Individual Capitalism: Empowering People

The 18th Century was the age of the Industrial Revolution. It paved the way for the prosperity of people all around the world and instilled a new way of humanism altogether. After initial stages, it defined the “way of doing things” and gave a prosperous future and empowerment of society back then.

On a similar note, the 21st Century is defined as the age of information. The world has seen drastic technological changes in the last decade such as the rise of mobile computing. We have seen the transformative power of IoT (Internet of Things), Artificial Intelligence, and Big Data which has given a paradigm shift to the “Way of doing things”.

This “Way of doing things” has largely affected the business models in which organizations opt. Instead of being organization-centric, it has more become individual-centric. The influence of maven has seen a definitive improvement in the recent past. This has given rise to a new business model; The model of Individual Capitalism. This has significantly changed the way markets work and has created a win-win situation for everyone associated with the life-cycle; the businesses, the investors, and the customers.

How has this happened? Let us try to understand this by the following example:

* Online Cab Booking Service:

Initially, if we wanted to travel across the different points in cities, we had to rely on either public transport or Auto Rickshaw or Private Cab Agencies. We never used to have fulfilling customer experience because of one or other disputes with the source of business.

Then enters an online cab booking service with a unique “way of doing things”. It utilizes the age of information in true sense. It does not have its own cabs; rather it shows you available cabs in the area whose services you can avail. The Service acts as a maven and connects the customer with the business. For providing the correct and required information with much ease to customers, it receives compensation from the customer. By providing the opportunity to serve the customer, it gets its own share of compensation from the business source.

Let us dive deeper to understand this more.

·

The Perspective of Business Source:

The business source a.k.a. Cab Driver gets a customer from the cab service. The customer pays directly to the cab driver through the cab service after having a fulfilling experience. As per the research and analysis, Cab driver receives a minimum sum of around 100–150 Rupees in his pocket per journey (Cab drivers define a customer as a journey generally). Cab driver receives almost 10 to 12 such journeys in a day. This leads the Cab Driver to have around 1000–1500 bucks per day.

Now, this is a big amount for a simple Cab Driver who was used to earn 5000 to 8000 a month from a Cab Service company. For the same amount of effort, Cab driver earns more. The previous dissatisfaction from the job, anger, and hatred towards customers is turned to “being your own boss” and “the customer is god” feeling in Driver. This instills the individual self-responsibility in Cab driver to provide better service and experience to the customer (better-serviced cars with good amenities and a good tone while talking).

· The Perspective of Customer:

The customer receives good experience and service from the cab without much haste, just by tapping the phone screen twice by paying the same amount of money as Private Cab Agencies or Auto Rickshaws. Customer also receives exciting offers from the cab services for rendering services through them which is an added advantage.

Every point for Customer converges to a good experience for choosing an online cab service which gives him good experience at a nominal price instead of the haste and sufferings of other available options.

· The Perspective of Maven ( Cab Service Provider):

The Maven tries to keep both ends happy and receives good compensation. It tries to increase the business source so that it can cover more market share and can receive more compensation. This increases the flow of money which attracts investors.

Investors also receive great returns from the maven because of the never-ending demand. This also helps the supporting businesses to grow. (Example: Increase in Car Sale (Tata has tied up with Uber to provide Cars on Simpler terms to Drivers), payment methods (different online payment gateway receive great business.) .)

This is just one example of how Individual Capitalism can create wonders. Other examples include the following:

• Online food ordering system — actors are more; Business Source (Restaurant), the delivery system, food ordering system, and customer.
• Online Stores for merchandise — actors increased; business source (The actual provider), Packaging industry, Delivery mechanism, online store, and customers.
• More Actors, more benefits!

Individual capitalism instills true sense of Capitalism. This executes the actual meaning of Collective Individual self Responsibility. This empowers the people in true sense. This will pave the way for the enriched future of the information era the way big businesses gave us the revolution back in the 18th century.

The above examples are pertaining to India. For other countries, you may think on a similar line.

Originally published: June 2016.