Bootstrap in Bangalore

This is going to be a theme in this blog/book – look around, think local and leverage available resources. Any business being started is adding some value to someone’s life. Either it is removing an existing pain point, giving gratification which never existed or creating an efficiency in a commercial ecosystem. For a young bootstrapper with limited resources the ideal customer would be herself. Lot of small projects start with just satisfying your own itch. If many people share that itch, it could be a start of something big.

Even if you are not a representative customer of the target market, look around. Nothing works better than being able to see the person you are addressing, talking to her and taking early feedback on the product/service you have. Lot of folks conjure an imaginary customer in USA who is going to spend lot of dollars. Unfortunately, remote innovation seldom works. In fact chances are that if you make something really good for the local market and it has universal appeal, you will be poised to take the leap. Think local not just in terms of audience or customer but also in terms of execution. And get really local like instead of India, think Bangalore. Instead of saying in your business plan that I will market in US, obviously saying that I will market in Indian metros is much better. But even better is to say I will start in Bangalore and open a marketing office on MG Road, Kormangala and Indranagar. Once you get to such specifics and ask the broker rental rates and deposits in these three places, you will automatically go back to the drawing board Then you get to being innovative and inventive by thinking that maybe I will use my current apartment as the marketing office till I get my first customer then once revenue comes, I can move to R T Nagar which is not that far from M G Road once I take the shortcut. And once you get more customers, you think why did I ever need to be at M G Road!

Instead of doing projections where you calculate in the top 6 cities 5000 customers exist for your service, you start with 5 that you know in case customers are business customers. They can uncles, aunts, friends at the right places in companies that you want to target as a business. People who will willingly be guinea pigs for your new idea and will provide refrences to the next 5 customers. This is what I mean by leveraging existing resources. Your network is your biggest resource, I will probably devote a post on networking later. For example if you don’t know 5 people in the space you want to target find a partner in your network who does. In the previous office location example, if office location is important to your plans find a friend, uncle or benefactor who will allow you to piggyride on an existing place.

Once you have the game plan ready for bangalore. It is easy for you to multiply that by 3 and see if the numbers are interesting to expand to Chennai, Mysore or Hyderabad (close by and easily accessible). Bangalore with a population of more than 70 million itself should be a big market and enough rich customers who are net savvy or even a whole lot of urban poor if that is your market. There is flourishing textile, auto, horticulture, biotech and other businesses around in case you think bangalore is only about software.

So what if when you look around, think local and try to leverage your resources you find that you don’t have enough to make headway. Instead of bemoaning – if I just had this, I could have made a great start – just ditch the plan and go back to the drawing board. There are just too many opportunities awaiting entrepreneurs and you have to find one that suits you. Play to your strengths, anyways starting out is going to be tough so you better have an unfair advantage in what you are starting out to do. If it is something where you do not have that unfair advantage don’t start, look for another thing where you do.