HarperCollins India is delighted to announce the acquisition of The Next Billion Ready by PAYAL ARORA

HarperCollins India  

is delighted to announce the acquisition of

The Next Billion Ready

BY PAYAL ARORA

 

About the book

A group of students in India spends hours analyzing Instagram’s metrics to shape their creative content in hope of becoming influencers. Ongoing digital campaigns by an NGO on healthy sex and relationships in Egypt, Kenya, and Lebanon are barely liked or shared but are heavily followed by millions of their young people. The Gen Z in Nigeria and Vietnam have become fast adopters of cryptocurrency, educating themselves incessantly through YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. These next billion users, young people outside the West in precarious and resource constrained environments with access to cheap data and mobile phones, are fundamentally changing how the internet is being used. Despite challenging socio-political environments, they are pioneering ingenious ways to self-actualize online through their creative content. However, current digital systems are not being built for them.

Tech Trend reports indicate that the next big trend in digital won’t emerge from a Western market. There is pressure on governments and corporations to capture data in the AI arms race for the future of innovation. India and China already account for most of the users in the world without having reached market saturation. A typical user in the Global South is twice as active online than their Northern counterpart. Major tech companies have got on the bandwagon, setting up next billion user labs to gain insights on this vast user base. Inclusive design is less altruistic and more consumer centric, attuned to the potential of diversity to foster innovation. UX researchers, media startups, aid agencies, and business folks are eager to unpack the black box on this user group. It’s not just a numbers game. The fervent aspirations of these users are fuel to new innovations and co-creations, where oftentimes they take the lead in what works for them and why.

In The Next Billion Ready, Arora proposes ways in which we can envision new digital systems and thinking to include the world. Drawing from fieldwork insights on young creators in diverse contexts such as Brazil, India, and Bangladesh, she reveals how their understandings of metrics shape their creativity, trust, identity, livelihoods, and political action. She draws from her numerous global engagements with public and private sector organizations and shares her learnings on what keeps UX designers, policy makers, digital startups, and aid agencies up at night as they struggle with tensions between risk and opportunity, and localization and scalability in design.

With the climate crisis, there is an added risk that digital inclusion is pitted against climate justice. Her book is targeted to organizations ready to take leadership of a global digital future. She argues that ethical data governance, and sustainable design will no longer be an option but a necessity. Organizations that recognize the compatibility between social and planetary well-being are the ones that will not just survive but thrive. She points out that it would be a serious mistake to view the next billion users as mere data sources to be extracted. Instead, she argues that they are at the forefront to help us reimagine the future of work, creativity, finance, banking, and even the fate of our planet.

Payal Arora says, “ I am thrilled to be working with HarperCollins India on my forth book, especially given how India is at the ripe stage to take leadership and shape future digital trends and innovations. In these difficult geopolitical times, many global organizations are becoming increasingly pessimistic, risk-averse, and inward-looking. Meanwhile, young people in places like Nigeria, India, and Vietnam are forging ahead with hope as they connect, create, and curate their digital engagements. They refuse to be left behind. I am grateful to HarperCollins for giving me this platform to champion the next billion users as a group we need to attend to, learn from, and collaborate for a resilient digital future.”

“We are delighted to acquire Payal Arora’s The Next Billion Ready. As one of the foremost digital anthropologists globally, Payal’s insights on creating a sustainable and inclusive digital future are of great value. We believe this book will provide the roadmap to organizations and policy makers to envision a better future for the planet.” Says Sachin Sharma, Executive Editor at HarperCollins India.

About HARPERCOLLINS INDIA 

HarperCollins is also celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, having begun publishing in India in 1992. HarperCollins India publishes some of the finest writers from the Indian Subcontinent and around the world, publishing approximately 200 new books every year, with a print and digital catalogue of more than 2,000 titles across 10 imprints. Its authors have won almost every major literary award including the Man Booker Prize, JCB Prize, DSC Prize, New India Foundation Award, Atta Galatta Prize, Shakti Bhatt Prize, Gourmand Cookbook Award, Publishing Next Award, Tata Literature Live! Award, Gaja Capital Business Book Prize, BICW Award, Sushila Devi Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and Crossword Book Award. HarperCollins India also represents some of the finest publishers in the world including Harvard University Press, Gallup Press, Oneworld, Bonnier Zaffre, Usborne, Dover and Lonely Planet. HarperCollins India has won the Publisher of the Year Award four times at Tata Literature Live! in 2022, 2021, 2018 and 2016, and at Publishing Next in 2015. HarperCollins India is a subsidiary of HarperCollins Publishers.

For more information, please write to Aman Arora at aman.arora@harpercollins.co.in