How the best do it

How do the best Indian companies compete against a US incumbent without pretending to be American?

The short answer

They stop treating India as something to hide and turn it into a specific, provable advantage rather than a vague claim about talent. Zoho made rural India roots into transnational localism, a philosophy about building software close to the people who use it, and put it in front of Salesforce's buyers instead of behind them. BrowserStack and Postman earned their standing with global developers through the product itself, a jQuery creator's tweet and years of being useful in forums, so credibility arrived before the pitch. Freshworks entered an existing category head on and won the segment the incumbent priced out. The pattern is the same: pick a narrow claim you can prove, prove it in public, and never ask to be judged on geography.

Go deeper, your way

5 hand-picked resources, 5 India-specific, 5 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.

📄 Article
✓ Link checked India Free Beginner

Why we picked it The founder's own account of entering an existing category (help desk) against Zendesk rather than inventing a new one, and winning on price and simplicity for SMBs. The clearest India example of segment choice beating category invention.

The Freshdesk Story: Where and How it All Started

From Freshworks by Girish Mathrubootham 9 min read

Open freshworks.com →

The same ground, at another level

How category design reads from a different seat.

What does category actually mean in go-to-market, and why does everyone keep telling me to pick one? A category is the mental shelf a buyer puts you on before they judge anything else about you. The moment someone hears what you do, they reach for ... Breaking into GTM 3 resources → How do I test whether a category name lands before we commit the whole website to it? Put the words in front of real buyers before you put them in a headline. Run the line past twenty people who match your ICP and ask them what they ... Doing the work 4 resources → When is category creation the right call for us, and when is it just an excuse? It is right when your buyer feels a real pain that no existing category addresses, and when the existing frame is actively making senior people ign... Leading a GTM team 4 resources →

People also ask

What does category actually mean in go-to-market, and why does everyone keep telling me to pick one? A category is the mental shelf a buyer puts you on before they judge anything else about you. The moment someone hears what you do, they reach for ... Breaking into GTM 3 resources → Should we create a new category or just say we are a better version of something that already exists? For almost everyone at the start, the answer is the existing category. April Dunford's own count is that around 90 percent of recently public tech ... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → How do I write the one line that says what category we are in? Write it as a comparison, not a description. The formula that works is simple: who it is for, what kind of thing it is, and why it beats the altern... Breaking into GTM 5 resources → Buyers keep comparing us to a big incumbent. How do I even respond in a first call? Do not dodge it and do not claim you beat them everywhere, because the buyer knows you do not and you lose credibility instantly. Name the incumben... Breaking into GTM 3 resources → How do I test whether a category name lands before we commit the whole website to it? Put the words in front of real buyers before you put them in a headline. Run the line past twenty people who match your ICP and ask them what they ... Doing the work 4 resources → We named the problem instead of the product. Is that a positioning mistake? It is usually the right instinct, badly executed. Naming the problem is what makes a category feel inevitable, because the buyer recognises the pai... Doing the work 4 resources →

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The same ground, over in Find your idea & build the brand, our D2C track.

Should my brand name be a made-up word, or should it actually describe what I sell? Made-up or arbitrary names (Kodak, Apple-for-computers) are the strongest legally and scale best across categories later, but they need real market... 3 resources → Who counts as my competitor - only brands selling the exact same product, or more than that? Track three tiers: direct competitors (same product, same customer), indirect competitors (different product solving the same customer need - a mea... 3 resources →
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