These briefs were used at all my previous companies when preparing executives for a field trip into markets. As in this example, we went to India with our Head of International and Business Development for a weeklong trip. We felt armed with a thumbnail sketch of country which gave us more confidence in engaging with stakeholders.


In today’s environment you can get far on the outline with generative AI. I wrote a recent one for Australia using ChatGPT and it improved the writing efficiency substantially. BUT, these models are quite bad at point value data. So I use a standard list of sources I trust:

- World Bank for population and economic data
- Country bureau of statistics for population, economic, and demographic data
- Statista for aggregated data
- eMarketer for advertising industry and platform data
- Crunchbase for private company funding

The intent of the trip was always to fill out the finer details. So the trip report afterward always had specific themes of insight gathered, and raw notes from conversations.

For each company, we would change the industry-specific overview. For example, for [redacted] we looked at the social media space, and times the creator economy. For [redacted], we looked at charitable fundraising and gaming. Each market brief needs adaptation based on timing.

Overall, what worked and what didn't:

What worked:
- Good high level overview of market
- Brought stakeholders up to speed on the importance of the market
- Prepared field trip team with in-depth knowledge for conversations

What didn't:
- Lacked color. Requires adding vignettes of users, products, or people
A story doesn’t land at headquarters if you’re not connected to an actual person. We would start pretty much any presentation, ever, with story of a real person that used the product, and what they used it for.

- Hard for execs to get a feel for the on the ground experience and energy
We would add visuals from time to time, pictures of places, meetings, us stuck in conference rooms. Doing this all over again, I would make sure to take enough video footage for a short roll that can help transport people to the location.

Scott Coleman 

This document provides a “thumbnail sketch” of the Indian market before we visited with a select group of company stakeholders.

India hosts one of the largest and youngest populations in the world with 1.4b people

Mobile internet access continues to explode, fueled by Jio with >1b mobile users

Venture investment hit a peak of $20b to India startups in 2022

New social media laws may change indemnity and require a local entity for operation.

India hosts one of the largest and youngest populations in the world. 

The current population is 1.4b and counting. Demographically nearly 650m people (almost half of the population) are under 25, making it one of the youngest countries on the planet.

Understanding regions and languages is critical for content creation and distribution. 

India is broken up politically and linguistically into many regions.

As examples: Hindi (528m speakers), Bengali (97m), Marathi (83m), Telugu (81m), Tamil (69m).

India’s GDP stands at $3.4T growing at 7% y/y. 

This puts India 5 between Germany and the UK. Historical growth rates have ranged between 5-8% per year.

Top industries are agriculture, industrials, and services, 

with services making up >50% of the economy. India has a huge technology services industry (Tata, Infosys, Wipro etc.) at nearly $245b.

Mobile internet access continues to explode. 

Over 1 billion people have mobile internet access with over 70% on smartphones. A substantial portion access via pre-paid plans with limited bandwidth and devices with low memory. App size and mweb speed are key.

Mobile has undergone an upheaval with the entrance of Jio, 

a low-cost operator completely vertically integrated through content and apps. Jio comes from the Reliance group, an oil and gas company. They have quite literally taken India by storm, gaining 41% market share in the space of 8 years.

Mobile distribution channels are crucial for success. 

As examples: the UC browser (from Huawei) reaches over 100m people alone. Moj built a 300m MAU user base based primarily on WhatsApp communities. Every large competitor, Facebook, Google has tie-ups with major airtels.

Competitors are strong and entrenched. YouTube has 467m MAUs, 

Facebook 315m, WhatsApp 390m. Each have local offices across the country. Google has >10,000 employees, Facebook 3000-400.

Venture grows at a torrid pace with many Indian founders preferring to address the local India market vs. relocating (or staying) in the US. Investors lead over 2,000 rounds with $20b in capital in 2022. Trends have slowed in 2023 along with the broader venture winter.

India is a federal parliamentary democratic republic, where the President of India is the head of state and the Prime Minister is the head of government. It is a multi-party system, where the political landscape is dominated by numerous parties at both the national and regional levels.

The current Prime Minister is Narendra Modi

 from the BJP party. Read more in footnotes.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology passed new laws that require chief compliance officers and have strict takedown requirements.

India has laws on the books that require a local entity for operation. This has implications for headcount and legal matters.

Our user base reaches xxm MAUs (xx% Android, xx% iPhone, xx% (m)web) +yy% y/y

Engagement rates are on par with other markets at xx% WAU/MAU

Top categories are similar to global [cat1, xx%, cat2, yy%, cat3, zz%]

India Market Brief at Pinterest

India

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