With the Shark Tank buzz going around in the country and people cutting across communities and age groups coming together to support the wave of entrepreneurship in India; TSB’s young minds decided to do an analysis of shark tank pitches so far in order to extract the biggest lessons that an entrepreneur should learn from the proficient sharks sitting on the hot seats:
Sometimes, first mover advantage isn’t really an advantage: First mover advantage implies being the first one in a market to provide a specific type of service or sell a new product. It’s the advantage of being the source of birth of an entirely new market with an innovative need. But is it really an advantage? Sharks in Shark Tank India have asserted the contrary a number of times on the show as it gives an opportunity for other players to enter the market to understand the market deeply. For instance, India’s first E-wallet was Oxigen wallet but the market leader still persists to be Paytm because Paytm would have had an opportunity to understand the possible needs that consumers want them to address, and to come up with a better product than previously launched E-wallets. The essence of it is that what matters the most is how conveniently a product addresses the problem and not when it enters the market; first movers need to keep evolving their products in order to be advantageous in the real sense.
The strongest aspect of a business is the people, and not the idea: If you have been binge watching Shark Tank India lately, you might have come across the investors saying that we are investing in you (the people) and not just the idea. Confident, talented, intellectual people are the backbone of the entrepreneurial world and the investment of money takes place in mindsets which are ready to revolutionize the world with their ambition, skills, and passion.
The vitality of brand positioning: I am pretty sure that you might have seen over a dozen people seeking the Shark’s expertise and financial resources just to devise a successful brand positioning strategy. This very assertion reflects on how paramount an efficient brand positioning strategy is to a businesses’ growth. In the contemporary business world with cut throat competition, you need to position your brand in a manner which allows you to stand out and it’s as important as developing an effective, innovative product offering.
Scalability is the key: If your business is limited to a single store, a single local region, a city, or even a country; your target market will reach its saturation point eventually at some point of time. Therefore, it’s extremely essential to think about the scalability of the business, to think about how you can keep expanding the business every single second that you are running it. Sometimes, it’s easier to think about scalability and at other times people might have to pivot their business in order to make it scalable; nevertheless it's always worth an entrepreneur’s time and investment to make a business scalable.