The china allure

And no, i am not talking the women.

i am talking about the busness potential of china. One word: massive!

lately i have been involved in more than 1 china project, suprising as i am a "banana" in all sense of the word (instance: i try to speak mandarin and still flub up by interjecting cantonese words into madarin - that's how badly i suck in speaking the language).

i was with a partner to discuss one project and i finally saw how immense the country is, and how incredibly lucrative that market is. If you thought there are a lot of 7-11's in singapore, there are millions of such provision shops across china!

but at the same time, the go to market strategy for each region is different as there is no one national chain (ie like our cold storage or fairprice) that has coverage across the country. Instead one finds provincial or regional autonomous companies, each with their own chief exec and p&l responsibilities.

from an investment perspective, sad as it may seem, any start-up without a china strategy would be awfully uncompetitive in chasing investor dollar unless there is a clear niche. Perhaps i should qualify that statement as companies targetting mass consumers and not nice b-b or b-prosumer markets.

and what differentiates china from india is that there is a very strong middle-class, thanks to the liberal communist rule over the past 20 or so years since deng xiaopeng opened up the country. For india, its democracy i would say is also its downfall as the country is somehwhat hampered in reforming the country by constant threats of coalition partners jumping ship. But i guess they (the indian government) is playing catch up.

simply amazing!


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