How to Grow Your Business in India
A common ambition among all businesses in India is their zeal to grow fast and become the next Tata, Birla, Narayana Murthi or Ambani. According to a study report from B2B market research firm Circle Research, achieving growth is cited as the biggest ambition for small and midsize businesses. While this ambition is a good motivator, the reality of business development is easier said than done.
India ranks globally 3rd with over 4,200 startups, as per NASSCOM’s ‘Start-up India’ report. Some estimates show that a full 90% of startups fail each year. The remaining 10% that do survive are also the businesses that are growing by expanding their business premises, entering new market areas, and introducing a variety of new products and services. If you want to do the same and grow your business in India, follow these tips:
- Jugaad: India is the land of “jugaad” which means that you can fix up a DIY free or dirt-cheap solution for just about everything. Make use of this jugaad mentality and figure out what big expenses and overheads you are paying for every month or every year that you can eliminate. For example, if you are using a licensed operating system and software such as Windows and/or MS-Office, you can find free open source replacements such as Linux and OpenOffice or Google Docs. This is the fastest way to grow your business in India, since you don’t have to spend time and money on business expansion, marketing and sales.
- 80-20 Rule: The rule depicts roughly that 80% of the outcomes are generated from 20% of total efforts in most events. This is is also known as Law of Inequality or Pareto Principle, since it was initially discovered by Italian Economist Vilfredo Pareto. In his 2008 bestseller The Game Changer, Procter & Gamble CEO Lafley explains how his company implemented the 80/20 rule to grow their business. Lafley notes that they dramatically improved P&G’s financial performance by increasing their focus on some 80 brands that generate 90% of sales and 95% of profit for the company. Lafley observed that 20% of brands account for 80% of sales in retail sector.
- Business Metrics to Grow: Business metrics and data can help you to take the right decisions to grow your business. Collecting and analysing the right business data such as KPI (Key Performance Indicators) or KPA (Key Performance Analytics) will help you take better decisions on issues such as budget, time and team. The key metrics that every business needs to track are Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), Highest and Lowest Selling Product or Service, Expense by Category, High Value Customers and Staff Productivity.
- Crowdsourcing: Your customers know best what they want, so get their input. Even big brands like Netflix, McDonald’s and Lego are making use of this method. One good example is Giffgaff, a mobile network operator in the U.K.Questions posted by its customers are answered by the company’s online community, creating a pool of crowdsourced user-generated content. If you want to do something like this, make use of these online crowdsourcing tools such as X Prize Foundation, CoFundos, Genius Rocket, Amazon Mechanical Turk, UTest, Idea Connection, Ennovent and Top Coder.
- Process Automation: Every aspect of business can be fully or partially automated these days. You can get automation tools and/or software for hiring and recruitment, marketing, lead management, sales acceleration, CRM, accounting, inventory, project management and collaboration, and a whole lot more. You can also get an ERP that covers all the business processes in your entire organisation. For instance, Cadbury India’s SAP implementation is often cited as a model example of how ERP software can enable a company’s fast-paced business growth in the Indian market.
