Ideas & Opportunity

How do I size a market for India specifically when data is messy?

A starting point

Ignore the '1.4 billion people' headline; the real spendable market in India is a fraction of that. Use frameworks like Blume's India1/India2/India3 to find the roughly 100 million households with real disposable income, and size that segment bottom-up. Be honest that your true SAM in India is often smaller than it looks, then build for the segment that can actually pay.

Go deeper

Hand-picked from around the web, each with a note on why it earns your time.

3 resources 2 link-checked

Read

📄 Article
✓ Link checked India Free Advanced

Why we picked it Sajith Pai's India1/India2/India3 framework and the Indus Valley report are the sharpest public analysis of who in India actually has money to spend. Essential before you slap '1.4 billion people' on a TAM slide.

Sajith Pai on the Indus Valley Report & the Indian market (India1/2/3)

From sajithpai.com by Sajith Pai (Blume Ventures) essays + annual report

  • India's real spendable market (India1) is roughly 100 million people, not 1.4 billion.
  • Segment the Indian market by disposable income before sizing it, or your SAM is fiction.
  • Build for the segment that can actually pay, and translate US theses to Indian wallets carefully.
Open sajithpai.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked Freemium Intermediate

Why we picked it Market size is meaningless until you know exactly who you're for, and Lenny turns that into a concrete, repeatable ICP exercise from real B2B operators. It grounds your SAM in an actual customer definition instead of a fuzzy segment.

How to identify your ideal customer profile (ICP)

From Lenny's Newsletter by Lenny Rachitsky ~15 min read

  • Define the specific customer you serve before you size the market, not after.
  • A sharp ICP makes your bottom-up market math credible and your GTM focused.
  • Narrowing 'who it's for' is what makes a small beachhead winnable.
Open lennysnewsletter.com →
📄 Article
Free Intermediate

Why we picked it A clear, no-nonsense primer on the three market-size numbers every founder gets asked about, with the bottom-up method that actually holds up in front of investors. Pick this over the SEO listicles because it comes from a platform that lives inside real cap tables and fundraises.

Market Size: What is TAM, SAM, & SOM?

From carta.com by Carta ~12 min read

  • TAM is the whole category, SAM is what you can realistically serve, SOM is what you can win near-term.
  • Build the numbers bottom-up (customers times price), not top-down percentages of a giant number.
  • A defensible SOM matters more to investors than an impressive TAM slide.
Open carta.com →

People also ask

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