The single most important trend unfolding in the world today is globalization -- the distribution of cheap tools of communication and innovation that are wiring together the world's citizens, governments, businesses, terrorists and mountaintops -- and it is going to a whole new level. In India alone, some 15 million new cell phone users are being added each month.
Having traveled to both China and India in the last few weeks, here's a scary thought I have: What if -- for all the hype about China, India and globalization -- they're actually underhyped? What if these sleeping giants are just finishing a 20-year process of getting the basic technological and educational infrastructure in place to become innovation hubs and we haven't seen anything yet?
Here's an example of why I ask these questions. It's a typical Indian startup I visited in a garage in South Delhi, EKO India Financial Services. Its founders, Abhishek Sinha and his brother Abhinav, began with a small insight -- that low-wage Indian migrant workers flocking to Delhi from poorer states like Bihar had no place to put their savings and no secure way to send money home to their families. India has relatively few bank branches for a country its size, so many migrants stuff money in their mattresses or send cash home through traditional "hawala," or hand-to-hand networks.
The brothers had an idea. In every Indian neighborhood or village there's usually a mom-and-pop kiosk that seell drinks, cigarettes, candy and a few groceries. Why not turn each one into a virtual bank
So they created a software program whereby a migrant worker worker in Delhi, using his cell phone and proof of identity, could open a bank account registered on his cell phone text system. Mom-and-pop shopkeepers would act as the friendly neighborhood local banker and do the same.
Then the worker in New Delhi could give a kiosk owner in his slum 1,000 rupees (about $20), the shopkeeper would record it on his phone and text receipt of the deposit to the system's mother bank, the State Bank of India. Then, the worker's wife back in Bihar could just go to the mom-and-pop kiosk in her village, also tied into the system, and make a withdrawal using her cell phone. The shopkeeper there would give her the 1,000 rupees sent by her husband.
Each shopkeeper would earn a small fee from each transaction. Besides money transfers, workers could also use the system to bank their savings.
Since opening 18 months ago, their virtual bank now has 180,000 users doing more than 7,000 transactions a day through 500 "branches" -- mom-and-pop kiosks -- in Delhi and 200 more in Bihar and Jharkhand, the hometowns of many maids and migrants. EKO gets a tiny commission from the Bank of India for each transaction and two months ago started to turn a small profit.
Abhishek, who was inspired by a similar program in Brazil, said the kiosk owners "are already trusted people in each community" and are already in the habit of extending credit to their poor customers: "So we said, 'Why not leverage them?' We are the agents of the bank, and these retailers are our subagents."
What is striking about the small EKO team is that it includes graduates from India's most prestigious institutes of technology who were working in America but decided to come home for the action, while the chief operating officer -- Matteo Chiampo -- is an Italian technologist who left a good job in Boston to work here, "where the excitement is," he said.
In the next decade, I predict, we will see some really disruptive business models coming out of India -- to a neighborhood near you. If you thought the rate of change was fast thanks to the garage innovators of Silicon Valley, wait until the garages of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore get fully up to speed.
I sure hope we're ready.


THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN is a columnist for the New York Times.