How to Take Your Company Global The current market has been penetrated enough and incremental cost in increasing the market share is higher than entering a new market
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It's an exciting as well as a daunting task to take your company global. Before embarking on the journey which can entail huge demand on your time, bandwidth and financial resources, you need to be very clear on the objective of taking your company global.
The current market has been penetrated enough and incremental cost in increasing the market share is higher than entering a new market. If not, then it is easier to focus on current market then spread yourself too thin.
If your product or service doesn't require much time to setup, time to market is fast and can be offered in seamless manner across globe then it might make sense.
Being in an international market will give you access to talent to collaborate and develop a better service/product, learn from experiences and best practice. Simply put, being global adds credibility and enhances brand value if done for right reason with clear understanding on company capabilities.
From our experience, we wanted to get into global market
- To help us collaborate and develop an international standard preschool program, collaborating and learning from best minds in early childhood
- Our business model was apt, scaling through fellow entrepreneurs who understand the local market and run the preschool at their locations. Going Global while delivering as per local market culture and expectations.
- Low penetration of organised preschool chains in these markets, giving us an opportunity to scale
- Our experience, network and understanding of global market
- To benchmark ourselves and improve
Post this realization and benefits for our company we spend time to strategize and plan the market entry. Key considerations for us were
- Research the market to understand existing landscape
- Regulations specific to those countries
- Ability and access to develop local support system for franchisees
- Customised franchisee model based on existing market conditions and players
- Cost feasibility for our franchisees to run a successful preschool
- Investment required to acquire franchisees
- Business plan for each of the market- A roadmap, timelines, milestones to ensure we keep track on our goal and monitor our performance
- Building alliances and partnerships for local support
We have entered Europe and Africa market and are the first Indian preschool chain to have entered a developed market like United Kingdom.
We are proud of the "Made in India' brand for global market. On elementary education, Indian market has still not evolved. Most of the existing players continue to work on age-old method of early childhood education and haven't kept pace with the developed world.
This presented us an opportunity to be able to create an international collaboration and expose us to best developed scientific way of approaching early childhood education in a holistic way. We are working on theme of mindfulness. Mindfulness is being global aware vis-à-vis you for example no wasting food when others are dying of hunger in other parts of the world, being aware of pollution issues and how you as an individual can contribute in reduction. Creating a globally sensitive individual as global citizen.
We have had some quick learning. We have learnt to be prepared for unknown, be patient and persistent. As an entrepreneur, this becomes very important as there so many other variables that you would have not planned for, but going with the confidence and belief that in the end you will figure it out, in our personal experience, has worked for us. Just keep looking for innovative solutions, can look at it as outsider with new perspective and problems will wither away.
It is exciting to see many global brands being produced from India, especially in SaaS space. We hope to create a truly global brand which brings most scientific early childhood education within reach of every kid and create a level playing field.
We also plan to get into primary segment, as that is another area where lot can and needs to be done to ensure youth in India, which is going to have the largest young population across globe in near future, has the capability and skillset to contribute to India's growth in global economy.
