Customer acquisition and an effective go-to-market strategy are crucial for any startup, let alone one that has its eyes set on an international market. However, understanding different needs overseas can be hard without sufficient local networks or knowledge.
Take WooHoo®, for example, which is a Silicon Valley-founded tech startup specialising in AI voice assistants for homes and enterprises. From the outset, WooHoo® wanted to “strategise [its] growth in markets with plenty of headroom, particularly those in which voice assistants hadn’t been tapped for enterprise”, shares Chief Product Officer Kirti Chandel.
In countries such as the US, established products such as Alexa and Google Home had cemented notions of how and where voice assistants could be used. WooHoo® had to look abroad for opportunities, and Asia quickly emerged as the key market where the company would find unmet demand for voice assistants in a wide variety of use cases.
Yet without a firm understanding of the region’s business landscape, this market gap alone would not have guaranteed a successful Asian entry.
This all changed when WooHoo® was invited to join a DeepTech Accelerator programme under the Global Innovation Alliance (GIA), a multi-agency initiative between EDB, Enterprise Singapore (ESG), and the Ministry of Education (MOE) which helps tech startups go-to-market fast in Asia by leveraging Singapore’s tech ecosystem.
Programmes such as the DeepTech Accelerator and Global SG Launch programme equip overseas-based tech startups with market familiarity and customers within Singapore, before they set up a presence in the wider Asia region.
