Market Expansion Strategy - new service line
Project scope
Categories
Market research Competitive analysis Investment Market expansion Product or service launchSkills
strategic decision making marketing punjabi language english language urdu language gujarati language transliteration multilingualism customer service scriptingOur mission
Our company was created over a year ago with a specific goal to create products and services that make it easier for children of South Asian descent to learn their native languages. So far, our focus has been on a single language - Urdu. We wanted to become excellent in a single language, and then extend our offerings to other languages (e.g. Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, etc.). South Asians are the fastest growing and wealthiest demographic in the US and we believe there is a huge opportunity in this space.
What we do
As a 1.5 person startup, we took a staged approach to test product/market fit.
Phase 1 - complete - published a series of bilingual books in Urdu. We are the first ones to include English transliteration, in addition to English translations besides the Urdu script. We have received excellent feedback over the last year having sold thousands of books around the globe, with a significant presence in Canada, the US and the UK.
Phase 2 - in progress - prove out product/market fit on multiple products
- Relaunch under a new name with a new set of products that take into account customer feedback we have received
- Launch a new service line of online tutoring specifically catered and designed for kids in the West
- Explore expansion opportunities
Phase 3 - future - scale!
The Project
We have some key strategic decisions ahead of us that need to be assessed. One of them is outlining our roadmap for the new online tutoring service we are looking to create. We envision this as a market place (see vipkid.com or lingobus.com) where parents can find tutors that have specifically been trained on materials that teach South Asian languages as a second language to kids who live in the West.
While we expect to launch with a MVP, we can use help from the students in outlining the opportunity and effort required to achieve our end objectives. This would include laying out a roadmap of our offering, key milestones, investments, languages offered, marketing opportunities and understanding how it links to the journeys of the customers from the rest of the business.
About the company
South Asians living abroad are struggling to transfer their native languages to their children. Our children are exposed mostly to English and resources available in native languages are too complex for children in the West. Plus, the parents themselves often struggle with reading the language even if they are able to speak it to varying degrees.
Our vision is to help preserve the use of South Asian languages. We aspire to become a leading bilingual edutainment brand for children of South Asian descent through a mix of high-quality physical and digital resources, with a focus on transliteration, e.g. Urdu written using the English alphabet.
We launched our first versions of Urdu-English books in September ’20 and now offer 12 books across 4 reading levels. We are expanding our product lines in January, have transformational improvements planned for next year, and a much more exciting vision ahead of us to offer multiple languages.