Representing the Non-formal: the Business of Internet cafés in India

It is our contention that small businesses of information and communication technologies are deeply embedded in a context of non-formal business relations and practices in developing economies. Cyber cafés in the city of Mumbai, the subject of our study, and illegitimacy, informality of business practices in emerging economies provide an alternate premise to understand its nature and operates in and through an unregulated grey market of non-formal business practices. In this paper we explore the fit of ICTs into this ‘area’ of commercial practices. We do relationships this by profiling café managers, business strategies and contextualizing these in the broader culture of non-formal business pervading every day transactions. With regulatory discourse of information technologies centered on piracy function. These challenge received notions of visualizing IT in emerging economies as simply piracy and illegality. It also implies coming to terms with markets shaped and structured by para-legal and non-formal processes in negotiating on-going and future business relationships.