SUMMARY
From Ola to OYO, native startups are looking overseas for the next phase of growth
Taking their product to other countries is one of the biggest fears of Indian startups
In this week’s Startup 101 series, Thiyagarajan Maruthavanan talks about what it takes to go global
OYO, Ola, GoQii, MakeMyTrip, Ixigo— the list of Indian startups which have expanded into overseas markets successfully is quite long. Meanwhile, multi-national companies like Amazon, Walmart, Ofo, among others have entered the Indian market to participate in India’s booming markets and engage with a new generation of India’s digital growth.
However, for many India startups, going global can be a daunting task, filled with uncertainties and costly mistakes.
In this week’s Startup 101 series, we got Thiyagarajan Maruthavanan (Rajan), Partner, B2B SaaS accelerator Upekkha to address to talk about the thought process, rules and regulations involved in taking your startup global.
Even though he believes that the global launch is not as hard as it was earlier, and shares that today to get your first 10 customers you can go to a product hunt and launch there, you can find people who are relevant to your persona. At the same time, you can go to different internet forums and share this as there are several online forums where you can do that.
Thiyagarajan highlighted that most people think about the product launch as a big-bang event but for internet products and digital products that is not the right way.
“I was doing my first startup, my friend and guide Amit Ranjan, at the time gave me the advice that even if you are building your B2C startup, the first focus is to get your first few thousand fans. Now, if you need only thousand people, you can find it in your Twitter network, Facebook network, in your friends’ network, provided that they are in the relevant persona that is meant for your product,” he added.
He believes that launch is not the big thing, it’s more about what you do once you have released— is it resonating with the target audience? how do you take it forward? This is lot more difficult than trying to figure out what and where to launch.
