How do I find my ICP when I'm selling to Indian SMBs who don't fit clean B2B categories?
The short answer
Indian SMBs (kirana owners, small manufacturers, local service businesses) rarely map onto the tidy firmographics that Western ICP frameworks assume, so start from behaviour, not category: who is already spending money to solve this, in what informal way, and who feels the pain sharply enough to change. Go sit in 10 of these businesses and watch how decisions actually get made (often the owner and one family member). Your ICP is the specific slice where the pain is acute and the person deciding is reachable, not the whole "SME" bucket. Treat this as a starting point and let the paying customers narrow it further.
Go deeper, your way
3 hand-picked resources, 3 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
▶️ Video
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Why we picked it
Before you have any data to cluster into an ICP, your job is to find and watch a handful of real customers up close. Michael Seibel (YC, co-founder of Twitch) gives a short, concrete talk on where those first customers actually come from and how to spot the ones who genuinely have the problem. It pairs well with the interview technique in The Mom Test: this is where to point that technique first.
Why we picked it
The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past behaviour, not your idea, so you can't be lied to. If a founder reads one thing before talking to a single customer, it's this.
Why we picked it
Most ICP advice assumes a clean B2B buyer, which is exactly what breaks when you sell to Indian small businesses. This piece grounds the question in the real texture of that market: price sensitivity, relationship and trust before any order, and how needs shift across retail, manufacturing, and services. Treat it as a starting point for who your customer really is, not a definitive segmentation.
