What we learned helping 40+ tech companies expand into Asia

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Asia is an infinitely diverse region, and this can present serious challenges toward smooth internationalization.

It is nearly impossible to condense decades of AccelerAsia’s collective learning (and unlearning) into one article, but here are the salient points to consider when expanding into Asia.

Importance of hiring locally

Many companies tend to focus on hiring local senior staff. But if your company doesn’t have a lot of traction in the region yet, you will need to find enthusiastic and hardworking hustlers instead.

It is necessary to hire people who have deep connections to local business networks, as norms and protocols around business relationships vary tremendously across borders. However, finding someone (or even a team) who’s very used to building and scaling new businesses can be priceless in terms of hitting the ground running in new markets.

Local customer support and delivery are also very important. If potential customers know that there is only one employee present in your Asia operations and that the company’s primary technical resources sit several thousand miles away, they may hesitate and question your ability to deliver. This can also get complicated across time zones and different support hours—we’ve seen many companies underestimate that.

Having a physical presence

A lot of companies ask us if they can start with having video calls with potential customers. In reality, it’s not an effective method. If you want to do business in Asia, come over and make the effort, and potential customers will acknowledge your commitment.

In a demo presentation, we prefer to have someone from the home office dial in, but we make sure somebody from our team is always present in the meeting to observe, ask questions, and respond to queries.

There are also many non-verbal cues that are critical in business meetings, which are very hard to pick up across often-poor conference call connections. This is why we do not operate in China, Japan, or South Korea at the moment, as we do not have an on-the-ground presence in those countries yet.

Finding the right time to expand

In some cases, companies come to Asia too quickly. Before expanding overseas, make sure that you have already proven your product in your home market and that you were able to operate in outside markets.

About seven years ago, an HTML5 mobile gaming platform expanded into Asia. The platform itself was good and robust. However, mobile data connection speeds in the region simply weren’t ready to absorb it on a massive scale. The mobile internet bandwidth in Asia at the time was inadequate to deliver mobile ads. The revenue wasn’t able to sustain the business.

Of course, the scenario is entirely different now: Asia is one of the most mobile-ready regions in the world. The company was indeed too early in its expansion bid. And for different companies and verticals, “too early” could just be a matter of months or years, depending on the circumstances.

Expanding overseas requires an investment of both time and money. If the headquarters has little time to support the satellite offices, no amount of monetary investment can make up for it.

It is also important to have a solid customer base of established brands at home. This inspires confidence and establishes credibility when you try to do business in regions like Asia where your brand is unfamiliar.

Revenue model-market fit

Readiness of the ecosystem

Positioning and finding the right use case