Who says niche players can't be billion-dollar companies?

Sashi Reddi,

Founder and CEO, FXLabs Studios Pvt. Ltd.

To reinforce the ‘value proposition and branding’, niche players periodically need to get their messages out in the market they operate in. This could also involve ‘a re-branding’ exercise, wherein the company considers changing its logo, tagline, external and internal messaging to its customers and employees respectively. This is also a positive statement in communicating the company’s ‘key differentiators’ from its competitors and to maintain its ‘leadership position’ in the industry.

A niche player could also communicate its value proposition to its customers through new and innovative pricing and packaging. For example, a testing firm could charge for its services appropriately, after analyzing the amount the customer currently spends on technical support (post-product deployment). If the spending is minimal, it could result in increased returns for the testing firm. The pricing could also vary according to the number of bugs one finds in the product.

On the packaging side, one could draw up a list of ‘top 20’ functions and charge it as a package, rather than charging for all the services. For example, in the arena of security testing, this ‘top 20’ list could constitute a set of services deployed to detect security flaws.

A niche player should clearly articulate the business benefits that would accrue from engaging the company’s full services to the customer, including the ‘financial savings’ in the entire product lifecycle, rather than limiting it to specific services concerned. Experience has taught me that this is one of the strongest factors that help win and retain customers.

Niche players are extremely effective at working closely with their customers to build and maintain long term relationships by innovating and challenging the existing norms in the industry, thus adding value to the project, program, and organizational level. The best organizations in the world want to work with the best, and if you (as a niche player) can be the best at what you do—and this can really happen only if you focus in one area—then you will have great success.

In conclusion, I would like to add that, the toughest challenge an entrepreneur faces while building a $1 billion niche company, is to convince people to believe in the ‘value proposition of offering only specialized services’. While a niche firm often succeeds in attracting the best talent with the requisite specialized skills, it does encounter challenges to retain them in the face of competition from the big ‘end-to-end players’ in the industry. Hence, it is imperative for a niche company to consolidate its workforce with appropriate talent, value proposition, and the conviction of being a ‘big player’ in the industry, while offering them promising career paths.

The author is the Founder, Chairman & CEO of AppLabs. He can be reached at sashi.reddi@applabs.com

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