Selling Software Products in India

After 5 months of marketing a product, I realized how difficult is the proliferation of a new product in India. Now I understand why the Indian market is so stubborn. The companies that have succeeded have all had connections, engaged in cronyism or not sold in India.

I am not saying those entrepreneurs have not been visionary and masters at execution, but they I don't think that they had to break the Indian mindset.

Here is the list of the recent entrepreneurial successes of India:

1. Infosys / Wipro / other - They don't sell in India
2. Airtel - Political connections got them valuable licenses
3. Air Deccan - Captain Gopi's army / political connections were helpful

I really have to rack my brains to find out one new business that grew from India solely on the basis of what value it delivered and without some crutch. I must say FabIndia is one of those exceptions - But they too started by exporting to the West! Info Edge and Naukri.com is another exception.

For the kind of products that we sell, its not that people are lining up to find out ways to make their small businesses more efficient.

Part of the reason is historical and cultural.

More than 75% of small business in the Mumbai area are owned by Gujaratis and Marwaris (full disclosure: I am a Gujarati too). Traditionally they have prospered due to their ability to migrate and form strong trade links across regions. They are still of a traditional mindset where investment in status and lifestyle comes before investment in their business. When they do business, they do it with a trader mindset. Because a trader always negotiates and keeps variable margins, they expect software also to be a tradable item or service. Also a trader does not invest in anything but inventory at the most.

Businesses in the West usually prosper because they invest in technology and hence they understand the value of technology. In India its a different story. I never thought this would hit me so hard so late in my startup process.

So I have two options if I want to break-even faster:

1. Sell to the West

2. Massage egos of larger companies. Sell to the West

Lets see how this process goes!

How Do I Find Good Open Source Projects?

Recently someone recommended me the CMS Concrete5. I had never heard of this CMS, but whatever little I saw, I found it very exciting. Seemed so much better than Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal - all of which I have got my hands dirty with. So the question hit me. Why did I not come acress this CMS before? This means that there could be many more interesting projects out there which I do not know about.

This got me thinking about what is my source of information? My immediate friends are not into exploring new stuff so they are out. Paid publishing sources like news sites are all sold to the companies with their journalists getting ego massages by paid PR teams. So they are out too. Many blogs / discussion boards are a lot freer but cater to niche audiences with niche tastes. For example, NewsYC caters to startups. "Experts" to have their own biases are and usually oriented towards the elite companies / VC funds.
 So how does a regular guy get to know about a good Open Source project? I think the viral word-of-mouth loop just got a lot more important. Large companies with an army of content writers are blasting the airwaves / cyberspace, so to speak and there is no place to broadcast your project. If you can spread happiness to one person, that person will pass it on to many others. That is the challenge of future Open Source projects.

Projects will have to sustain much longer and will have to cover a lot more functionality than before to get noticed. Someone starting / promoting a new Open Source project must be aware of this. Its going to be so much harder!