The document outlines insights on building a global tech business from India, highlighting entrepreneurs' challenges, especially in sales and funding. Key themes include the importance of traction, the need for a flexible product-service strategy, and the advantages of frugal innovation in the Indian market. It discusses the necessity of adapting to global markets while acknowledging local limitations and investor expectations.

1. How to Build a Global Tech
Business from India?
Krishna Mehra
@kpowerinfinity
21-May-2013

2. The India Growth Story is Quite
Fascinating
Which is probably why all of you are here…

3. 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

4. How’d all Begin?

5. 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

6. Getting Initial Traction
“You” are the “Product”

7. Traction begets Money
• Angel Funding Eco-
System in India is
harder
– Real revenue
traction expected
• Focus on Business,
Funding will
happen

8. 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

9. Iterate, Iterate, Iterate

10. Growing Pains

11. 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

12. India Runs on SaaS
• Op-ex based Pricing & Servicing model better suited to Indian Customers
• Fuse Products & Services together
• Prevent Piracy

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. Thank you!
@kpowerinfinity