Main takeaways: - Understanding the dynamics of emerging markets - Key differences between building products for the US vs. developing economies - Product-market fit and challenges to scale

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How to Build Products In Emerging
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10. Rahool Gadkari
TONIGHT’S SPEAKER

11. Introduction
- SPM at Zocdoc
- Lead a Growth & UX team
- 5.5 yrs PM experience
Companies I’ve
worked for
Institutions

12. - I’ve built products for these emerging markets:
- India
- Brazil
- Indonesia
- Philippines
- Passionate and bullish about these markets
- Huge opportunity size
- High impact problem statements
- Difficult but rewarding work
Why am I talking about this topic?

13. Preface
- Focussed on bringing an existing product to emerging markets
- Primary focus will be on India, with some examples from other countries
- Designed this for a general audience:
- Don’t need to be a PM or
- Have ever visited an emerging market
- I’ll cover some high level examples of problems I’ve worked on
- This is just a primer, and by no means is this exhaustive
- Let’s keep it interactive!

14. - Introduction to emerging markets
- Four key takeaways to be successful in these markets
- Endnotes
- Q&A
Agenda

15. Emerging Market
“An emerging market is a country that has some characteristics of a developed
market, but does not satisfy standards to be termed a developed market. This
includes countries that may become developed markets in the future or were in the
past”
Source: Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_market#cite_note-2

16. Emerging Market - in more detail
Source: https://www.msci.com/documents/1296102/1330218/MSCI_Market_Classification_Framework.pdf/d93e536f-cee1-4e12-9b69-ec3886ab8cc8

17. Emerging Market Countries
Source: https://www.msci.com/emerging-markets

18. Why do they matter
- Huge untapped internet population (1.5Bn + between just India, Brazil and
China)
- ~40% + of the world GDP
- 2-3X GDP growth rate of developing economies
- Young population
- Highly underserviced

19. Market
reigns
Supreme

20. Take your time to understand each market
- Size up the market, greater population <> more users
- Size up the competition
- Understand Internet / mobile penetration and usage trends
- Infrastructure support
- To Localize or not to localize?

21. Take your time to understand each market (cont.)
- Consider population density, especially from the supply side. Eg: if you’re
thinking of running a marketplace
- Infrastructure/logistics: Eg: brazil and the problem of last mile delivery
- After sales support / onboarding - limited automation possible
- Evolution of other internet businesses in the market. Eg: Practo and reliability
challenges
- Understand regulation
- Understand the quirks of the market and exploit them

22. Build for
Mobile

23. Desktop ?

24. Smartphone usage growing rapidly in emerging
markets led by China
Source: KP Internet Trends 2018

25. ..and India
Source: The Year in Search Report Google

26. These markets are 80%+ Android OS
Share of Android, iOS by market

27. Mobile usage aided by cheaper data costs
- India has the cheapest cost per mb of data in the whole world
Source: KP Internet Trends 2018

28. Mobile != Apps
- Mobile web remains a key acquisition channels, especially for new businesses
- Apps - key engagement channel
Source: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-apac/trends-and-insights/masters-mobile-india-report/
India: top 500 apps vs top 500 mobile websites

29. Yet, there are some challenges. Eg: India
- Data/cellular coverage
- Internet speeds are inconsistent - products needs to take being offline
seriously. Eg: Youtube
- Storage constraints. Eg: Flipkart lite, Facebook lite

30. An example from today:

31. Plan for
Monetization

32. Revenue for top startups
Sector Revenue FY 2018 ($)
Zomato Food tech 74M
PayTM Payments 480M
Flipkart e-commerce 3.1B
Grab Ride hailing 1B
- Markets are hard to monetize
- A lot of growth driven by influx of venture funding

33. Spotify, Netflix & Prime subscription fee in India
$1.67 / month $7.3 / month $1.9 / month

34. Guidelines to monetization
- Focus on getting a scalable business plan in place
- Who will you monetize ? Consumer monetization is challenging (esp. at scale)
- Who is your comp?
- Will supply side commissions scale ?
- Subscriptions are increasingly working
- Think through your unit economics
- How much runway does your business have
- Test acquisition strategies
- Figure out distribution channels
- Vendors and Partnerships
- Use pricing tiers
- Very difficult to change price point when set (both from a tech and business standpoint)

35. Leverage
Human
Capital

36. Scaling through people
- Cost of hiring an entry level ops/sales associate is as low as $400-
500/month
- First principles thinking required on acquisition and support strategies:
- Have a starter strategy
- Plan to migrate to a growth/scaling strategy once you achieve market fit
- Don’t over engineer. Eg: data quality challenges often require more hands
on approach
- B2B2C businesses are a great opportunity
- Caveat - don’t lose sight of your unit economics

37. Endnotes
- Emerging markets have tremendous potential
- Remember to focus on the basics:
- Understand the market
- Build for mobile
- Plan for monetization
- Leverage Human Capital
- Some sectors I’m excited about:
- Sustainability solutions. Eg: energy efficient supply chains
- NBFC lending. Eg: small business / individual loans
- Micro mobility. Eg: < 5km distance transportation solutions ala GoJek

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