Building software products for the South East Asian market – a survival guide

So how do you build products for the SE Asian market? Most Product Management professionals and researchers have worked on building products for the global markets. By global, we mean mainly the US and European markets. These guys have written about their experiences and what works for these markets. But what about other markets – the Indian sub-continent and South East Asian markets? Most Product Managers have very little idea about what how to go about establishing a product business targeting these markets.

Let me give you a run-down of my own experience of building and selling software products targeting Indian businesses.

Building software products for the Indian market is a completely different ball game. It is of course extremely challenging, as is any other market. However, the motivations of customers here are very different from their western counterpart. And I am talking about B2B products here, since I have prior experience in that, however, I am sure, B2C Product Managers with an Product built for the sub-continent background will echo my thoughts to a large extent.

Customizations

The Indian customer is extremely demanding about customizations. They are seldom satisfied with the out of box experience, and would want the product to be customized to suit processes and idiosyncrasies of their own organization. It does not matter if there are established standards that are followed around the world about how to do a specific work. They will insist on doing it their own way. So, if you are building a product for the sub-continent, make sure to make it platform based and infinitely customizable.

Doing more than what it was set out to do

When the Indian customer buys a software product, they expect that it should not just serve the purpose of what the product is built to do. They look for other technology gaps in their current business processes that it can potentially fulfill. Even if there is a 50-60% match, they would extend the product and use it for that purpose rather than buy separately. So, again, be prepared for more customization's and more ways of using your product. This is often a good learning experience, as you will find your product being used in ways that you may not have imagined, immediately bringing out synergies and potential pivots.

On prem vs cloud

Most Indian (and SE Asian) customers (and not just government) are still unwilling to deploy or use cloud products. They prefer on premise deployments. Its just a few years lag in the mindset, trailing behind the more advanced counterparts in the West, who have been exposed to the cloud ecosystem for a longer time. So, if you are catering to the Indian customer, be prepared to maintain an on-premise version of the product as well, for another 10 years. This will naturally set back your product innovation and release speed over competing products in other economies.

Pricing

The Indian software customer is far more price conscious and price sensitive than their western counterpart. Not only will they drive a hard bargain, the price to value equation is also extremely tenuous. For marginal value differences, they will easily flock over to competing products offering better price. If you are not clear on your value proposition, they can be quite unforgiving.

I have mentioned what I have seen, do let me know if you have seen other characteristics of this market that I may have missed.

Despite all these challenges, it is still a substantial and growing market. There is a plethora of local players here that cater to most of the B2B software areas, as many of the global software leaders find difficult to penetrate, and even fear to tread.