Official Blog of GTM360 Marketing Solutions
Here’s another post on the cultural differences across different markets, with specific lessons for sales and marketing. Many years ago, Fortune had used the following lede to introduce the largest company on its prestigious list of 500 largest corporations in the world: Walmart is the #1 company on the GLOBAL FORTUNE 500. As the largest … Read more
Direct-to-Consumer financial technology startups are new age companies that sell bank accounts, loans and other financial products directly to end users. In this post, we’ll use the term “Fintechs” to refer to these D2C firms and “Fintech” to refer to the industry as a whole. Fintechs are different from “Fincumbents”, which is a term I’ve … Read more
Today’s Economic Times published my letter on H-1B and the controversy over surplus or scarcity of STEM talent in the USA. It was in response to the following article on this subject two days ago. The published version of my letter is a highly condensed version of my original letter. As a result, it’s quite cryptic (even … Read more
At the end of my blog post titled Retail Is Still Barking Up The Wrong Tree Against Ecommerce, I’d made a bold prediction that, within a few months, I’d find a few more non-price related reasons for shopping online. Well, it took me longer than that but I found one recently. This was at the outlet … Read more
Let’s take the following two statements: Indians are obsessed over security Indians make payments without entering any password. Each of these statements is a fact. But, taken together, they appear contradictory and portray Indian consumers as fickle (or worse). Not true. In this blog post, I’ll use the principles of Customer Journey Mapping to explain why these … Read more
Today’s Times of India has two op-eds on petrol pricing. The one by Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyer (@swaminomics) advises the government to hold taxes at their present levels and leave petrol prices as they are. The other by Chetan Bhagat (@chetan_bhagat) advocates exactly the opposite approach. In the past, I’d leaned towards the former point of view. That changed … Read more
There’s no better introduction to this year’s FORTUNE GLOBAL 500 than Fortune’s own lede: Change is everywhere in this year’s Global 500 – except at the very top. Walmart, with $500 billion in sales, ranks No. 1 for the fifth straight year on Fortune’s annual list of the world’s biggest companies ranked by revenue. Apple … Read more
When my employer posted me to Germany in the early 2000s to open its subsidiary for the so-called D-A-CH (German speaking) market of Europe, we had no reference customer in Germany. When prospects asked who we worked with, I’d rattle off the names of several American customers. Prospects would shake their head and ask for … Read more
Many people complain that cashiers decline Apple Pay even though their stores have advertised support for Apple’s payment service. I’ve come across the same experience with HDFC Bank’s PayZapp mobile wallet. The cashier at a restaurant in my neighborhood told me they hadn’t started accepting PayZapp although there was a “PayZapp Accepted” sticker on his … Read more
When an offshore IT services provider enters a new market, it’s (relatively) unknown in that geography. Many companies in this situation eschew end users and try to drive their go to market strategy by partnering with local IT companies. Ideal partner candidates are boutique shops and systems integrators that are well known in the target … Read more