Gold's product market fit with Indians ⚱️
The story of perfect product market fit of Gold with Indians.
Welcome to the 98th edition of the GrowthX Newsletter. Every Tuesday & Thursday I write a piece on startups & business growth. Today’s piece is going to 94,400+ operators & leaders from startups like Google, Stripe, Swiggy, Razorpay, CRED & more
Remember the last time you spoke about Gold at home?
Was it for an investment, a wedding or just a muhurat day (say, for Diwali)?
It’s fascinating how deeply rooted Gold is into Indian culture, even today.
So how did we get to this point?
The adoption (initial product market fit, PMF) for Gold happened when Indians lacked a currency. This was well before British ruled the Indian continent. Most kings & emperors (even Aurangzeb, The Mughals, Shivaji Maharaj & others) had reserves of casted Gold & Silver coins for trade.
Then, Gold soon lost it’s PMF as the currency for trade 🥺
Everyone wanted to have a smooth payment option and reverted to cash, resulting in most countries moving to printed currency notes. This didn’t stop Gold though.
Enter - World war I & II ⚔️ 🚀
Most currencies depreciated in value and could not store value during the period. This pushed the world & even British ruled Indians to not trust the government printed money and resorted them to Gold.
Fast forward few decades 🗓
The world has seen multiple hyperinflation cycles, recession & bull runs, and we are now in 2022 where markets seem to be bearish & Gold now seems to be a good option to store value.
On the other hand, Gold seems to be the insurance policy for emergencies 🩺
That’s core to why Women carry so much gold in India even today in most part of the country & how it’s the most respected gift for occasions in the Indian culture.
Now, you must be thinking - why are we talking so much about this? ⬇️
The core insight is “Gold Admits that it’s PMF can go away”. I have seen so many founders & growth leaders carry the idea that “their product will never lose PMF”. If Gold can lose it’s PMF, any product in the world can lose it’s PMF.
That’s where the idea of product market fit by stage comes into picture 📈
When you are building the product out, you will find set of users / use cases that your product solves elegantly. And ofcourse, customer’s show insane pull towards your product, keep buying from you repeatedly & are willing to pay for the product.
But, this can go away - similar to how Gold lost to cash 💵
And that’s where you need to understand either the adjacent users or the use cases that your product / it’s specific features can solve for the same or new set of ideal customers. Similar to how Gold found it’s next PMF in store of value & last resort during financial emergencies.
The science of scaled product market fit isn’t new 💡
We discuss the concept of building distribution during PMF, early scaling, mature stage of your product during the 1 year GrowthX experience. The actionable has helped GrowthX members solve PMF ceiling problems on distribution. If you are struggling with scaling PMF with distribution (acquiring customers), join the conversation in the GrowthX community.
