(The Weekend Insight) - Desi PMF: Why India Needs a Different Playbook Than the West

In today’s deep-dive, we will explore how Indian startups approach Product-Market Fit differently from their Western counterparts. We will unpack the desi playbook that’s helping founders find traction, trust, and scale in one of the most complex markets in the world.

In Silicon Valley, the journey to Product-Market Fit (PMF) often follows a well-worn path. Founders validate an idea through structured MVPs, test with early adopters, track retention cohorts, optimize metrics like CAC and LTV, and only then raise capital to scale. But in India, the road to PMF is rarely so clinical. Here, PMF is often hacked, not found. And the way Indian startups stumble, hustle, and juggad their way to PMF tells a fascinating story of market improvisation, cultural intuition, and resourceful execution.

In India, the traditional playbook of PMF simply doesn’t apply for most founders. A large part of this comes down to the diversity and fragmentation of the Indian market. A strategy that works in South Delhi may completely fail in rural Bihar. English-first apps, Silicon Valley-style email onboarding flows, or assumptions around card payments simply don’t hold. So instead of textbook PMF, Indian founders look for desi signals: are shopkeepers using it without training? Are WhatsApp forwards driving organic installs? Is the neighborhood kirana owner recommending it? These are not vanity signals - they are survival checkpoints.

Consider Kuku FM. The audio content startup didn’t start with a flashy podcast library. It started with Bhojpuri and Hindi audio summaries of self-help books, narrated in a relatable style. Instead of targeting urban listeners, it focused on Tier 2 and Tier 3 youth who were hungry for self-improvement. Their PMF came not from App Store reviews, but from 4-minute voice notes sent by users asking for more book summaries, or sharing how they listened while farming. For Kuku FM, PMF was not a dashboard metric - it was when listeners called the customer support number just to say thank you.

Similarly, Meesho didn’t obsess over user retention curves. It found PMF when housewives in small towns began reselling products through WhatsApp groups, treating the app as a business toolkit. PMF wasn’t a function of product analytics - it was embedded in human behavior. The company realized that they didn’t need to build a massive frontend catalog. Instead, they had to make sharing, ordering, and cash collection easy for the digitally semi-literate. That shift in framing - from a B2C app to a tool for micro-entrepreneurs - was the real unlock.

Sometimes, PMF is discovered not through metrics, but through narrative. Consider The Whole Truth Foods. Its founder, Shashank Mehta, wrote an open letter about the shady practices in the food industry and how he wanted to build a brand that was honest about ingredients. That story resonated so deeply that it became the product. Customers weren’t buying just protein bars; they were buying trust. The company didn’t run elaborate A/B tests or hire a growth PM to chase retention. Instead, they doubled down on content that explained food labels, narrated founder dilemmas, and educated consumers. Trust became the PMF.

Many Indian startups find PMF in community before product. Take Leap Scholar, a platform for Indian students going abroad. Their initial growth wasn’t driven by performance marketing. Instead, it came from thousands of students joining their counseling groups on Telegram, attending live sessions, and sharing documents. The product evolved by listening to what students struggled with: SOP writing, visa slots, or IELTS coaching. PMF happened when users began referring friends not to the app, but to the group. Community, not UI, was the first product.

Desi PMF is also often found offline. Startups like Ninjacart or DeHaat had to sit with farmers, mandi traders, and supply chain middlemen for months before understanding what value they could truly provide. Their PMF came not from building a fancy logistics app, but from solving daily pain points around price discovery, spoilage, and trust. For these founders, Google Analytics wasn’t the guide - truck driver feedback was. Even BharatAgri, a digital agri-advisory platform, found PMF when farmers started sharing screenshots of the app on village WhatsApp groups and requested in-person demo calls from company reps.

This difference also shows up in pricing. Many Indian startups price their products at launch not based on marginal costs or gross margin models, but based on what the target customer can afford. Teachmint, which built tools for teachers to run online classes, initially charged Rs 200/month because that was what a tuition teacher in Lucknow or Nashik could pay. PMF was validated not when 100 teachers signed up, but when they continued paying month after month. Indian PMF is often not about scale, but about meaningful, recurring value from a tough customer base.

A common trait across these journeys is the absence of polish. Early PMF in India is often messy, hacked together, and partially manual. Startups use Google Forms, WhatsApp groups, Excel sheets, and shared PDFs to simulate the real product. Filo, a tutoring app, started as a hotline number where students could call and get instant doubt-clearing from tutors. The tech stack was rudimentary, but demand was unmistakable. Founders validate PMF by standing behind the curtain and manually pushing buttons, only automating once real usage emerges.

And then there are the GTM (go-to-market) innovations that are unique to India. Startups like Growth School and Graphy leveraged influencer distribution before product readiness. Growth School pre-sold courses by collaborating with creators who had niche but loyal audiences - marketing experts, designers, tech folks. Product-Market Fit was less about product stickiness and more about the willingness of a micro-community to transact on trust. Indian PMF, in these cases, rides on borrowed credibility.

This model of distribution-first PMF is increasingly popular. Instead of spending on paid ads, founders piggyback on existing WhatsApp groups, community pages, Telegram channels, or creator audiences. PMF is found in the act of forwarding. As odd as it may sound, for many desi startups, virality is a better leading indicator of PMF than retention.

In rural and semi-urban India, PMF is also culturally mediated. Apps like ShareChat and Chingari succeeded because they understood the emotional and linguistic landscape of Bharat users. ShareChat didn’t just build a TikTok clone. It built a platform where Bhojpuri, Tamil, and Marathi users could engage in familiar formats with local flavor. Their PMF emerged not from market research, but from being present where the action was: regional festivals, political rallies, and even local radio. They advertised on autorickshaws, tied up with vernacular influencers, and let communities shape the product.

Interestingly, PMF in India is often multi-modal. For some users, the app may be the core experience. For others, it may be a WhatsApp bot, a call center, or even a local distributor. Companies like Dukaan realized that small merchants didn’t want to install a new app. So they created store links that could be shared directly on WhatsApp, with order notifications via SMS. PMF wasn’t about MAUs. It was about how quickly a seller could go from no digital presence to selling online. Convenience was the product.

These desi PMF patterns reveal something important: in India, you don’t wait for the perfect version of your product to start testing. You find proxies, shortcuts, and surface signals. You run Facebook ads not to get installs, but to get 50 WhatsApp leads. You don’t obsess over daily active users; you track repeat UPI transactions. You don’t build a dashboard; you take feedback on voice notes. And in many cases, you don’t even know you’ve hit PMF until people start calling your personal number to ask for more.

While this may sound chaotic to a Valley observer, it works. Because Indian users are unforgiving. They don’t hesitate to uninstall. They don’t give second chances. If a product solves their need, they stay. If not, they vanish. So when you find a cohort that sticks, especially in a low-trust, high-churn market, that’s your PMF. No matter how unscalable the method of finding it.

There are, of course, risks to this style. Many founders mistake early traction for PMF, when it’s just curiosity. Others burn out in trying to support semi-manual operations for too long. Some raise money on the back of influencer-led spikes, only to realize that real retention never existed. But over time, Indian founders are learning to blend desi hustle with global structure. They start with WhatsApp and Excel, but gradually move to CRMs and funnels. They hack their way to PMF, but then grow with discipline.

What India teaches the world about PMF is this: there is no universal method. The user defines what the product is, not the founder. And in a market as chaotic and creative as India, PMF isn’t a point you reach - it’s a process you survive.