| Friday, 13 September 2024 |
An abridged, narrative version of the latest episode of Two by Two, The Ken’s premium weekly business podcast Subscribe here
Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],
“There are some fundamental differences between India and the US.
I think everybody knows it. It’s obvious, but just to state it explicitly, on most metrics, we are one-tenth the size of the US. Online commerce. Digital payments. All one-tenth the size of the US market.
And if you look at monetisation, it gets even worse.”
That’s Vikram Bhat, formerly Chief Product Officer at Setu.
It’s partly his theory of why Stripe couldn’t make a dent in India.
I’m listening because Vikram understands startups, the internet, and most importantly, products. Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of companies where Vikram was the CPO of: Good Worker. Capillary Technologies. Lendingkart. Ekstep Foundation. Aditya Birla Online Fashion. He’s been at the apex of product management for over a decade.
I press Vikram further.
India being a smaller market didn’t stop similar companies, like Amazon, or Uber, or Apple, or Google. All global, well-funded, powerful companies who made India a priority, despite its size, have seen some success.
What did Stripe miss?
“Stripe kind of forgot how it grew initially. When it started, Stripe’s founders were the ones who were actually going and trying to identify the growing segments of the market.
“It doesn’t look like they followed that playbook when they started in India, because I think if they had applied the same playbook, it would have been clear to them that India is the next biggest growing market for startups.”
I’m still unconvinced.
Stripe, the world’s mightiest fintech, currently valued at US$70 billion (and at US$95 billion at its peak), could not make a dent in India. It spent seven years trying. It had a great product, a massive untapped opportunity, and didn’t have much competition.
And yet, it failed. Why?
There’s an internet quip that was quite popular until recently. The Amazon of China is Alibaba, the Uber of China is Didi, the Google of China is Baidu, the Apple of China is Xiaomi. In India, the thinking was: the Amazon of India is Amazon, the Uber of India is Uber, the Google of India is Google, and the Apple of India is Apple.
In this week’s episode of Two by Two, The Ken’s latest business podcast, we discuss why Stripe couldn’t become the Stripe of India.
And to find the answer, my co-host Rohin and I are also fortunate to be joined by Arundhati Ramanathan, The Ken’s Deputy Editor.
Arundhati has a lot to say about why Stripe lost.
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