David Chen, Founder of Strikingly, Edith Yeung, VP at International Business Development of Dolphin Browser, Soujanya Bhumkar, CEO of Cooliris, and Anis Uzzaman, General Partner at Venture Capital Fenox joined us today at TechCrunch Shanghai discussing how to do branding in international market.
Ms. Edith Yeung shared how Dolphin mobile browser expanded to over 200 countries. Ms. Yeung concludes the key to international expansion is the product. After having had users from multiple countries or regions, Dolphin tried to figure how they were mobile browsers. But later they realized there are some issues that all the users would be concerned with or have problem with. You can solve problems for people around the world by figuring out and solving those key problems. On which markets to focus on, Dolphin’s strategy is launching different language versions and follow up on which markets perform better.
Mr. Soujanya Bhumkar doesn’t agree with some others that there are two markets, China market and the market outside China. Even Beijing and Shanghai, the two Chinese cities, are different. He thinks every region is different and you should keep continuous attention to each one. Cooliris wants to have users view and manage their photos in all online services in one place. It has integrated photo storing and sharing services from the US, Russia and China.
Mr. Anis Uzzaman thinks it’s not that you’d test the water of a foreign market but that you should build products for the global market, for if you don’t go international other players will eventually expand to your realm and grab your market share.
Bowei Gai, founder of World Startup Report and MC of the panel, often found people in the rest of the world think products by Chinese are of low quality or with security issues. As a Chinese that founded a company in the US, David Chen doesn’t feel he’s discriminated. Mr. Uzzaman, as an investor, doesn’t care where entrepreneurs are from so long as they are talent and build good products.