Rahul Pathak : My Personal Blog

Q: Hey Rahul - thanks for joining Askablogr! I saw your post about your recent India trip and was curious: do you have any specific strategy tips for U.S. managers wanting to tap the Indian market?

Posted by Chris DeVore

A: Great question Chris. Also, I’m looking forward to trying out the Askablogr service. A few things jump out when thinking about tapping into a different markets.

1. Get a local contact you can trust:While it’s valuable to have an outsider’s perspective, I think it’s very important to also have good, trusted local contacts. Each country has a different tempo and there’s the official way things get done and the real way. It really helps to have someone you trust helping you manage relationships on the ground. 
2. Understand Local Nuances:Porting business models is tempting, but it’s important to also understand where things are different from what you’re used to. India’s consumer web use is still largely metered and dialup based. Also, more and more people are using their phones as their primary point of connectivity. This has major implications for how you might choose to do business. Another point that came up on my trip - copyright law. India’s copyright on things like movies is 30 years shorter than that of the USA. If you’re in the content business, you’ve got to understand this.
3. Be Patient:With any new endeavor, there will be obstacles. I think all the complexity is amplified when you’re going international. India will be a pretty big challenge from anyone moving from the USA. Having said that, the growth out there is insane and as you’d expect, infrastructure is straining to keep up. I think it’s a market that you can’t afford to ignore. Going global is similar to a local site in the US going national. Go market by market - establish a beach-head, build critical mass, repeat.

I came back from my trip pretty inspired by what I saw and also very aware that the pace of change out there can only mean increased competition here. It’s definitely a fun time to be doing business.

There’s a great post on Redeye VC about targeting ads at employees of big Internet companies. While Josh Kopelman was focused on finding ex-employees interested in  starting a company, his approach (which is very clever and like most good ideas ‘duh-inducing’) strikes me as a great way for recently funded startups to find disgruntled developer talent.

I decided to test Facebook’s targeting mechanism by running targeted ads to employees of large Internet companies — including Yahoo and Microsoft.

In Seattle, if you’re looking for .NET talent, poaching from Microsoft is a way of life and buying employer-targeted ads on Facebook and LinkedIn might be a great way to go.

Thanks for a great post, Josh.

I just got back from a week-long trip to India and I was blown away  by how much growth the country is experiencing. The economy is booming and there’s opportunity everywhere. Infrastructure is straining to keep up - there’s traffic everywhere, airports are clogged, streets are crowded, there’s advertising everywhere you look - in short, the country is going nuts.

Going from the US, where the talk around the economy is so negative, to India where most people are making hay, made the contrast even more jarring. There’s a sense of optimism overseas which is pretty inspiring. If you’re not thinking about how you can leverage assets overseas or how global consumers are relevant to what you’re trying to do, you’re missing out on tremendous potential.

On an unrelated note, a ton of people I spoke to out there view the current situation in the US (declining stock markets, real estate prices, subprime meltdown) as a buying opportunity. I don’t know if this is a bottom yet (actually, I’m pretty sure it’s not) but if you can be a buyer when everyone else is selling, in general, that’s probably a good thing.