How to Build a Global Tech Business from India?

Krishna Mehra@kpowerinfinity

21-May-2013

The India Growth Story is Quite Fascinating

Which is probably why all of you are here…

A Little About Me…

• Entrepreneur, co-founder @capillarytech– 5 Year old startup in the Consumer CRM Space– 10,000 Stores, 70M Consumers, 10 Global Offices– $15.5M from Sequoia & Norwest

• Earlier Researcher at MSFT, B.Tech from IIT Kharagpur, Worked at Minekey Inc.

• Family into the Book Publishing

How’d all Begin?

Choosing the Space• Mobile & Retail looked like a great opportunity

– Easy seed financing from alma-mater– Wanted to do something similar to Groupon… before Groupon

• Early Challenges– The “Indian Baniya Businessman”– Cost of Data– The Mobile Savvy Indian Customer is probably not so savvy

• The Pivot into CRM

Getting Initial Traction

“You” are the “Product”

Traction begets Money

• Angel Funding Eco-System in India is harder– Real revenue

traction expected

• Focus on Business, Funding will happen

The Team is the Clincher

• Hiring is hard!– Money– Equity– Marriage– Distance– Work– Passion

Picture taken from http://therodinhoods.com/profiles/blogs/flat-marriage-and-family-3-reasons-why-young-indians-don-t-turn

Iterate, Iterate, Iterate

Growing Pains

Selling Software in India• Indians Buy a Phone Number

– @mukund, http://goo.gl/RE9B1

• Nobody wants to be a “Sales Guy”– Sales as a function is not as well

established

• Fragmented Channel for Selling Software

• The frustrations of Getting Paid for your work

India Runs on SaaS

• Op-ex based Pricing & Servicing model better suited to Indian Customers

• Fuse Products & Services together

• Prevent Piracy

The Product vs Services Debate

• Initially, it doesn’t matter– Getting traction is most critical

• It’s always going to be both– They can’t exist without each other

• It’s where in the continuum you fall – Strongly defines the growth curve

The Decision to Look Abroad• Is your product sellable in global markets?

• Market Size Challenges in Scaling up– Lack of a large local market– The Currency-Conversion Factor

• Investor Pressure? Many VCs (at least in India) today prefer a Global Story

• Regulatory Challenges in building a Global Business from India

The Advantages of Jugaad

• Frugal Innovation: Indian Customers are more forgiving to product defects

• Talent Availability, and ability to iterate quickly

• Capital is Easier than many other parts of the world

Thank you!

@kpowerinfinity