Product companies need to display their products at international tradeshows so that they can get in front of global buyers. Emerging companies find this to be a challenge given the tight funding situations. Also, lack of a made-in-India brand makes individual company participation a low-impact proposition.
We are trying to get NASSCOM to lead India delegations to some tradeshows where the Indian comapnies can demonstrate their products as a country pavillion. NASSCOM could arrange for some PR with the local media etc.
What are some of the tradeshows that the comunity would like to see targeted?
Good initiative. But would you think clustering all Indian companies together in a trade show would get more visibility? While for emerging companies it can be cost-saving, but a product identity would be more attracting than a country cluster.
For web product companies, some of the trade-shows that we might visit this year are:
- CeBit - Web 2.0 Expo - Enterprise Software Development Conference (California) - AJAXWorld Conference & Expo - Possibly Internet World
If the problem you are trying to address is lack of "awareness" that product companies also exist in India, then having a country cluster starts to change the perception.
Individual products need to find their own space. It cant hurt to get some footfalls via country specific cluster.
I believe the identity of a product is much stronger than the country it comes from. People wouldn't care as much as where the product is from, rather than what the product does for him.
The way we look at this is: Show/Demo the product and "wow" him with all the functionality/features/support - and then stun him with "it's from India".
Funny anecdote: Post purchase, quiet a few of our Indian customers also mentioned that if they knew FusionCharts was an Indian product while evaluating, they "might" not have bought it at the first place.
Hi Arvind, Thank you for starting this thread. I have been part of some delegations which have gone to US, CeBIT Australia and to China.
We have taken stall space at CeBIT (Australia) and have also exhibited but due to budget constraints the stall size have not been able to position India well....CeBIT Germany seems to be a mela where we might get lost unless and untill we have a largish presence.
Would love to hear on where we can exhibit Made in India Products. We should ideally look at some vertical focussed exhibitions. Like i know there are good focussed events on Banking, Healthcare, Gaming, Web 2.0, Mobile applications, etc.
The idea of representing a cluster of emerging product companies at Tradeshows is good and does create a country identity for product innovation and a basket of goods. But for many entrepreneurs who are looking to get clients to build revenue and are working on limited budget, it may fail to raise an identity and the breakthrough that some of these companies are looking for for their investment and efforts. I am with Pallav here that a cluster of products perhaps will not achieve the result that emerging companies seek. The representation should be further aimed at perhaps the type of product or services cluster that create identity for country as well as for the participating emerging companies.
The idea is to have a horizontal play - Indian product companies to establish made-in-India identity and change the pre-dominant perception that India only does services; AND a vertical play - a bunch of Indian product companies in a niche / vertical area to build product specific identity. Has to be horses for courses...
Companies that are selling products through the web dont need a direct presence show. They do web marketing (e.g. fusion charts)
Small companies that dont have marketing budgets before and after to show to leverage the fallout also dont gain.
Bigger product companies may be able to gain from this, but i guess they have the budgets to do a show themselves..
Could the money planned for the show be used to do a global web based campaign after shortlisting objectively products for various markets (as in the product directory). I feel more will be achieved this way.
I agree that the web lets you reach a much wider audience. Our primary reach at FusionCharts has been through web. But conferences add the following value:
Talk to existing customers, meet them face to face, understand how they're using our products, their pain points, their future requirements
Get a chance to meet and present our products to high level executives directly (for a top-down approach), as opposed to medium on web (wherein mostly tech people see/evaluate a product). As such you get access to a wider variety of audience, which *might* not have been reachable via web.
Many a times, we've been able to convince people using competitor products to use our products as we were able to showcase ourselves better. When someone is already using a product, he might not have the time/interest to look into another similar product over web. But at a conference, due to the personal touch, you get a chance at this.
Branding - from our research, people do tend to trust things slightly more when they see it offline as well (print media, trade shows etc.) Again, it adds the personal touch. So when a trade show, we take in our head of implementation team, head of support etc. As customers, they had been in touch with these guys from our team - and they feel good to meet them.
Just my 2 cents. Again, trade show is NOT a replacement for online marketing - it's another way to gain extra mileage - but yes, the costs are higher.
We found our experience at PMA 2009, USA very helpful, its a trade show for everything related to photography, hardware/software/non-tech. Online and trade-shows can not replace each other.
There were a few country pavillions there too, from Korea, Germany, China and I agree with Pallav that product identity is more important than country showcasing, but it works both ways.
A strong country brand-name can help companies too, and vice-versa. eg the perception an "Indian IT company" gives vs Thai or French IT company. They may be equally good but the country brand helps.
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