Emerging Market Opportunities

So I just finished a big tour de Southeast Asia. There is really only one story going on over there – Mobile. Check out this research from BCG (BRICI = Brazil, Russia, India, China, Indonesia):

  • 1.2B new internet users coming from BRICI countries by 2015
  • Mostly coming from mobile, much of that will be advanced feature phones (not smart phones)
  • Social in Indonesia & Brazil, Email in India, IM in China (QQ FTW!!!)
  • That will only result in 20% internet penetration in those countries (i.e. lots more to come!)

All of this is happening here and now. There are huge opportunities for any mobile startups to break into these countries. Let me give you a taste of Indonesia.

Two years ago Nokia had 60% of the phone market. A retailer called Nexian had just started up with the idea of importing and reselling Chinese manufactured phones and branding them as Nexian phones.

Fast forward to today. Nokia is down to 30% of the market!!! Nexian is one of the dominant retailers, they just sold to the Spice Mobile family (large conglomerate in India exploding across Asia, Middle East and Africa). You can get a stylish QWERTY phone with a big display with pre-loaded apps including email, Opera Mini, Facebook, Twitter, Mig33, Nimbuzz IM, private messenger, widgets, news reader, etc, all for < $40 (in some cases closer to $20). You can also get a Nexian Android phone for $150-$200. [caption id="attachment_9327" align="alignleft" width="640" caption="This Bad Boy = $20"][/caption]

Everybody is ripping off Nexian’s go to market strategy. The telecos have launched new brands to sell these phones. The retailers have gone to China, sourced phones and are re-selling them. The Chinese manufacturers have opened up retail in Indonesia (Huaiwei has their own stores!). On top of that I counted at least 20 Nexian clones, small companies with the same strategy as Nexian.

Blueberry Probably Outsells BlackBerry 2:1 In Indonesia

Nexian has countered by offering apps & services on these $20-$40 phones. People don’t have data plans, so Nexian does micro-billing via the carriers. 10c/week for Facebook, 5c/day for IM, $3/month for chat as examples. It works, they make millions a month from it.

There are roughly 170M phone users in Indonesia.

For Canadian startups, this means that there has never been a better opportunity to build mobile apps and “go global”. Check out if your app has a competitor in markets like Indonesia. All these phones in Indonesia (and China and India) are on a single platform with a single OS -> MediaTek. Port your app to MediaTek and go get deals with any of the manufacturers, the Nexians and their clones, the operators, etc. You can either try and get a royalty up front with your app pre-installed on the phone, or you can work out a rev share agreement on the service, or whatever other monetization scheme you have in mind.

There are plenty of folks who can help you with local business development. For instance, if you are a mobile app startup and you think Indonesia looks hot, Andy Zain runs the Indonesian Mobile Monday and Founder’s Institute. He is incredibly well connected in the teleco scene and he has helped startups like mig33 and Payfone (you are also free to reach out to me for contacts and info as well). In every country there are guys or companies like him. A bit of research and networking and you can find them.

Next week I’ll have some more on the start-up scene in Singapore, including some info from the leading startup blog over there (sgentrepreneurs.com).

Pre-Launch Marketing for Stealthy Startups

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by serial entrepreneur and marketing executive April Dunford who is currently the head of Enterprise Market Strategy for Huawei. April specializes in brining new products to market including messaging, positioning, market strategy, go-to-market planning and lead generation. She is one of the leading B2B/enterprise marketers in the world and we’re really lucky to be able to share here content with you. Follow her on Twitter @aprildunford or RocketWatcher.com. This post was originally published in January 3, 2010 on RocketWatcher.com.

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Some products and services don’t have a pre-launch phase.  For companies where building a minimum viable product isn’t a months-long effort, it makes sense to just launch a beta and then start talking about it.  For other companies however, the product might take a bit longer to develop and talking about it before it’s been released in some form could be pointless (because you don’t have a call to action yet), risky (competitors position against you or customers get confused because there aren’t enough details) or both.

One of the techniques that I’ve used in the past is to engage with the market by talking about the business problem that your product or service is going to solve, without getting into exactly how you plan on solving it.  At IBM we sometimes referred to this as “market preparation”.

For larger companies this often entails spending a lot of time (and money) with industry analysts and industry leaders sharing your company’s unique point of view on the market and why it is currently being under-served.  If you do this properly you’ll come to a point where your point of view starts to align well with that of the influential folks you’ve been working with.  By the time you launch, these folks will be standing behind you saying that your view of the market is one customers should consider.

Pre-launch startups generally don’t have the time, clout or cash to change the way Gartner Group thinks about a market but that shouldn’t stop you from taking your message out directly to the market you care about.  There’s never been a better time for startups to get the message out.  Here are some considerations:

  1. Create a clear message about your market point of view – you will need to create a set of messages that clearly illustrate what the unmet need is the in market and why that need has not been met by existing players.  You can go so far as to talk about the characteristics of the needed solution (without getting into the gorey details of exactly how you plan to solve it).
  2. Develop case studies that illustrate the pain you will be solving – Gather a set of real examples of customers you have worked with that have the problem and clearly illustrate the need for a new type of solution on the market.
  3. Spread the word – Launch a blog, write guest posts for other blogs, comment on relevant blog posts,  write articles, write an e-book, speak at conferences and events, open a Twitter account and start sharing information that illustrates your point of view.  There’s no end of ways to get your message out there.  Do your homework and find out where your market hangs out.  What forums do they participate in?  What blogs and newsletters do they read?  Get your message in front of them in the places where they already are.
  4. Engage and gather feedback – Starting a dialog with your potential customers about how you see the market gives you a chance to test your messages and see what resonates and what doesn’t.  You’ve made a set of assumptions (backed up by customer research hopefully), the more folks in the market you can talk to the more you can fine-tune your market story.
  5. Capture where you can – If it makes sense you can start capturing a list of potential beta customers or a mailing list that you can use when you launch.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by serial entrepreneur and marketing executive April Dunford who is currently the head of Enterprise Market Strategy for Huawei. April specializes in brining new products to market including messaging, positioning, market strategy, go-to-market planning and lead generation. She is one of the leading B2B/enterprise marketers in the world and we’re really lucky to be able to share here content with you. Follow her on Twitter @aprildunford or RocketWatcher.com. This post was originally published in January 3, 2010 on RocketWatcher.com.

Founder Fuel Jam Session in TO

FounderFuel

Nothing like the last minute planning around here. Ian Jeffrey (LinkedIn, @ianmtl) from FounderFuel is planning on being in Toronto today (June 27, 2011) and tomorrow (June 28, 2011). He is planning on meeting with startups and founders to share his experiences launching FounderFuel, the mentorship and incubation/acceleration plan for participating startups and to talk about tech startups generally. If you are interested in talking with one of the emerging technology company incubators/accelerators you should come and talk to Ian and learn about what is being offered in Montreal. There is a lot of choice in the marketplace for entrepreneurs, and the best way to see the differences are to connect with the people behind the scenes like Ian and the FounderFuel team. This is a great way to evaluate the program, get introduced to the people, and connect.

FounderFuel Jam Session

Date:
June 28, 2011
Time:
7 PM EDT – Presentation & Overview
8 PM EDT – Startup 1-on-1s and discussion
Location:
Camaraderie Coworking, 102 Adelaide Street East, Toronto, ON, Canada [map]
Register to attend:

From the looks of Alexa Clark’s (@alexaclark) photo exposition at Camaraderie, it is a great space to host a startup. I know that Matt (@mattskilly) and Aron (@defrex) at Hipsell have their startup offices there. It is a great space for startups requiring a great work space, a central location, and the benefits of an enabled coworking culture.

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