India’s troubled regional position and what’s to take away for Sri Lankan tech startups
The Indian team loss their Champions’ Trophy final to the Pakistani team. Hands down, that’s due to the way that the Pakistani team played. But what’s interesting is how pretty much everyone except the Indians stood beside the Pakistani team.
Almost always, all the other South Asian countries support the team playing against India; be it West Indies, England or some other country. I reckon the reason why this keeps happening is obvious. Indian Cricket team is good; actually pretty damn good. But as sports ambassadors, they just suck monkey balls. I’m sure that everyone agrees on Virat Kohli’s brilliance as a batsman. But does he command the same respect as Brian Lara or Ricky Ponting or Kumar Sangakkara or AB de Villiers? I highly doubt it. Same goes for any number of current Indian Cricket players. Within the Cricket Loving sub-continent, almost everybody except the Indians hate the Indian Cricket team.
Is this trend only about Cricket or does it transcend the Cricket field too and why is this important for a Sri Lankan tech startup?
We know of a lot of hyped-about Indian Startups. From Flipcart to Snapdeal to Ola Cabs to PayTM, many of these startups are now valued at multiple hundreds of millions of dollars. However, their reach is mostly limited to India. Yes, they have a population of around 1.3 billion so their market is several magnitudes larger than any of the other South Asian markets. But to put things in perspective, isn’t it strange that it’s a Malaysian company that has a South Asian telco network instead of an Indian player?
You see, the geopolitical realities of South Asia is stacked against India. Pakistan and India both claim Kashmir as their own. Bangladesh and India are on OK terms so is Sri Lanka. But both Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have their massive reservations about India. Let’s leave Nepal and Bhutan for the moment. Both these countries are dependent on India for almost everything from fuel to slippers. Maldives is too tiny a country and they anyway have enough problems with global warming. Afghanistan is embroiled in problems that someone created for them.
Now how do all these connect?
You see, Sri Lankan population is barely 21 million. Population in Dhaka is 8.906 million. Population in Karachi is 27.51 million.
Karachi, a city of Pakistan has more people in it than Sri Lanka as a country has people in it. Population in Pakistan is almost 189 million people. Bangladesh’s population is 161 million. Even though they have lower GDP per capita than Sri Lanka, the number of people in their middle class is actually much higher than that of Sri Lanka.
So if you’re a Sri Lankan tech startup, use Sri Lanka to validate the idea and try to breach at least these markets because the critical mass in these countries make a damn lot of sense. What’s more, don’t expect an Indian startup or startups to breach into these markets any time soon. Remember the story about Indian Cricket? People from these countries don’t much like the guts of the Indians as much as we Sri Lankans.
Plus, the Sri Lankan Cricket team, despite all the catches they drop, are crowd favourites in both Bagladesh and Pakistan. Sri Lankan team is much loved by both Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Wouldn’t be wrong if I say that Sri Lanka is each country’s favourite South Asian team apart from their own; and the thing is this attitude transcends the Cricket field.
I don’t know whether a comprehensive study was ever done. But I’d bet that a Sri Lankan startup will have better chance of working things out in either Pakistan or Bangladesh than an Indian startup would.
Thus, the stakes are in our favour. If you’re a growth focused Sri Lankan startup, have some plans about expanding into these countries. Pretty sure the challenges of doing so would be that much difficult. But considering the successes that Hemas has had with their Bangladeshi FMCG operation and Hirdaramani with their apparel manufacturing operations, I reckon that Sri Lankan startups have a fighting chance of breaching into these markets. Interestingly, Hemas anyway has a startup accelerator programme.
So, think about it. Going global is probably the only way that Sri Lankan startups can grow to meaningful sizes. Should Pakistan and Bangladesh be the stepping stones, so be it. It’s about time that we thought way outside the box and focus on sustainable growth.
Shameless plug → If you want to talk growth, come talk to me at SXF.
