Testing a New Market on a Minimal Budget: Building the Evidence for Growth in India
India showed every sign of being a strong growth market, but the business's foothold there was small. The question was how to test the opportunity rigorously before committing significant investment.
At a glance
- Client
- eCommerce tech platform, serving B2B and B2C customers
- Market
- India, tested in Bangalore
- Starting market value
- £108k a year
- Approach
- Contained test in a single city
- Budget
- Minimal test budget
- My role
- Head of Commercial
- Launched
- Early 2024
A large opportunity, and a small foothold
India had been identified as an emerging market with unusually favourable conditions. Barriers to entry were low, and the competitive landscape left room for strong product positioning.
The business, however, was generating only £108k a year there, a small fraction of what the market appeared capable of supporting. The gap was substantial, and so was the risk: committing serious investment to an untested market on the strength of research alone could easily outrun the evidence.
The strategic question was not whether to enter India at scale. It was how to establish, quickly and cheaply, whether the opportunity was real and what it would take to capture it.
Understanding existing customers before reaching new ones
The existing customer base, though small, was the most reliable evidence available. I analysed customer behaviour against spend to establish which benefits customers drew from their plan and how they used the platform, paying particular attention to the habits of the most successful B2B users.
Alongside this, wider market research examined customers, competitors, emerging technologies and shifts in the market. Together, these shaped the positioning, messaging, routes to market and customer touchpoints for the test.
Finally, I built a live dashboard tracking customer spending, so that changes in revenue, and their causes, would be visible as the test ran rather than reconstructed afterwards.
A contained test in a single city
Rather than launching nationally, I tested growth potential in Bangalore on a minimal budget, combining acquisition, retention and commercial levers in a single first phase.
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Visibility in search
Google Ads secured first-page visibility from the outset, while search engine optimisation and new content built organic presence that would outlast the paid activity.
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Customer-led messaging and pricing
I surveyed and contacted current customers, evaluated each pricing plan against what it offered, and compared customer behaviour with lifetime value to shape targeted messaging and promotions.
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Prospecting new customers
With positioning and messaging informed by the strongest existing users, outreach focused on prospects most likely to resemble them.
What I chose not to do
I did not commit a national launch budget on the strength of research alone. A contained test in one city made the opportunity measurable, kept the downside small, and produced evidence on which a larger decision could be made.
Early signals that the opportunity was real
The test was designed to answer one question: would the market respond? In the first month after launch, compared with the period before it, web traffic rose by 88% and engagement by 84%. Most importantly, monetary transactions rose by 9%, showing that the increase in attention was already translating into revenue.
These were leading indicators from a deliberately small test, and were read as such. Their value lay in what they made possible: a decision on further investment grounded in observed market behaviour rather than projection.
The engagement also left the business with:
- a clear picture of how its most valuable customers used the platform
- positioning and messaging tested in the target market
- a live dashboard linking revenue changes to their causes
From test to scale, on the strength of evidence
The Bangalore test established a repeatable model: understand the strongest existing customers, test positioning in a contained market, and measure revenue impact in real time. That model provides the basis for extending into further Indian cities with confidence rather than conjecture.
If you are weighing up a new market, I would welcome a conversation.
Whether you are facing a single commercial blocker or need someone to lead the strategy, we can start with a call.