Within the startup ecosystem, the methods to create value for the product or service are ever evolving, making the forces affecting the growth of companies dynamic in nature.
The process for companies to identify :
- the right market,
- target audience ,and
- a successful medium to launch their products has evolved over time.
This process is factored in by:
- changing customer needs,
- product quality expectations,
- ease of access to avail a service,
- competitive pricing, and
- innovative features.
Within an industry what may differ are the product/service features, but the methods to create value for your customer are inherently sector agnostic in nature.
Lets enlist various techniques adopted by companies within the startup ecosystem, to build and sustain competitive advantage, through value creation.
Creativity: Creativity drives innovation. The ability of a company to find new creative means to capture the attention of its target market, is what would help it sustain its customer base, over time.
- With the onset of the pandemic, the Edtech industry has shown tremendous growth and creativity, as online education and e-learning platforms have seen astonishing adoption and exponential growth.
- Besides K-12 education, coding is the next frontier as a slew of startups are looking to gain headway in this segment. Edtech startups in the coding and programming segment have come into the limelight post- ByJU’s $300 million acquisition of WhiteHat Jr.
- Creativity and innovation trends varied within the startup ecosystem that ranged from gamification process to AI driven platforms that map user journeys more efficiently.
Target Audience: The ability of an entrepreneur to identify “blind spots” when viewing a potential target market, impacts his ability to carve a new set of customers for his/her product.
- Catering to the existing target audience, doesn’t cut it anymore. Growth lies in the capacity to identify a new market segment for the same services/products. Remote Healthcare industry is a prime example of this.
- With an increase in the incidence of lifestyle diseases and rising healthcare costs, there’s immense pressure on the traditional healthcare system. Innovative technologies are allowing health organizations to enhance the access and reduce the burden on hospitals through real-time consultation with doctors through smartphones, tablets, laptops or PCs.
- Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) also provides devices that can monitor and report a person’s health in real-time to reduce response duration and completely remove the need for constant checkups.
Co-creation:
- Forbes defines co-creation as the purposeful action of partnering with strategic customers, partners or employees to ideate, problem solve, improve performance, or create a new product, service or business. It requires alignment of goals, solution propositions, and tech stacks.
- Within the Logistics and Supply Chain Management industry, there is a rising trend of collaboration between various stakeholders to provide enhanced services.
- With delivery times going as low as within a few hours, an effective supply chain management using technology has become a strong value differentiator. Effectively connecting the fragmented supply chain and ensuring seamless and hassle free deliveries, various startups are improving the efficiency of logistics within the country.
Timing: Market timing is a critical element in the growth and success of any business.
- It is essential that one understands in great detail the specific ecosystem factors that impact the target customers’ willingness and ability to adopt your solution.
- Timing of launching your product in your market can feature as a major factor to generate customer value. It directly impacts your market presence.
- If you’re joining the brigade too early it is termed as a “False Start”. This happens when the company often jumps into launching the first version of their product as fast as they can in the market. The problem arises when the customer won’t relate to the product as a solution to a problem they don’t think exists.
- And if you’re too late, then your product is already competing with players that have been in the market longer to create customer resonance. A recent example of such a failure was the exit of “Uber Eats” from the Food Aggregating industry, as it was a late entrant and it got sidelined.
Aggregation of Services:
- To provide an ease of service to consumers, startups have taken the aggregator model approach to consolidate products on a single platform.
- Whether it is within the mobility sector, food industry, FMCG products, payment gateways, insurance sector or hospitality industry, the aggregator model is playing a key role in bringing structure and equilibrium within the organized space across various industries.
- Typically, the goods and / or service providers on these platforms are the real customers of such aggregator based businesses. In return, the aggregator helps these service providers gain more customers, usually for a certain fee or commission.
- The end goal is to convince the consumer that by using this platform, they have been removed from the hassle of comparing various services/products on different websites, and can even find ratings/ranks on these, to make purchasing decisions faster.
Conclusion: There might not be a “secret sauce” to create the ideal value for the product but the identification of the correct technique to launch the product, can assure significant success rate.
Think disruptive, and build a proof of concept.
- Improvise,
- Implement, and
- Repeat – all at lightning speed
Unlearn, reorganize, relearn, and strike new partnerships to build and sustain value of the product !
