Your dream is to create this one app that millions of people use in their lives. You spend a year creating your masterpiece and launch. But wait. Why aren’t users flocking to your app? Is it the product or is it the market?

It is always better to analyze and map the market that you want to create a product for, BEFORE creating the product. You get a sense of the revenue potential as well as get a good feel of what your competitors are doing.

Target Addressable Market (TAM): The total audience that you can market your product to.

Serviceable Achievable Market (SAM): The percentage (%) of TAM with constraints like geography, internet connectivity, age, gender, interests, preferences and competitors.

Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM): Looking at your own resources (budget, logistics, team etc), the percentage (%) SAM that your product will be able to access. This is a more realistic market potential for your product and can be broken down into achievable monthly goals after you validate your MVP.

Competitors: The products that are already in the market, their revenue and expenditure, market penetration strategies, burn rate. This also ensures a decent understanding of market saturation i.e. does your product have the potential to capture a percentage (%) of market share or is the entire market demand already being met by established players.

Target Customers: This is the demographic profile of users that will use your product. Understanding this is vital to the development and growth of your product. Be obsessed with your customer’s (ग्राहक) likes and dislikes, the lifestyle that they lead, their ambitions and goals, where they like to spend and why.

The dangers of not spending enough time to assess the market are too big to ignore. Analyze risks and opportunities and take decisions based on market data to build and grow your dream product.