It’s the achilles heel of international companies

Whenever I mentor aspiring founders in the Philippines who are exploring what startup or business they may want to pursue, the most common challenge is they can be overly sensitive to the global competitive landscape. They tend to avoid, in particular, industries that already have an international player in the Philippines. “Wag na yun. Nan dun na si —” (Not that; there’s already someone doing it) they’ll say, naming a foreign company, whose local traction, I like to remind them, may not be as significant as it seems.

I try to dispel this sensitivity as much as I can. If they are passionate about solving a particular problem, they should let no company stand in their way. Yes, the competitive landscape should be an important consideration, but it shouldn’t be a deciding factor unless you’re staring down a truly unbeatable monopoly (I’d caution local founders who want to start a search engine, for example). Fortunately, most competitors are not Google. No matter how invincible they may seem, they can be beat.

The sensitivity toward international competitors is by no means limited to founders at the ideation stage. Even leaders of established companies can fall into this trap once a company from abroad enters the Philippines. The local leaders often end up following every move of their competitor in the press, on social media, and through the grapevine, planning out responses to all their actions rather than focusing on what they should be: their customers.

Also read: Can the Philippines produce a great social media platform?

We need to put a stop to this sensitivity. Local founders need to realise that international does not equate to better. While the competitor’s product has allowed them to expand to different markets around the world, their progress to date is not guaranteed to continue in the Philippines.

In the same vein, if the international competitor is better capitalised, it does not mean that they are automatically equipped with a brilliant strategy. In fact, the opposite is often true: Businesses with fewer funds are more creative, as circumstances force them to be, a tendency that may be amplified further in the Philippines due to our cultural tendency toward resourcefulness.

I’d argue that we are not only on equal terms with international competitors, we are actually at an advantage. International competitors need to go through the process of localisation: They need to think about how to tailor every aspect of their business, from marketing and advertising to even administrative functions like hiring and procuring to the Philippine market. Localisation is a conscious process, and it is by no means an easy one — the business lore of every market is crowded with tales of seemingly unbeatable businesses whose achilles heel was their failure to properly localise.

A grassroots perspective

Filipino founders do not need to localise our business because it’s our default perspective. We were born, raised, and educated in the Philippines, so we know how the country works. We know our malls and our streets, our movies and our celebrities. This advantage is a significant one, and I’d like to draw on my own experience to illustrate this fact.

In late 2015, I founded Mober. While we were the first and only on-demand logistics platforms operating in the Philippines at the time, I knew there would be more to come from around Southeast Asia. Despite the soon-to-be crowded marketplace, I was undaunted, confident that my intimate familiarity with the country — Mober would remain the only company in this category founded by a Filipino — would guide the company toward success, and it has.

Though traditional businesses in the Philippines are not known for investing into tech startups, we managed to fundraise from the logistics provider 2GO. I credit this milestone to the fact that our leadership team knows how to communicate with industry leaders in the country and their confidence in our knowledge of local logistics. We now have a serviceable area that stretches from Metro Manila as far north as Pampanga and as far south as Laguna, in addition to our recent expansion into Cebu City. This growth is in large part due to successful homegrown campaigns like “i-Mober na yan!” led by none other than Filipino heartthrob and best-in-class endorser Piolo Pascual.

Since many of the biggest brands in the Philippines rely on us for same-day delivery of their products, we vet and train for drivers who know our city streets like the back of their hand, as navigation apps can only do so much. Most international competitors deem this kind of selectivity a waste of time, not knowing that navigation apps can be useless in a city as alive with life as Manila. Getting from origin to destination requires the ingenuity, creativity, and persistence that you can only find in a skilled driver (and have no doubts about it: driving is a skill-based profession).

Also read: Regardless of product or industry, every business is a service provider

On the other hand, the few competitors that do try to have some form of vetting or training tend to take a strict by-the-book approach, as though they were programming robots. This kind of rote learning is less than effective because the goal should be to build overall people, not only individual skills: You want someone who has the heart to care whether a package is delivered from sender to recipient. Mober’s efforts toward overall character-building have always been well-worth the effort: our client companies get their products to their customers safely, quickly, and reliably, rain or shine, as evidenced in our stellar customer service ratings.

Founders in the Philippines need to internalise what I have experienced with Mober: Our upbringing is a decided advantage over international competitors that will enable us create more value for our customers if leveraged correctly. We look at all of the country’s problems, both big and small, though an entirely different lens, one crafted through years and years of first-hand experience. Filipino entrepreneurs should not be afraid to use them to see.

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