1 Healthcare: Biotechnology has opened up a world of endless possibilities to mankind. Diseases that traumatise and kill people today will become a thing of the past. Surgery may be replaced with non-intrusive techniques that don't just repair, but grow new cells to heal. That in turn will have a dramatic impact on productivity and efficiency of workforce. But increasing longevity will create a market for new kinds of geriatric care.

2 Environment: Population growth in developed countries will begin to taper off, while that of Third World countries will continue to clip. Basic natural resources such as air, water, fuel will become big issues. Innovations aimed at squeezing more out of dwindling resources will hit the market. Increasing global incomes would increase the consumption of energy. Therefore, new ways of tapping green and renewable sources of fuel will be developed.

3 Education: In the new age, labour will increasingly be replaced by knowledge. Mechanical jobs will either be eliminated or entrusted to machines. Personal progress would be linked to education. With more people seeking education, the need will be for the service providers to reach out to them inexpensively but ubiquitously.

4 Communications: The demand for information and connectivity will grow exponentially. Media will converge with greater force, and more versatile communication devices will see the light of day. Geographical distance would become meaningless, and the cost of communication ape the trend in information technology.

5 Artificial Intelligence: Robots built to think like humans will be everywhere: at road crossings, shop counters, offices, restaurants, and even in the cockpit of an aircraft. Highly developed user interface will allow such robots to talk to human beings and build their knowledge dynamically. In the short term, artificial intelligence will potentially endanger all low-skill tasks currently carried out by human beings. In the long run, it may play God.

Sowing the seeds of consumer revolution

The Rural Revolution

If you are a marketer, your next big revolution is not going to come from the middle-class. Rather, it is going to be led by the people you've ignored so far-the poor. Here's why: just 1 per cent rise in rural income translates into Rs 10,000 crore of buying power. By end 2007, half of 200 million Indian households will be accounted for by 'Aspirants' and 'Climbers'-those with annual income between Rs 16,000 and Rs 45,000 (at 1998-99 prices). They will still not make it to what marketers love to call the 'Consuming Class', with annual income between Rs 45,000 and Rs 2,15,000.

Let us look at penetration projections of some consumer durables by 2007 in rural India. Colour television penetration will go up by 363 per cent from the current 38 per 1,000 households to 138. Refrigerators from 29 to 65. Even in consumer expendables, packaged biscuits will enter nearly half of all Indian households, from less than 40 per cent currently. Ditto for shampoo. Read between these numbers, and there is a different story here. With penetration amongst top urban socio-economic class A and B households nearing saturation on most of these product categories, the envisaged growth in penetration is going to come from urban low income households and rural households. Already, FMCG major Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL) makes half of its Rs 10,948 crore revenue from rural India.

The aspiration for consumption would have been built up largely through deeper penetration of both terrestrial and cable and satellite television, from the current 70 million to 139 million households by 2010. What will be needed are appropriate products, pricing and distribution strategies to tap the bottom of the consumer pyramid. And this will mean a radical shift in management thinking: from gross margins to high profit; from high-value unit sales to a game of volumes and capital efficiency. And more importantly from the one-solution-fits-all mentality to market innovation.

HLL, which was forced into the low-priced detergents business (Wheel) by Nirma, discovered that its return on capital employed for Wheel was much higher at 93 per cent compared to 22 per cent from its high-end detergent brand Surf, though gross margins, at 18 per cent, were lower for Wheel compared to 25 per cent of Surf. It is even creating consumer buying-power (and not waiting for income levels to rise) through self-help groups in rural Andhra Pradesh. Or Aravind Eye Hospital, which does over a million cataract surgeries annually, 60 per cent free of cost and the rest at 30 per cent discount to market rates, and yet turned a profit of Rs 11 core on an income of Rs 23 crore-a jaw-dropping 44 per cent return-on-sales.

The opportunities exist wherever you can identify a problem. Rural telephony, with penetration at just 4 per 1,000 individuals, even by 2010, according to projections by the Department of Telecommunications. What hinders it is the average cost of putting a new telephone line-at Rs 30,000. Enter cordect, a wireless in local loop technology that marries telephony and internet, developed by Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Professor at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and the fixed cost can be brought down to Rs 18,000.

In a country where nearly 20 per cent of urban population is illiterate, with more than a third in the rural areas, isn't there an opportunity for a language-free internet interface that will take the medium to the masses? A good quality, single-serve packaged ice cream for Rs 2-3? Branded apparel and footwear for the entire family, available at organised retail, at prices lower than Rs 300? Not a Rs 30 potency drink, but maybe Rs 2-3 for the blue-collar worker?

-Shailesh Dobhal