Are Gujarat businesses going to suffer if they don't quickly get on Social Media?

Gujarat is land of entrepreneurs. Government is promoting Gujarat as a top investment destination. Businesses are signing multi-billion dollar MoUs for projects. Media in India has gone crazy about development going on in Gujarat. But Gujarat which trailed to catch up on IT has never taken Internet and IT seriously. This has been reflected in business brands in Gujarat. It skillset in these companies either have been more doing routine operational stuff or the budgets are not there to really leverage the best solutions for internal usage and branding the company.

Today for any mid to large sized business, having a clean, modern looking website is absolute must.

Large corporates allocate huge marketing budgets and dedicated team to manage their website, content and promoting their brands in international market.

I've taken around 3 minutes review of each of the Top 5 Fortune 2010 brands. I found that they are engaging heavily with their clients, customers to get feedback and improving products. They are even going to the level of crowdsourcing for new ideas. e.g look at what GE is doing http://challenge.ecomagination.com They are using power of internet and social media to build solid trust with their followers and improving their brand's global reach. Each of these brands syndicate content for others to consume.

Here is summary of what I found for Top 5 fortune 2010 companies.

Fortune Top 5 Companies

Then I started analyzing companies of Gujarati Entrepreneurs. The findings will put doubts in all those who say that Gujarat companies are ready to compete with the best in the world. I ever wonder why hasn't any analyst even asked any question to these company management about their branding, website and customer engagement strategies. If the world is engaging closely with customers, what is preventing Gujarat Companies from doing it?

Here is what I found for Top 5 companies of Gujarat:

5 Leading Companies of Gujarati Entrepreneurs

** No copyright year in RIL Site

** Adani Group site has 2008 copyright

** http://www.adani.in/pressrelease.htm – broken in Firefox

** Zydus Cadila menus not working in Firefox

** Arvind Mills website is in flash, poor usability, hard to read fonts

** Torrent Group has copyright of 2004, Pharma unit has 2003, hard to read fonts, poor navigation

So what do you think? – not having well defined web and social media strategy – will it hurt these and many other companies to gain international exposure? Or maybe they are just happy with Gujarat and domestic consumption story!!!

Poll Question

Why Gujarat Businesses are not embracing Social Media?