India has a drought – not of Investors, but Customers

India has a drought – not of Investors, but Customers
vijayanand.name

All the big empires here, be it Amul, Tata, Dabur etc etc have built their brands as such.

Adoption doesnt come quickly though, and pouring venture capital into a business in India to gain quick adoption is akin to asking nine women to give birth to a baby in a month here. Which is also the issue that startups face, when they are funded by US based VC Firms cause they are expected to act and deliver like US based startups - fast, quick, wham-bham customers who come and leave, but still "acquiring" them is what investors care for.

Its a long story. There is no J Curve with Indian Startups, but the ones that manage to sustain and build, build a moat so large that they are IPO worthy by any measure. Its a different kind of enterprise building, that the investors from the west, arent quite "getting"

Ideas are never invalid only the timing in which we play in an existing market is. Tablets were not a craze when Apple's Newton was launched but they are a craze now.

I believe playing in a market where where an existing product or a set of products are not able to solve an obvious problem will certainly garner interest of investors as well as customers. I also believe if I am unable to get atleast five paying customers to see eye-to-eye in what I do, then I need to pivot to what they want.

Speaking about B2B in India - I run a small consultation firm(ninjaas.com), we have worked with couple of big clients in India, who have deep pockets, but they don't burn much cash for software and web services. They must be taught + nurtured more in adopting web tools, so largely its only support with Phone calls. They ask for way too many customization's and Ready made things don't sell!

Worth mentioning, they don't have much Internet presence, are more or less offline businesses, and as you said - they must be taught, nurtured to adopt newer, better Business processes tools. As there is no internet presence, adoption is largely word of mouth.

But, the market is huge and the change will happen soon; will only get better overtime.

So, Selling B2B web products in India = Fail, a small market with no much Demand. I see a favorable market where Demand >>> supply, 3x at least. And Many Businesses say - they don't need Internet presence, as most of them operate largely around Phone calls.

And its not easy to close bigger deals in India doing an Internet startup. You can pocket out around $$ max. And if its a bigger deal, you have to wait longer to get your returns from followups, may be 18+months.

Speaking about B2C in India - Low cost deals with huge discounts works great. Anything around phone, tablet is huge, its growing faster than PC web. And most of them own a budget smartphone and/or a tablet. This market is huge, people are spending to buy apps from the App market. But this segment is largely owned by Indie developers. Startups have nothing much to disrupt in this space.

In short, in India, its only the phone that Sells.

Oh, there can easily be a drought of customers. The article covers specifically the Indian market for one, but even in the US, with the squeezed out middle class, there can very well be a drought of customers.

>Here is the real picture: there are over a billion customers in India.

No, there are a billion _people_ in India, which is a different thing. Even if you bypass the starving masses, the actual internet ready audience for what an internet startup might sell is smaller than the US, less adopted to the internet way of doing business and with less money.

>They need something. All you have to do is open your eyes and ears and figure out what they want the most. Solve a pain that people currently have.

Well, most of their problems have nothing to do with what an internet startup can offer. Hence a "drought of customers" for internet startups.