We plan to bring eChai across 100 cities in India. It starts with eChai Startup Demo Day on 26 September, all in person. 11 cities confirmed, 313 founders registered. Any city that reaches 20 interested founders is on too. See your city
Leading a GTM team

We sell in India, the US and the Gulf. How much should the messaging actually change per market?

The promise stays the same, the proof and the packaging change. What genuinely differs by market is who holds the budget, what the buyer is afraid of, what counts as expensive, and which proof they trust: a US logo, a regional customer they can phone, a regulator, a partner. In India that can mean the same product sold in a regional language, priced in rupees, to an owner rather than a department head. In the Gulf it means Arabic and right to left support, a local presence, and showing up where buyers actually gather. Run one positioning with local proof and local objections handled, and let each market change the examples, never the promise.

Go deeper

4 resources, 3 India-specific, 4 link-checked.

📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Intermediate

Concrete about what changes for the Gulf beyond translation: Arabic and right to left support, dialect differences between countries, local legal and data rules, and showing up at regional events to be taken seriously.

Localization Strategies for SaaS Products in the Middle East Market

From Zoho Blog by Mary Nyambura 10 min read

  • Arabic is written right to left, so the interface needs rebuilding, not translating.
  • The working week differs: Friday and Saturday are the weekend, which changes support hours and campaign timing.
  • The UAE has its own GDPR-equivalent data protection regime to comply with.
  • Offer the Hijri calendar where it is used, and treat Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt as distinct markets.
Open zoho.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked India Free Beginner

A reminder that your India message may need to change language before it changes argument, with Jio and Zomato as examples and the blunt statistic that most of the country does not buy in English.

The Rise of Vernacular Marketing: Connecting with Bharat Beyond English

From Medianews4u by Yasin Hamidani 8 min read

  • Only about 10 percent of India is proficient in English while roughly 90 percent speak regional languages.
  • Nine out of ten new internet users are coming from rural and semi-urban India, where regional languages dominate.
  • Jio ran its Shah Rukh Khan campaign in Marathi, Telugu and Tamil rather than one national English cut.
  • The platforms already moved: Google Assistant and Search serve Indian languages, and regional YouTube creators pull millions of views.
Open medianews4u.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked India Free Intermediate

Compares direct sales, channel and marketing-led entry for an Indian company going abroad, and makes the case that the US may not be your best first market. Honest about the cost of a wrong first sales leader hire in a new geography.

Indian SaaS And The Art Of Going From Local To Global

From Inc42 by Sandeep Chawda ~12 min read

  • The US is not the automatic first market: GCC, Southeast Asia, or Japan can be the better first step out of India.
  • Three entry motions compared: feet on street (a hired sales leader, high risk if it stalls within 2 to 3 quarters), resellers, and marketing-led sales.
  • Pay channel partners on revenue share, not retainer, and pick ones who already sell into your target domain.
  • Marketing-led works for SMB and PLG, and breaks down for enterprise deals that need heavy onboarding.
Open inc42.com →

Browse all 796 resources →

The same ground, at another level

How positioning and messaging reads from a different seat.

What is positioning in plain English, and why does everyone insist we have got it wrong? Positioning is the context you give a buyer so that your strengths look obvious. It is the answer to 'what kind of thing is this and who is it for'... Breaking into GTM 3 resources → Our positioning reads fine on the website but every rep says something different on calls. How do I fix that? That gap is almost always a sign the positioning was written for the website and never translated into a conversation. Fix it by building the pitch... Doing the work 4 resources → How do the best B2B companies get positioning agreed when product, sales and the founders all disagree? They stop arguing about opinions and go find the buyer's view, because the only competitive alternative that matters is the one the prospect would ... How the best do it 4 resources →

People also ask

What is positioning in plain English, and why does everyone insist we have got it wrong? 3 → How do I write a one-line description of what we do that a normal person actually understands? 4 → Our positioning reads fine on the website but every rep says something different on calls. How do I fix that? 4 → How do I build a sales deck that is not just a tour of our features? 4 → We are changing our positioning. How do I roll it out without breaking the pipeline mid-quarter? 4 → Do we need to create a new category, or should we position inside one that already exists? 4 →

Also in Starting Up

The same ground, over in Understand your customers, our Starting Up track.

How do I talk to customers without them just telling me what I want to hear? 24 → What is an ideal customer profile and how do I define mine? 2 →
eChai Partner Brands