Executive Interview
Executive Interviews
An Interview with
Paranee Damodaran
Market Navigator
CEO
Publish Date:
17 October 2019
Singapore
Location:
Tell us about your background, and how you came to found your company?
Market Navigator was born out of our love to help tech founders grow their business, find their footing and expand into new markets. We are a hybrid team of market access specialists and venture builders. We help companies with market entry services and business expansion consulting.
We work in a wide range of sectors, primarily B2B tech companies in BFSI, telco, healthcare, pharmaceutical, retail, agriculture, education etc with clients ranging from corporates, MNCs and startups.
What is most important to you and your organization – mission, vision, or core values? Why?
We have one motto - Deliver Value! That sums it up.
Can you explain briefly how your service(s)/product(s) works?
We are consulting and services company, our value proposition is very simple. If you want to enter a new market in the fastest possible time, you will need to secure clients, franchise partners, engage distributors, negotiate a deal with payment system providers etc. This requires companies to engage with decision makers, find local clients/channels/partners and manoeuvre regulations. This usually takes a foreign company 12-18 months. We help our clients get there in 3-6 months, in most cases.
How has the industry been changing in recent years?
The awareness level is the market has improved tremendously. The buyers and investors, in general are getting more and more sophisticated. So I think people have become more value driven, these days, which is awesome. The negative aspect of this, is that there is a lot of noise. So it's difficult for people and companies to determine what is real and what is not. Hence why, people still rely on recommendation when procuring a product or service.
What makes you different from what’s currently available in the market?
People interpret market access differently, so there's a lot of confusion in the market, I feel. Co-working spaces, community builders and events offer market access as their value proposition as well. For all the above parties, they would consider a networking session as providing market access. And that's fine because "market access" is a broad term.
For Market Navigator, we interpret market access as gaining market validation, meeting with decision makers and securing a client or a strategic partner. Our yard stick is measured by how quickly our clients go-to-market.
What does the future hold for your company?