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Understand your customers

How do I understand the competitive landscape for an Indian market specifically?

Don't assume the US playbook maps onto India, pricing power, distribution, and willingness-to-pay are wildly different. Study who Indian customers actually pay today (often informal or offline alternatives), read Inc42/YourStory for the local landscape, and size the reachable market bottom-up in rupees.

Go deeper

2 resources, 2 link-checked.

📄 Article
✓ Link checked India Free Intermediate

A grounded India-specific feature with hard-won lessons from BigBasket, Razorpay, BrowserStack and Instamojo on understanding the Indian market before building. Inc42 is the reference publication for the Indian startup ecosystem.

Defining, Measuring And Solving Product-Market Fit Puzzle For Startups

From Inc42 by Inc42 ~15 min read

  • Think 'market-product fit', understand who and why before what and how
  • Founders fail by obsessing over the product and ignoring what the market wants
  • Iterate frequently and expect to fail on most attempts
  • Track active users and churn, not vanity metrics like downloads
Open inc42.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Intermediate

The reference primer on the metrics and market-sizing logic investors use, including bottom-up market sizing that keeps founders honest about how big a market really is. Canonical a16z source.

16 Startup Metrics

From a16z by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) ~15 min read

  • Size markets bottom-up from customer count and willingness to pay
  • Know the metrics that actually signal a healthy business
  • Distinguish real traction from vanity metrics
  • Use consistent definitions when comparing yourself to the market
Open a16z.com →

People also ask

How do I research my competitors properly? 2 → What if my customers say they have no competitors, is that good or bad? 2 → What tools should I use to track competitors and market landscape? 2 → How do I position against a bigger, better-funded competitor? 2 → How do I size the market and figure out if it's big enough? 2 → How do I do competitive research when my competitors are private and share almost no public numbers? 3 →

Also in How Founders Use AI

How founders actually use AI for this, over in Market Research.

How do founders validate a startup idea with AI in a weekend? 20 → How do I use AI to map competitors, pricing, and positioning? 22 →

Also in GTM

The same ground, over in Who you sell to, and why they care, our GTM track.

What is an ICP and how is it different from a persona? People use both words for the same thing. 4 → What is positioning in plain English, and why does everyone insist we have got it wrong? 3 →
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