The people staying in the expensive urban cities like Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco and catering to the urban, affluent and yet a small population mainly depend on their mobile phones and internet to order the services and goods. There are a host of startups like Postmates, Blue Apron, GrubMarket, Munchery, Instacart and Uber who attract the middle income level of people and have a vista of plans opening up for them. This is the most happening business models for the startups in the present business scenario.
Venture capitalist firms catering to the U.S and the Chinese startups had backed several startups like the GrubMarket and so on but they are presently of opinion that the mass market should be catered to, at first. It is the rich that subsidize to the rest of the market, according to news sources. If it wasn’t for the $10000 funding for the earlier versions of Apple and Mac, the iPhone would perhaps not come into the market.
It is difficult for the mass market to get started in China, like a bolt from the blue. In China the major population happens to be middle class so startups surely go after the mass market. The high profile customers are however chased by the companies in China, but the Chinese middle class customers make the mass market more viable for them. Companies like YY, Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba all come from the mass market ventures anyway.
Therefore the huge market of the smartphone adoption globally will now approach to a market outside China. This is unlike the nineties when only the high income people could afford the computers. Startups can reach some billions of the customers at the middle income levels also. The internet is so accessible to them nowadays with a low data card and an ordinary smartphone to avail of the services rendered by the startups. Thus, the founders of these startups had an enormous vision that the middle class people globally can create companies worth billion dollars with their growth potential. Xiaomi, like Apple is the most coveted of companies today as the makers of smartphones. The smartphones are very much affordable in comparison with those of Apple. Xiaoumi will not only attract the mass market appeal and grow faster but it will also survive in the market downturn surely.
Some of the sectors are ready for the mass market appeal like Xiaoumi. It not only has the mass market appeal but it also creates a very high quality hardware at a low cost. It collects its customer feedback and usage data and uses that to integrate all the information and feedback into its future products. The company presently has a huge customer base.
According to news sources, the company sold 61 millions of phones in 2014, with a record breaking sale of 2 million phones in a day. With that much of sales, it has now sprung up to the sale of home appliances and market accessories. Chinese companies like JD.com and Alibaba also has a mass market approach with other models emerging in the U.S. In U.S. the ecommerce aims to target the high end customers first including the Gilt Groupe, the Etsy while the Chinese e commerce mainly aims in targeting the middle income consumers primarily.
Other startups in China like Meilishuo and Mogujie that sells household good and baby things also have reached an enormous mass selling zenith point, while in U.S, a mass market startup is Wish, offering low cost products from China.
Snapdeal and Flipkart, the e commerce giants in India also succeeds with the mass market first. These companies sell the everyday items to the people and do not stop at selling the special goods to the one percent of high income level people.
Uber also started with the mass market approach first but later trickled down to catering through the GrabTaxi in south east Asia, Didi Dache and UberX in China. The companies initially had started with the low cost rides but later expanded to the luxury services. In China, services are offered by mobile technology to the mass market as per Wuba, the services like Craigslist in China. Even the mobile apps on demand offer Boxed which is an online club store shopping experience at a low cost. The mass market approach may go global from the very first day of the venture. This is much possible in China than in the U.S. Companies and the venture capitalists with a vision to cater to the mass of world’s middle class people thus has a vision to serve them globally and thus create global companies worth billions of dollars with all the growth potential.