Globalization and 1 to n products in India – Our first Indian bet
We have never really had any Indian client till date nor do we have had any B2C plays or investments in India just because we could not connect with the Indian audience. I think the primary reason was that we are essentially a mobile first company and really cannot envision products without any mobile aspects. Given the huge growth of Android adoption in India in the past two years, I have been tracking things very carefully and had started taking some initial steps to position us to enter the Indian market since three months back. It was still very crude, without any real roadmap.
Then I came across this video:
It just connected the dots for me and I immediately knew how we want to position ourselves our Indian play. There is no need to invent when there is so much to optimize. India is bound to see at least 10 obvious, mobile first, billion dollar companies emerge and we are uniquely positioned. We know what works world over, we understand it intricately and our execution is proven. All we needed was a strong thesis and right timing.
We are betting on mobility focussed 1 to n products or globalization as Peter Thiel calls it. The reason is simple, the effort to impact ratio is just maximum implementing obvious products that bring convenience to the west but much needed efficiency and necessity to the developing world. In many cases, these solutions are not replacing anything as in western markets but just bypassing web based solutions completely.
Lets take an example, Lyft allows people to use their cars as taxis whenever they want and earn some extra cash. I and most Indians have been doing this since 15 years in India without any app and a peer to peer ride-sharing app just makes that process easier. It is amazing that a common cultural behavior is invented/appified in San Francisco first and no one has yet built something to help the people doing this already. Well, we are doing it. we will launch a peer to peer ride-sharing app in India and set the ball rolling for more India centric mobile products to come. Starting, nest week we will start a pre launch campaign. More details to follow, stay tuned.
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