幅削减手机价格，甚至令最贫穷的人也能用得起手机。如今，印度大约有6亿有效手机用户，其中很多住在乡村地区。但是米塔尔先生说，公司为给农村用户提供服务花了许多额外费用，而这些用户的手机使用率却很低，这两点都已令这盘生意无利可图。在过去二十年中，整个电信业的手机价格都在下降；而如今据预计，价格将会上升。看来，印度的低成本电信革命已达极限。

Indian firms have made much of their ability to serve the poor masses at the “bottom of the pyramid”. Along with cheap phones, other celebrated examples include one-rupee sachets of shampoo and clever schemes to get around the lack of bank accounts. This reflects raw commercial instinct, but also serves an ideological purpose by showing that capitalism in India is not just for the middle classes. It is politic for Indian bosses to talk up their ability to invent things that all can afford.
印度的公司都已经花费大量精力为处于“金字塔底部”的贫苦大众服务的能力。除了廉价手机，其他广为人知的例子包括一卢比的小包袋装洗发水和解决没有银行帐户的问题的高明策略。这种手段不但反映了印度人天生的商业本能，还通过表明印度的资本主义并非只为中产阶级带来利益，这种手段也能起到意识形态方面的作用。对印度的老板而言，宣扬自己有能力生产每个人都能买得起的产品是个上策。

Whether their firms profit as a result is less clear. Mobile phones are not the only field where the limits of frugali

ty are being reached. Tata Motors’ Nano, a $3,000 car, has been a flop so far. Some blame Tata’s marketing, but other carmakers say they cannot