Essay

TAM: Notes & Thoughts

Sajith Pai · sajithpai.com Free Intermediate India

Sajith Pai is an India VC, and he tells on himself here: he passed on WhiteHat Jr. by trusting a headline India TAM number, then learned it was the wrong way to think. The piece grounds you in real reachable demand (the actual India1 consuming class and a beachhead you can serve) rather than a paper market pulled from a slide. Read it as a starting point for why a smaller, real market usually beats a big, imaginary one.

  • Headline India TAM figures are a blunt tool that measure existing demand, not the market you can actually reach or expand into.
  • Size the problem and a concrete beachhead you can win first, since a targetable immediate market funds the next round even when TAM looks small.
  • Most Indian startups are really addressing India1, the consuming class, so honest sizing starts from who will actually pay, not the full population.
Open on sajithpai.com ↗

It answers 3 questions

  1. How do I estimate a market size when the product I'm building doesn't have a category yet?
  2. How do I research a market in India where reliable data and analyst reports basically don't exist?
  3. Everyone says my market is too niche to be venture-scale. When are they right, and when are they wrong?

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