{"id":2449,"date":"2021-09-09T04:33:44","date_gmt":"2021-09-09T04:33:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.matsio.com\/matsio\/saasboomi\/?p=2449"},"modified":"2024-06-04T12:07:34","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T12:07:34","slug":"is-marketing-indias-achilles-heel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.matsio.com\/matsio\/saasboomi\/saas\/marketing\/is-marketing-indias-achilles-heel\/","title":{"rendered":"Is marketing India’s Achilles’ heel?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

India\u2019s startup ecosystem has a marketing problem. <\/strong><\/em>
Here\u2019s how it can be fixed.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last decade, Indian entrepreneurs have done a phenomenal job of transforming the way India is seen by the tech world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While our engineering and technical prowess has never been in question, for a long time, we\u2019ve been in the shadow of global leaders. And now, we\u2019ve evolved from being a services provider to a product nation, driven predominantly by the exponential growth of SaaS<\/a>. From being the back-office for western technology and IT companies, India has expanded its scope to become the provider of top-notch products with features, quality, and innovations that are on par if not better than western products.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, twelve Indian startups joined the unicorn club, and we have already seen ten startups achieve unicorn status this year. This is a great sign for the Indian business world, and there is no doubt India has earned the respect of the world and a seat at the global tech table<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s one conspicuous gap, though: marketing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some reason, Indian business people simply don\u2019t give storytelling and marketing their due. We come up with transformative ideas, put in tremendous hard work, and create great products<\/a> and companies, but struggle with SaaS marketing and inevitably depend on talent from the West for marketing and branding<\/a>. We have solid talent when it comes to engineering, product, and other technical aspects of building a company but fall short when it comes to SaaS marketing<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It isn\u2019t that we are inherently poor at SaaS marketing. Indians have historically been great storytellers and have, in fact, given the world some of the most fascinating, creative epics and works of fiction. But somewhere over the last few decades, our focus has veered away from storytelling and marketing. Indian business houses have been tightlipped about their work and journeys despite being incredibly successful in what they do<\/a>. This has become culturally ingrained in entrepreneurs over the last few decades and now requires a fundamental change in mindset.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We haven\u2019t paid enough attention to SaaS marketing, and because of this we don\u2019t have success stories to inspire and don\u2019t have marketing talent to carry the legacy forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Young engineers have mentors and leaders to learn from and successful companies they aspire to join. Marketers, on the other hand, end up moving to the West to learn from them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My fellow entrepreneur Varun Shoor, Avinash Raghava, the quarterback of Indian SaaS, and I got talking about this recently. It was gnawing at us, and we realized that this is something that requires tackling before it gets too late for the ecosystem.\u00a0

From our experiences, we noticed that even when Indian startup founders did invest in marketing, they didn\u2019t do it right. They\u2019re quite conservative in their approach to SaaS marketing.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So often, I\u2019ve had startup founders tell me they need \u201cto hire a marketer<\/a>\u201d to help them build their startups, and I\u2019ve always pointed out that there\u2019s no such thing as \u201ca marketer.\u201d There are different kinds of marketers for the various types of marketing activities, whether it is creative campaign building, marketing analytics, brand storytelling, building organic traffic<\/a>, social media, or any other such function. Trying to get one marketer to do everything is akin to getting an engineer to own and run the front-end, back-end, and all engineering functions. Western countries recognize this and have fostered a talent pool that has experts in each of the dozen marketing functions. That\u2019s what we ought to do too.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Varun and I wanted to do our bit to fix this problem and bring about a change in mindset among young entrepreneurs. Having done quite a bit of marketing for our respective businesses over the last decade, we wanted to share some of our learnings and draw attention to things that wouldn\u2019t typically come to the fore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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