Is Asia Too Hard?

Author: Nick Evered, Executive Advisor, Salesinnovation.io

Asia for foreign software companies, opportunity or too hard??I don’t know about “too” hard, but it certainly has its challenges.?Most of us know the key stats.?

30% of the world's landmass

49% of the world’s manufacturing

60% of the world's population

44% of the global GDP

20% of global SaaS revenue, 13% annual growth

The opportunity is substantial, especially as there are still significant areas of the market where it’s far less competitive than Europe and certainly so in comparison to North America. So why do foreign software companies struggle so much??Well simply put, they often view the world as ubiquitous, that the rest of the world is like them. My experience says this is less so from Europe as they at least are used to dealing with the differences between German, French, Dutch, Sweden etc.?But North America - well…….?

I remember talking to a senior development executive based out of America about the need for localisation of the product.?He said the investment wasn’t worth it as countries in Asia will rapidly become like the US. Hmmm.?So, the challenge and outcome from this delay meant that a local company reverse-engineered an app that looked the same and gained enough market share that they became a real competitor not just in this region but then they also opened up in the US and Europe.

I also had another very senior executive from a different company berate us in the region for not expanding our market coverage quickly enough.?Not that we weren’t growing revenue as at that time, it was nearly 20% year on year on a substantial base.?No, he wanted us to open offices in every city with a population of over 3m people. We did point out that it didn’t make sense as many of those in these population centres didn’t even have electricity let alone computers!?I recently did a quick search online and right now, there are 90 cities in APAC with populations greater than 5m people - you can imagine back at that time how many cities >3m.?One of my directs back then had a presentation that started with a graphic of a person in those cities balancing a laptop on the handlebars of an exercise bike fitted with a peddle-powered generator surrounded by a city slum - I wish I had kept it. Yes, we opened a lot of offices, but many closed after a couple of years.?What a waste!?The impact of course was a bunch of disfranchised employees, partners, and customers, let alone the cost.

There is a litany of examples where companies get it wrong coming to the region, causing them to lose credibility and money along the way in a region where trust and credibility is so important.?

In building businesses in Asia Pacific, it pays to understand why and how the region is different and take viewpoints from others who know the region, no matter how different and counterintuitive it seems to your own worldview.