Built at Home, Sold Abroad: The Case for Going Global Earlier

Headline and Context

Dev Khare of Lightspeed Venture Partners published "India Startups are (finally!) building Global Brands" on 8 February 2023; the page was last modified on 4 September 2025. It is an investor's view, and some data in it come from the author's own rough analysis of January 2022 data. Readers should treat the numbers as dated.

The argument

Khare wrote that younger companies go global earlier because web-based access to markets and remote teams lower the barrier. He described Indian software as moving from business-model innovation, offering affordable self-serve tools in mature categories, to category creation through technology and product innovation. In his words, "We have now clearly entered Phase 2 where category creation using tech and product innovation is the main wedge." He listed the foundations: a growing community of founders, a deep pool of developer talent, a large home market to test products and durable business models. He expected edtech, B2B marketplaces, labour marketplaces, crypto and web3, and fintech to follow software.

“We have now clearly entered Phase 2 where category creation using tech and product innovation is the main wedge.”

Evidence he offered

• About 30% of India's 80 unicorns had gone or were going international and about 20% had expanded abroad as a smaller extension, by his rough analysis. • Bain & Company expected Indian software to reach $30 billion in revenue and an 8 to 9% share of global software by 2025. We have not checked whether that happened. • Internet users grew from 50 million in 2011 to 850 million; venture funding rose from $1 billion in 2011 to $63 billion in 2021; unicorns rose from one to 79 by the end of 2021, with a combined valuation of about $260 billion. • Examples: Byju's used its teacher network and acquisitions to enter the US and other markets; Zetwerk used its work with large Indian customers to serve Airbus and GE; Pepper Content drives over a third of revenue from the US; Hubilo is headquartered in the Bay Area with clients including SAP and Coca-Cola; Acceldata counts Oracle and PhonePe as clients; Darwinbox expanded from India to Southeast Asia; ShareChat hires AI and machine-learning talent in the US.

Some of these examples have changed since 2023. Byju's, for example, has faced serious difficulties in recent years, so it should be read as a historical illustration, not a current success.

Our analysis: what holds up

1. The home market as a test bed. A large, price-sensitive domestic market forces products to be efficient, and a product that survives there is often competitive elsewhere.

2. Talent location is flexible. Hiring where talent is plentiful, as ShareChat did with machine-learning engineers, is now normal. Founders can choose a team location on the basis of skill supply.

3. Customer proximity matters. A company serving US enterprises usually needs sales people near them. The essay's examples of Bay Area headquarters reflect that.

4. Start with one market. Going global means choosing a first country, a first customer type and a first channel, not everything at once.

What the essay does not settle

It does not address the cost of a new market, regulatory differences, payment and tax complications, or how many companies attempted to expand and failed. Survivorship bias is real: the stories that get told are the ones that worked.

A first-market checklist: our framework

• Is demand abroad proven by paying customers, not by interest? • Which market shares your product's problem most closely? • What local laws on data, tax and employment apply? • Who will sell and support in that time zone? • What is the budget, and what result will make you stop?

For MSMEs and exporters

The same logic applies to physical goods. Start with one buyer in one country, learn the paperwork, and grow from there. Government export schemes and trade-deal developments covered in our Enterprise section may affect the choice.

Common mistakes when going abroad

Founders often assume that a product built for India will sell unchanged elsewhere. Pricing, payment methods, language, support hours and legal terms usually need adjustment. Another common mistake is to hire a large foreign sales team before understanding who buys and why. A leaner approach is to run a small pilot with a handful of customers, learn what they need and decide whether to invest more. Keep the home business strong while you test; a weak core cannot fund a distant bet.