Monday, November 20, 2000		Article

M-commerce: counting chickens before
 they hatch?
by Peeyush Agnihotri

IN this region, where e-commerce is in diapers and m-commerce has just been conceived, computer educational institutes are already basking in the latter’s glory and are busy introducing m-commerce courses.

From the present 3 million, mobile phones in India will overtake PCs that are at about 11 million, by 2003, analysts predict.

The institutes have been quick to cash on this statistical projection and are already counting the chicks before they’ve hatched. The more prudent ones, wary of the trend, have preferred to upgrade their e-commerce curriculum and included new courses in their syllabi.

"We have introduced AceP.net, an m-commerce oriented course that has the latest modules like XML, WML and WAP," says Himanshu Bathla, Centre Head, Aptech, Panchkula.

Other enterprising ones have gone whole hog to introduce full-fledged m-commerce courses. They charge anywhere between Rs 20,000 to 25,000.

Curriculum, infrastructure and teaching faculty. Well, those can wait as a few of them admitted non-availability of trained m-commerce teachers as a pressing problem.

"Finding a faculty member trained in the new technology is difficult," says Rajan, manager at an institute in Sector 8, Chandigarh. He says 40 per cent of commerce course-related queries at his centre are about m-commerce. "The course will be of seven-month duration with two-months of live project and Rs 24, 500 will be charged from each student. Students will be trained on mobiles and lap-tops and classes will start after a week," he adds.

"M-commerce will take long, say five years, before it becomes viable in India. With the technology changing at a rapid pace, who knows if the present day curriculum might become obsolete by then. Ultimately, the control buttons of pass-outs will lie with the MNCs," feels Prof Subhash Vaidya, Dean, Faculty of Management and Commerce, Panjab University.

"The hype surrounding m-commerce is high. So institutes have resorted to marketing gimmicks, anticipating a rush for their courses. Even in developed countries like Australia while e-commerce has caught on, m-commerce is yet to take off, really speaking," says Anita Abbi, General Manager, Austech.

Ajay Mantoo, Central Director of Zed Career Academy, agrees: "M-commerce is all theory and no live project till now. Even DoT has not given radio permission as yet though that might not be much of a problem at a later stage."

He says m-commerce aspirants are convinced to go in for WAP development programmes first and opines that even e-commerce in banking is facing teething troubles in India.

Those running the courses however disagree. "The concept of m-commerce is successful, purely because m-commerce has the convenience of taking and implementing decisions at the same time. Our country doesn’t have the required infrastructure and the bandwidth. E-commerce implementers faced these problems. But WAP will operate through thin air and it’s just six to eight months before it starts becoming rather actual in our daily lives," Dr B.S. Gill from Microuniv says and feels that pass-outs will have good scope in India as well "since all Web sites and portals will need them eventually."

E-commerce or m-commerce. Both or only one and which of these. Computer educational institutions hold a divided opinion about the modules and courses. This being a transitory and a decisive stage, will opinions change after six months? Maybe!