Forming an Independent View on India vs. US Market Dynamics
Developed a formed perspective on how Indian markets differ from US SaaS and enterprise, built through sustained cross-sector reading alongside day-to-day US-focused research work.
Ektha S
Financial Research Associate at The D. E. Shaw Group
From their time as
Financial Research Associate
The D. E. Shaw Group • 2023
Overview
Ektha's day-to-day research at D. E. Shaw focuses on US companies, primarily in SaaS and cybersecurity. But alongside that work, she has spent significant time tracking the Indian consumer and enterprise landscape independently, through newsletters, Substack, LinkedIn, and sector-specific research materials.
The Story
Ektha's day-to-day research at D. E. Shaw focuses on US companies, primarily in SaaS and cybersecurity. But alongside that work, she has spent significant time tracking the Indian consumer and enterprise landscape independently, through newsletters, Substack, LinkedIn, and sector-specific research materials.
Over time, that reading has produced a formed view: in India, distribution and business model innovation tend to matter more than pure product quality, in a way that is meaningfully different from what she observes in the US companies she analyzes. In the US, especially in SaaS and enterprise, markets are more defined and mature. A clearly better product can find an established buyer persona, a budget, and a willingness to pay. The investing logic tends to revolve around product differentiation and scalability.
In India, she has observed that the constraint is often not the product itself. It is whether the market is ready: whether customers have the budget, whether trust and adoption habits are in place, whether the distribution channel exists. A valuable product can still fail to reach users if the go-to-market is wrong. Indian companies, she has noticed, tend to innovate more on business models than on pure technology as a result.
This has shifted how she thinks about evaluating opportunities: in the US, she starts with the product; in India, she starts with distribution and behavior.