Tuesday, October 18, 2016

My Business Trip to New Delhi - Is India a high potential country to expand your business?

My Business Trip to New Delhi - Is India a high potential country to expand your business?.
I have been to India a few times before, but this is the first time I came to explore about business.
This was what everybody told me about India:
1. It is a large country.
2. Large Population. About 1.26 billions
3. Very strong in IT. Many programmers. Many large ICT companies.
4. It is a BRIC country.
5. Many Malaysian ICT company failed to penetrate India. 
6. Every Indian is very good in English.

This is what I learned:
1. Yes it is a large country. Population is large. Many cities with millions of populations. New Delhi is about 20 millions. Other cities are Mumbay,Chennai, Pune etc are also big.
2. The people in the north speaks Hindi. The people in south speaks Tamil. Those guys in the north do not know how to speak Tamil. The guys in the south do not speak Hindi.
3. To solve the problem, the government make all forms in English.
4.  I tried to speak to a number of graduates, and found that their command of english is poor. Almost like many Malay graduates from local Universities here on their command of english.
5. Yes they have many large ICT companies. But they have very few their own products. They are positioned as system integrators and outsourcing companies.
6. How to penetrate the market?. It will take time and patience.

About our competitors:
1. The no.1 competitor is Tally Software. They have 650 staff.
2. Thy have about 1.0 million paying users.
3. There are about 48 million SMEs in India. Why so much different?
4. Some research shows that probably 10X of the numbers are using pirated version.
5. The software is the PC based system. Sold in CD or download.  It is almost like the UBS in Malaysia. Using old User Interface like 20 years ago.
6. There are a few cloud based system like OfficeCentral coming up. OfficeCentral need to compete with them.
7. The large ICT companies like Wipro, Satym, TCS are not our competitors. They normally implement SAP, Oracle and large custom solution. They do not have similar product like OfficeCentral.

Can we buld up successful business there?
1. Yes.
2. Competitors are like Malaysia, using old PC based tehnology. They focus on accounting, inventory and payroll. No CRM.
3. Face to face marketing is necessary. Relationship is important.
4. We will do extensive workshop and seminar on cloud technology and Accounting, Payroll and Sales Management using OfficeCentral.
5. Focus on training of new staff. Staff should be young and cloud is something part of their life. Easy to train.
6. Which city? Probably New Delhi or Chennai. Chennai is nearer to Malaysia.
 



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